The Melancholy of the Palaiologoi
By Photios Kontoglou
By Photios Kontoglou
When I was working in Mystras, it often happened that I found myself alone inside the Peribleptos Church. In the late afternoon the church would grow dark and forbidding. From above, on the scaffolding, I would hear footsteps.
“Some ghost must be walking about,” I would think to myself, and I would always turn my head toward the place where the soldiers and commanders were painted.
They stood in a circle, one after another, a little above the ground. Most of them had their eyes gouged out; their chests had been pierced. Many had been slashed to pieces by swords. On many faces only a single eye remained intact, but that one eye looked as though it were ten living eyes.
“Remember me, O Lord!”
Years passed while I worked inside that church, and yet all these things still made me shudder; a chill would run through me. Those grass-covered walls were alive. Hearts were beating, sinews were stretching, swords, arrows, quivers, and shields creaked upon living bodies.
“And behold, there was a shaking, and the bones came together, each bone to its proper joint. And I looked, and behold, sinews and flesh came upon them, and skin covered them above. And the spirit entered into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great assembly” [Ezekiel 37:7-8].
These are the last soldiers of Palaiologos, from the time when they came and took as their final bastion of desperate resistance the famed mountain of Taygetos, near ancient Sparta. Wind-beaten upon the rock, worn and withered, their eyes darkened yet shining with fervor, sleeplessness, and anguish. Men of the East, recruited from the regions of Selymbria, the Black Sea coast, Anchialos, Kavarna; others were natives from the Droungos of Skorta, Salavro, Voitoulos, Mani, Grembeni, Aetos, and elsewhere — ancient bloodlines all.
They are not heavy soldiers with powerful bodies. Their hands and feet are gaunt and bony, their frames slender. They move lightly, like apparitions, warriors of a kingdom that is not of this world. “A divine host, God-proclaiming soldiers of the Lord’s battle-line” [Doxastikon of the Sunday of the Holy Fathers]. Like their master Constantine, they know the evil fate appointed for them....
Their companions are sorrowful, but this one is deeply grieved; bitterness drips from his mouth. He stands like a bird startled into flight. In one hand he lightly holds his bow, while the other rests upon his sword. His helmet hangs behind his beautiful head from his neck. Upon one shoulder is slung his quiver full of arrows, and upon the other his shield.
For hours I would sit and converse with him in a language that needs neither mouth to speak it nor ear to hear it. I listened as he spoke to me from the other world, like the wind blowing through the wild grasses that grow upon a ruined fortress. Yet I understood clearly what he was saying.
This soldier is not a mighty man with a powerful frame, strong-armed and fearsome. His body is light and graceful, his legs slender and long like those of a deer. The fingers of his hands are like finely carved styluses, like the fingers of a saint, and one wonders how they can bear weapons at all. His head inclines upon his shoulder like that of Christ.
What brush could have painted such a head?
I too am a painter, and yet I stand in amazement before such artistry. From what place came the hand that held the brush and impressed upon the wall these sorrowful eyes, this chin, this mouth, this hair? What mystery is hidden within this mirror that reflects the joys of another world? And what a blessing for us that such an exquisite gift has survived down to our own times!
His face is darkly beautiful, bronzed by the sun of the East, in those lands where he fought for the faith of Christ. From his half-closed eyes shines a gentle radiance, calm and sorrowful.
In all the world there has never been, nor will there ever be, an art equal to that of the East in imparting such passion and such sweet sorrow to its creations. Whoever possesses a warm heart will understand what I mean.
No art has ever employed such simple means, and no art has ever achieved such things. Seen up close, the eyes are only two brushstrokes, one black and one white; the nose is formed by two delicate lines. Is this not a great mystery?
What do those people mean when they speak about naturalism, anatomy, science, ophthalmology, and such things? Here there is neither natural nor unnatural, neither this nor that. Here there exists only that unfathomable mystery which not even wise Solomon could grasp with words, schools, or philosophies.
“Every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
An ungraspable flame, an incomprehensible breath!
The art of Eastern Christianity is pure nourishment for the spirit and delight for the eyes. The ideal of the East differs from the ideal of the West as much as heaven differs from earth.
Through passion, the East attained that transcendent result for which the spirit longs like a thirsty deer. The West, among those nations, acted like Prometheus, bringing light to those who dwelt in darkness.
And so there came and settled in the eagle’s nest of Toledo an Eastern dervish, a preacher of restraint in the art of painting, weary of the festivities of Venice. Just as the Byzantines, pursued and oppressed, clung to the rocks of Mystras, so too did Theotokopoulos go and make his home in Toledo.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
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