Villa Bourani
Svensk version
As far away as one can get in the Saronic archipelago lies the island of Spetsai, a green island with a proud seafaring and boatbuilding tradition which dates back to the 18th century. To delve into Spetsai history would be to rub shoulders with such people as Lascarina Bouboulina, a strong Wiman who contributed to the defeat of the Turks in the Greek war of independance.
Horse drawn cabs clatter along the town’s virtually car free streets and create a relaxing, and rather magic atmosphere. It is an island in waiting, a green pearl in a glittering ocean, an island with a sense of atmosphere which moulds personalities.
At the beginning of the fifties, author John Fowles came here, and worked as a teacher at the island’s boarding school, Anargyrios College. Boys in ties and short trousers were trained here with strict discipline in the ‘English Manner’.
In the book "The Magus", which came out in 1968, the teacher Nicholas Urfe came to the island Phraxos. He flees from an unhappy relationship to this quiet island. During one of his rather restless walks, he comes upon an elevated white villa surrounded by pine trees. Thus begins his contact with Conchis, an egocentric man who inhabits the borders of dream and reality, at times like a stagesetter ... "the man who thought he was God" ...
My travelling companion and I had read this book, and being fascinated by it, decided to plan our annual holiday with this beautiful green island as the destination.
On the first day, we we had already asked our sprightly guide about the house where the novel was set. Oh yes, she had heard of the book, and she had understood that the house should lie on the other side of the island on a crest, surrounded by pine trees, just as John Fowles described it in "The Magus".
During the second day’s boat trip around the island, we discovered two candidates: white washed houses on a slope.. One had a flat roof, the other a one of tiles. Which one could it be?
We began to be taken by a dream, an obsession, to be able to come nearer the house to be able to feel a little of the atmosphere that Fowles communicated in his book.
The magic, the twilight land, the mysticism which surrounded the house and the story, fascinated us greatly. We were convinced that the vivid narration, which had taken Fowles over ten years to write, must have been, at least partly, his own experiences.
In the town’s newsagents/bookshop, we found a copy of the book in English. The man behind the counter jumped from one language to another, almost without accent. His answer to our question as to whether the Villa Bourani existed in reality was an abrupt "No it’s only fiction!", but with a somewhat teasing glint in his eye.
Day three saw us, despite the heat, following in the footsteps of Fowles. We pedalled our hired bicycles northwards to the school where Fowles had done service as a teacher. The area was full of large, slightly delapidated bulidings. Window shutters banged in a tired manner in the wind, and notes from pupils’ exercise books lay like secret messages in the bushes. On the playing field lay tattered carpet, and the stands gaped their emptyness. One could begin to imagine the boys’ hardships, the strict discipline, (which Fowles disliked), homesickness, despondancy ... and success.
Behind the school grounds, the green slopes spred out where Fowles fled from his, as he saw it, meaningless teaching work, in solitary walls ... and here, somewhere on the other side of the island, after a couple of hours walk in the heat and accompanied by the ear deadening sawing of the cicadas, he meets Conchis of the book - and the charm of Villa Bourani.
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