The "Pleiade" in Cyprus: French Authors and the Island of Aphrodite

THE “PLEIADE” IN CYPRUS: FRENCH AUTHORS AND THE ISLAND OF APHRODITE

Demetra Demetriou

Perhaps the oldest reference to Cyprus in French literature is to be found in thelong poem La Bataille des vins (1224), by Henri d’Andeli; the poem refers to theinternational wine competition, which was organized by the French king PhilipII Augustus. Commandaria, the sweet wine of Cyprus, competed and wasjudged to be among the best wines of France and Europe. Centuries later, the poetand songwriter Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780-1857) praised the same wine,which “created all the gods”,1 in his poem “Le vin de Chypre”. Cyprus inspiredFrench authors from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, some of them with itssweet wine, others with its mythological past or even its historical present. Therelationship that great figures of French literature formed with Cyprus varies,and renders the bonds connecting the two countries over time deeper and moresubstantial.

The most famous French poet who associated his life with Cyprus, wasundoubtedly Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the adolescent rebel poet, whosepassage on earth was a landmark for world poetry. After writing the Illuminationsand Une saison en enfer (A Season in Hell) and after a stormy life, he decided topermanently abandon poetry and “change life” (“changer la vie”), this time throughtravel. Cyprus was among the places visited by the poet-traveller; the island ofAphrodite-Venus, goddess of Cyprus, who he had already praised in his 1870 poem“Soleil et Chair”.2 His letters are the main source of information for his arrival, theduration of his stay and his activities in Cyprus.3 Rimbaud arrived on the islandon 16th December 1878 and he worked for the French company E. Jean et Thial

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1 Pierre Jean de Béranger, “Le vin de Chypre”, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, Paris 1836,p. 157-159.2 Arthur Rimbaud, “Soleil et chair”, Poésies, in Œuvres Complètes, A. Adam (ed.), Paris 1972,p. 6-11.3 Id., Correspondance, in Œuvres Complètes, ibid., p. 306-316.

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4 After research, the former educational attaché of France in Cyprus Roger Milliex foundthe exact location where Rimbaud worked, see Roger Milliex, Le premier séjour d’ArthurRimbaud à Chypre, Nicosia 1965. See also Γιώργος Γεωργής, «Στον Ποταμό του Ρεμπώ»(“In Rimbaud’s Potamos”), Ύλαντρον (Ylantron), nο. 1, Nicosia November 2001, p. 163.5 Ανδρέας Π. Πολυδώρου, Η Ξυλοφάγου. Τοπική μελέτη (Xylofagou. A local study), Nicosia1989, p. 31.6 Ibid.7 Yiannis E. Ioannou, “La réinvention de Rimbaud par la poésie chypriote”, Transtext(e)s-Trans-cultures, no. 2, Lyon January 2007, p. 184.8 Πίτσα Γαλάζη, Ο ωραίος Αρτούρος ή Ο Αρτούρ Ρεμπώ στη Νήσο Κύπρο (Beautiful Arthur orArthur Rimbaud on the Island of Cyprus), Nicosia 1991.9 Χρήστος Μαυρής, «Δικός σας, Αρτούρ Ρεμπώ…»(“Yours, Arthur Rimbaud…”), Νέα Εποχή(Nea Epochi), no. 306, Nicosia Autumn 2010, p. 74.

Fils as a supervisor in a quarry in the location Potamos,4 near Xylofagou village.Nicolas Anastasi, a local inhabitant, who was a child at the time, remembered untilhis death that “some Franks were cutting huge rocks”.5 Rimbaud was amongthem, and had about 60 workers under his supervision. Contracting fever, he stayedfor a few days at Andreas Anastasi’s house in Xylofagou6 and then returned to Francein June 1879. He came to Cyprus again around the end of April or beginning of May1880, this time in Limassol and then in Mt. Troodos, where he was the supervisorof the building crew for the house of the British governor of Cyprus, which is todaythe presidential holiday residence. He left suddenly in June 1880, after submittinghis resignation and continued his travels in Africa.

