I read Far From the Madding Crowd during the summer of 1968, when I was 11 1/2 years old and vacationing with my father in Greece. It was a great novel and I found myself identifying with Gabriel Oak in his unrequited love for the beautiful Bathsheba. . . In 1974, I read The Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge, which novels confirmed my great love of Thomas Hardys writing, his characters and his plots. Later I read Tess of the DUrbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. For me, Far From the Madding Crowd will always be linked with that first exploration of Greece, and the days and nights that I shared there with my Theio and Theia, my cousins, and Filia, the village where my father and his siblings, and where my grandfather was born. Like Gabriel Oak, I too fell in love that summer, not with a woman, but with that village, my Greek heritage, my father, my Theio Kosta, my Theia Pota, my Pappou Yianni, and those three cousins whom Id never met before. With the trip drawing to a close, when we left Filia, and even then I realized that my father would likely never again see his father, and perhaps never again see his brother and the village of his youth, the village that he had fought to save during the fratricidal Greek Civil War, as we left Filia, the two of us, my father and I found ourselves blinded by the tears that fell like raindrops, and the longing for our patrida, our horio, that will never end. . .
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 02:49:40 +0000