Despite the prosaic character of his letters, the only written information he hasleft about Cyprus, the “deserted” land of “fleas” and “mosquitoes”, or the land ofthe “unpleasant” heat from the valleys or the cold from the mountains, Rimbaudhimself entered the Cyprus literature “as a semaphore of individual and nationalrevolution as well as an idealized example of contestation and rebelliousness”.7

Characteristic is the example of the poet Pitsa Galazi, who places him in the centreof her collection O ωραίος Αρτούρος ή Ο Αρτούρ Ρεμπώ στη Νήσο Κύπρο8 (BeautifulArthur or Arthur Rimbaud on the Island of Cyprus), where her virtual Arthur becomesa communicant of the Cyprus history and reality; he is compared with the Cypriotteenager and hero poet Evagoras Pallikarides, he fights with the sea along with themuch-pounded “boat” of Cyprus. Christos Mavris’poem «Δικός σας, Αρθούρ Ρεμπώ»9

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LINKED BY HISTORY - UNITED BY CHOICE: CYPRUS AND ITS EUROPEAN UNION PARTNERS

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(“Yours, Arthur Rimbaud…”), functions in contrast to the “hagiography”10 whichGalazi outlines, while for Theodosis Pierides, the “archangel”11 left Cyprus withoutleaving any trace:

Before arriving herethe drunk boat was completely wrecked12

The impact of Rimbaud on Cypriot poets is evident, as Andreas Iacovou,13

Xanthos Lysiotis, Nicos Vrachimis, Pavlos Valdasaridis, Lefkios Zafiriou oreven Manos Kralis, the eminently Cypriot “cursed” poet, who names one of hiscollections Φθινόπωρο στην κόλαση (Autumn in Hell).14

In Cyprus, a memorial column in Xylofagou, a plaque on the wall of the houseof the British governor in Troodos, as well as a rock where Rimbaud engraved hisname, are today reminders of the passage of the poet of “Le Bateau ivre” (“TheDrunken Boat”) from Cyprus, while the French School, operating on the island since1987, bears his name; according to Pitsa Galazi:

Αrthur Rimbaudlost before and afterthe drunkthe Nobody, the eternal.15

André Chénier (1762-1794), one of the most important representatives ofneoclassicism in France, had also a special relationship with Cyprus. He wasborn in Constantinople from a French father and a Cypriot mother, ÉlisabethSanti-Lomaca,16 from Larnaca. It seems that his mother had lived part of her life in

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10 The poem is dedicated “To Pitsa Galazi, who once made his hagiography” («Στην ΠίτσαΓαλάζη, που κάποτε τον αγιογράφησε»), ibid.11 Θεοδόσης Πιερίδης, “Ρεμπώ” (“Rimbaud”), in Ποιητικά Άπαντα (Complete Works), vol. 2, Tαανέκδοτα (Unpublished works), Γ. Φ. Πιερίδης (ed.), Nicosia 1976, p. 294.12 Ibid.13 Δώρος Χρίστης, “Aντρέας Ιακώβου, ένας κύπριος καταραμένος ποιητής” (“Αntreas Iakovou,a Cypriot accursed poet”), Ο Φιλελεύθερος (Phileleftheros), Nicosia 4 July 1988, p. 14.14 More about Rimbaud’s reception in Cyprus in Yiannis E. Ioannou, “La réinvention de Rimbaudpar la poésie chypriote”, op. cit., p. 178-184.15 Γαλάζη, op. cit., p. 29. [Text translated by Demetra Demetriou]16 Robert de Bonnières, Lettres grecques de Madame Chénier. Précédées d’une étude sur sa vie,Paris 1879, p. 11.


Cyprus, spoke Greek and considered herself Greek.17 It is also mentioned that herancestors on her mother’s side were members of the court of the Lusignan kingsof Cyprus.18 Xanthis Xenierou street in Nicosia (adaptation of Santi-Chénier ingenitive) is named after her. The poet himself was really proud of his origin, as hereveals in Élégies:

For there a Greek woman, in her spring,Beautiful, in bed to a husband born in FranceBrought me into life, a French, in the heart of Byzance19

From a young age he started writing verse, influenced by his cultured andliterary mother, who initiated him in the Greek customs, traditions and literature.In the salon of Madame Chénier-Lomaca, he came into contact with various writersand artists and with the world of Ancient Greece.20 In many points of the Élégiesand throughout his work, he praises the Cypriot Aphrodite, Paphos, the ancientIdalion and the Cypriot wine, which was ritually present on the table of MadameChénier, as mentioned in her correspondence.21 André Chénier fell victim to thereign of Terror, decapitated at a young age, at the peak of his intellectual creativ-ity, having already introduced a new era in poetry, according to Sainte-Beuve.22

Less known than Chénier, Gustave Laffon (1835-1906),23 was another Franco-Cypriot poet who wrote in Greek, while he also translated a number of French authorsin Greek, as well as Hymn to Liberty by Dionysios Solomos in French. Son of theFrench doctor and Consul Adolphe Laffon, Gustave Laffon was born in Larnaca in

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17 Μ. Η. Cottez, “Αndré Chénier”, trans. Αχ. Έξαρχος, Πνευματική Κύπρος (Pnevmatiki Kypros),no. 27, Nicosia December 1962, p. 108.18 Bonnières, op. cit., p.12. See also Vernon Loggins, Αndré Chénier. His life, death and glory,Ohio 1965, p.8; Francis Scarfe, André Chénier. His Life and Work. 1762-1794, Oxford 1965, p. 3. 19 André Chénier, Élégies, in Poésies, Émile Faguet (ed.), Paris 1944, p. 203. [Text translatedby Demetra Demetriou]20 Katharine Hillard, “André Chénier(1762-1794)”, in Library of the world’s best literature.Ancient and Modern, Charles Dudley Warner (ed.), New York 1896, p. 88.21 Bonnières, op. cit., p. 199.22 C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits littéraires, vol. 1, Paris 1862, p. 174: “Chénier est le révéla-teur d’une poésie d’avenir et il apporte au monde une lyre nouvelle” (“Chénier has revealedthe poetry of the future and brings a new lyre to the world”).23 Laffon’s relation with Cyprus has been extensively studied and presented by Roger Milliex,Esquisse d’une biographie de Gustave Laffon (1835-1906), reprinted from Πρακτικά του ΠρώτουΔιεθνούς Κυπρολογικού Συνεδρίου (Proceedings of the First Cyprological Congress), Nicosia 1973.


1835. Following in his father’s footsteps, he pursuit a carrier as a diplomat. He servedat several posts abroad, and replaced for a certain period of time the French Consulin Larnaca Tiburce Collona-Ceccaldi in 1868, before succeeding him in 1869.24

Multilingual, he served at this post until 1874, and was then appointed in Piraeus,Adrianople and Valparaiso. On his return to Cyprus in 1900, he undertook theproject of founding the first Rural Bank of the island, which met with no success.His second wife was Ada Bargigli, of a widely known family of Larnaca. TheBargigli’s salon hosted, amongst others, the national poet of Cyprus VassilisMichaelides, who dedicated some of his poems to Ada’s sister, Eugenia.25 Laffonwas bound by friendship with Michaelides, as well as with litterateur Themisto-cles Theocharides.26 He published his poems in various newspapers and periodicalpress, and three editions of his work are reported during his lifetime.27 A posthu-mous edition of his complete works, edited by his wife’s brother in 1915, is availabletoday.28 Although Laffon’s first poems are significantly influenced by Romanticism,both Greek and French, he seems to follow later on the Greek literary generationof the 1880s. The Cypriot press lamented Laffon’s loss in 1906 through necrolog-ical articles, or even verse,29 focusing on his love for Greece and Cyprus, which waswidely expressed in his work:

My homeland’s name is CyprusCyprus, the golden isle,a place where girls are beautiful and tasty is the wine30

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24 Olivier Masson, “Diplomates et amateurs d’antiquités à Chypre vers 1866-1868”, Journal dessavants, vol. 1, no. 1, Paris 1992, p. 123.25 A. K. Ιντιάνος, «Ο λυρικός και αισθηματικός Βασίλης Μιχαηλίδης» (“Vassilis Michailides:lyrical and sentimental”), Πρωινή (Proini), Nicosia 3 September 1933, p. 3. 26 Γιώργος Κεχαγιόγλου/Λευτέρης Παπαλεοντίου, Ιστορία της νεότερης κυπριακής λογοτεχνίας(History of the Contemporary Cypriot Literature), Nicosia 2010, p. 224.27 Milliex, Esquisse d’une biographie de Gustave Laffon (1835-1906), op. cit., p. 234-235.28 Γουσταύος Λαφφών, Τα Άπαντα (Complete Works), Ριχάρδος Βαρζίλης (ed.), Nicosia 1915.29 Φωνή της Κύπρου (Foni tis Kyprou), Nicosia 22 December 1906; Ελευθερία (Eleutheria),Nicosia 15 December 1906.30 Γουσταύος Λαφφών, «Επιτραπέζιον» (“Poem over the table”), Τα Άπαντα (Complete Works),op. cit., p. 222. [Text translated by Demetra Demetriou]


The famous “wine of Cyprus”31 is also praised in the poetry collection LesΟrientales of Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the great French romantic, author ofLes Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris, among others. The collection LesOrientales was written in the context of the philhellenic movement, a part of theinfluences of the intellectual currents of France in the 19th century after the outbreakof the Greek Revolution in 1821; the collection includes the well-known poem“L’enfant grec” (“The Greek boy”).

Cypriot wine receives different perspectives in the poem “Palais”32 (“Palace”)of Alcools (1913) of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1919), a major figure in the literaryaffairs of his time and thereafter, who constituted a reference point for surrealismand modernism.

At the white lamb’s love-feast I have tastedResins that bitter the Cyprian wine33

The oxymoronic use of the adjective “bitter” for the Cypriot wine, which ischaracterized for its sweet taste, is indicative of the deep disappointment fromlove that dominates both the poem and its creator. The exchange between theerotic and the Christian imagery with the reference to “agape” and the allusion tothe Last Supper and Holy Communion, ends up in a banquet nοir: the poet tasteshis own “body and blood”, where Cypriot wine stands for blood, his dead thoughtsand dreams, his own failure for love as well as for poetic inspiration.

Cyprus also followed the adventurous publishing course of the monumentalwork of the French and world literature Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of evil) ofthe symbolist and decadent poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), through his poem“Lesbos”.34 This poem belongs to the six censored poems of the first publicationof 1857, for which republication was prohibited, as they were considered outragesto public morality. Lesbos, the island of Sappho and love, is compared to the cityof Paphos, which metonymically refers to Cyprus, as the worship centre of Aphrodite.

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31 Victor Hugo, “Marche turque”, Les Orientales, in Œuvres poétiques, vol. 1, Pierre Albouy(ed.), Paris 1964, p. 633.32 Apollinaire, “Palais”, Alcools, in Œuvres poétiques, M. Adéma/ M. Décaudin (eds), Paris 1965,p. 61-62.33 Id., “Palace”, Alcools, trans. Donald Revell, Hanover/London 1995, p. 37.34 Beaudelaire, “Lesbos”, Les Fleurs du mal, in Œuvres complètes, Claude Pichois (ed.), vol. 1,Paris 1975, p. 150-152.


The comparison with goddess Aphrodite and her island, functions supportively forthe tribute that the poet wants to pay to Lesbos, Sappho and love itself, a factwhich shocked the French morals of his era:

Lesbos, where Phrynes attract one another,Where a sigh never remained without an echo,On a par with Paphos the stars admire you,And Venus can rightfully be jealous of Sappho!35

The case of Cyprus and the fight of its people for freedom and national justifica-tion against British control during the 1955-59 period, occupied the famous FrenchNobel Prize winner, writer and thinker Albert Camus (1913-1960). The author ofL’Étranger (The Outsider) and the Absurd wrote about Cyprus in L’Express of 6th

December 1955 the touching article “L’enfant grec”(“The Greek boy”), whose titlerecalls the above-mentioned poem of Victor Hugo. A new philhellenic movement wasborn, this time to advocate the pardoning of the young patriot Michail Karaolis, whowas sentenced to hanging for his anti-colonial revolutionary activities in Cyprus:

For a few weeks now, revolutionary Cyprus has gained its hero in the face of theyoung Cypriot student Michalis Karaolis, who was sentenced to death by hangingby the British courts. On the happy island where Aphrodite was born, people die, infact in a horrible way. […] On my part, I will not hide my admiration and my affec-tion for this Greek population, that, as I found myself, was, along with the Spanishpopulation, one of those that the barbarian Europe will need in the future to createa new civilization again.36

His appeal was not heard and Karaolis was hanged on 10th May 1956. However,Camus, as an author, acted out of duty for freedom and truth, as he noted in thespeech he gave for the award ceremony of the Nobel Prize:

But the silence of an unknown prisoner, abandoned in humiliation at the edge ofthe world, is enough to bring the author back from exile, at least each time hemanages, through the privileges of freedom, not to forget this silence and to retainit through art. […] Whatever the personal weaknesses are, the gentleness of ourprofession will always take root in two causes difficult to serve: the negation of lyingabout anything you know and the opposition to compulsion.37

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35 Id., Flowers of evil and other works, trans. Wallace Fowlie, New York 1992 (1st edn 1964),p. 105.36 Albert Camus, “L’enfant grec”, in Essais, R. Quillot/L. Faucon (eds), Paris 1965, p. 1766-1767.37 Id., “Discours de Suède”, ibid., p. 1072.


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Pitsa Galazi converses with Camus in the memorial poem for his death “AlbertCamus II (1963-1993)”:

Because you were one of our own Albert[…]Sisyphean our lifeWe cleave to your voice an amulet[…]That will eternally bless your memory Albert.38

Cyprus is also found in the pages of Louis Aragon (1897-1982), whose routemarked the 20th century from dadaism and surrealism, which he introduced, to thepatriotic poetry of the Resistance and socialist realism. A reference to Paphos is foundin his collection Les Yeux et la Mémoire39 (1954) and to Famagusta in his poetic auto-biography Le Roman inachevé40 (1956). Also, in a prologue he wrote for the Frenchpublication of the collection Pierres. Répétitions. Barreaux41 of the Greek poet andhis friend Yiannis Ritsos, he praises the latter’s poem Aποχαιρετισμός (Farewell),inspired by the sacrifice of the Cypriot hero Gregoris Afxentiou. The fate of Cyprusin the vortex of modern history also occupies him in the novel La Mise à mort (1965)which, as he stated in an interview in Haravghi newspaper: “is inspired from Cyprus.It is certainly not a book for Cyprus, but it is subordinated to a central idea, producedafter meeting Cyprus”.42 In this book, the tragic events of 1963-64 are integratedin Aragon’s thought concerning the eternal recurrence of History and conflicts,which are traumatically reflected on the present:

Anthoine promenades with a transistor and a bundle of newspapers under hisarms. Cyprus always. Cyprus. My impression is that the immobilized situation there,after two days that appeared that there was a war, did not relieve him at all.43

The division of the island is also interrelated with the issues of love, jealousy,

38 Pitsa Galazi, “Albert Camus II (1963-1993)”, in Mona-Savvidou-Theodoulou (ed.), Europein Cypriot Poetry, Nicosia 2006, p. 97,99.39 Aragon, “L’Ombre et le Mulet”, Les Yeux et la Mémoire, in Œuvres poétiques complètes,Ο. Barbarant (ed.), vol. 2, Paris 2007, p. 57.40 Id., “Les dames de Carpaccio lentes et lourdes à ravir…”, Le Roman inachevé, ibid., p. 200.41 Id., [Preface] in Yannis Ritsos, Pierres. Répétitions. Barreaux, Paris 1971, p. 3.42 Πανίκος Παιονίδης, “Το πορτραίτο ενός μεγάλου ποιητή και διανοητή. Ο Λουί Αραγκόνμιλά στη Χαραυγή” (“The portrait of a great poet and thinker. Louis Aragon talks to Haravghi”),Χαραυγή (Haravghi), Nicosia 24 July 1966, p. 9.43Aragon, La Mise à mort, Paris 1965, p. 224. [Text translated by Demetra Demetriou]


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44 Ibid., p. 30. [Text translated by Demetra Demetriou]45 Σημερινή (Simerini), Nicosia 4 November 1981.46 Louis Aragon, “Pandora”, Η Λέξη (I Lexi), nos 85-86, Athens June-July 1989, p. 453.47 Hamid Fouladvind, Le Cahier grec, Paris 1983. 48 Έλλη Παιονίδου, “Λουί Αραγκόν” (“Louis Aragon”), Νέα Εποχή (Nea Epochi), no. 157,Nicosia November-December 1982, p. 895. 49 Apollinaire, “Vendémiaire”, Alcools, in Œuvres poétiques, op. cit., p. 154.

separation, as well as with the request for identity, through the intertextuallink of the novel with the Shakespearean tragedy Othello, which mainly takesplace in Cyprus:

Cyprus, Famagusta… I bought all of the books that one can or cannot find, to see,is it Othello or Anthoine? this figure that mirrors don’t reflect back to me. It seemedthat in this mirror of Cyprus, in this perfume, I was going to learn about myself, well,about Anthoine, the secrets that are being refused to me.44

Also, after his visit to Cyprus in November 1981,45 he wrote his unpublishedpoem “Pandora”.46 His companion in Cyprus Hamid Fouladvind, a Persian poet,who writes in French, also devoted some of his verses to Cyprus in Le Cahier Grec.47

The death of Aragon caused deep sorrow to his friend, the Cypriot poet Elli Peonidou:

The twentieth century fades out in Rue Varenne[…]Bring some baskets to pick up the words.48

Beauty, otherwise Aphrodite. Love, otherwise poetry. Beauty wakes up in Paphos,it is extracted from “evil”, it is tasted in the wine, hides in “songs of universaldrunkenness”,49 lives with the fiery words of the defenders of values, fightsagainst our “sisyphean” life, sails with drunken boats in the harvest of the world.Beauty was born in Cyprus and beats in the heart of France.


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The French writer André Chénier (1762-1794). His mother came from Larnaca, Cyprus.

“Pandora,” an unpublished poem forCyprus by Louis Aragon

Photo: Η Λέξη (I Lexi), nos 85-86, Athens

June-August 1989, p. 453.


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A commemorative inscription built into the wall of the house of the British governorof Cyprus in 1947, on the initiative of the then British governor Lord Winster.

Photos: Christiana Charalambous

The house of the British governor of Cyprus on the Troodos Mountains, today thepresidential summer residence, was built under the supervision of the Frenchpoet Arthur Rimbaud, during his second sojourn in Cyprus in 1880. In his corre-spondence Rimbaud describes it as a “Palace”.

“Arthur Rimbaud, a Frenchpoet and genius, who, in spiteof his reputation, contributedwith his own hands to the construction of this house”


The "Pleiade" in Cyprus: French Authors and the Island of Aphrodite

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