Notebook

IN AEGINA, IN THE SARONIC SEA, WITH ST. NECTARIOS AND ANCIENT GUARDIANS
Paper Notes for the Otherworldly
From this island, the youngest among manifested Greek saints departed ”into the distance and silence”. He, Nectarios, the heavenly beverage. Behind him, up to the very day, remain miracles and this most popular place of pilgrimage in Greek Orthodox Christianity. Here is the first ancient Greek altar and the oldest preserved temple. Great sanctities from the fallen Constantinople were hidden here in refuges. Aristophanes, comediographer, was born here, this is where Kazantzakis translated Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and created Zorba the Greek. This is where we left one of our wandering late summers and took with us an entire future book

By: Branislav Matić
Photo: NR Press

We are diving out, at dawn, from the horizon of the Saronic Sea. Bright marks are spreading on the skyline, the sun is rising. Daylight is beginning to drop. White Piraeus and Salamis, wise as Solon. The island in front of us used to be called Enona a long time ago, in the sunken world. Then Zeus seduced Aegina, beautiful daughter of river god Asopus, and on that island she gave birth to Aeacus. The Enona island has been called Aegina ever since, and Aeacus was its first king. That is according to the myth, which remembers when gods were still among us. Or in us. It seems that only poets are still listening to that reality and symbols within themselves.
For millennia, ships have been docking along these polished rocks. In the beginning, passengers from that dock set off to Apollo’s shrine from the VI century B.C., on a small horn north of the city, where the Archeological Museum is standing today. Today they first visit the Chapel of St. Nicholas Thalasinos, the white shell in the dock, standing on a wave. The scent of thyme and candles is mixing with the salty breath of the great water. Looking at the outlines of the charming little Mediterranean city, which is carrying the same name as the island and the old goddess, one immediately notices belltowers of at least three more Orthodox Christian churches. The church of St. Leontios is in the coast boulevard of Kazantzakis, in the square where the Achileos Street is flowing in. The great Church of St. Nicholas, with two powerful belltowers, is about five hundred meters far from the coast, near a tower which today hosts the city museum. In the vicinity is the Church of Holy Theotokos Panagia, as well as the beautiful edifice of the Metropolitanate from 1806. Walking from the coast, you first go down the street of Socrates, then Metropolitanate and finally St. Athanasios’ Street. You can also come from the eastern side, down a street called after the most famous saint in Aegina.
”St. Nectarios of Aegina, the youngest among the manifested saints of the Greek church, is the protector of this island. This is where he spent the last twelve earthly years in the XX century, this is where he reposed in the Lord”, tells young Vasilije, Serb and born Cretan, theology student in the Serbian capital city, son of a priest. ”Numerous miracles took place on the wings of his prayers already during his lifetime, and later above his relics. That is why this island and the Monastery of St. Nectarios are the most popular places of pilgrimage in the Greek Orthodox lands. Aegina for Greeks is what Ostrog means to Serbs. In two days, on September 3, is the celebration of the Transfer of Relics of St. Nectarios. That is why all these people, from this gigantic ship, are here.”
We will not retell the hagiography of St. Nectarios, born in 1846 as Anastasios in Silivri, Thrace. The path of mildness and feats, the asceticism full of miracles and clairvoyance, are well known. Silivri in Thrace, Constantinople, Ios, Athens, Alexandria, then again Athens, Evia, Phthiotis and Phocis, Athens for the third time… Jelena Popović from Belgrade made a Greek-American motion picture Man of God based on his life, which was very popular in theaters in 2021.
In the year 1908, at the age of sixty-two, wounded by the world, longing to immerse into deepest prayer, he resigned from the position of manager of Rosario’s Library in Athens. He retreated to Aegina island, about thirty kilometers south of Athens and Piraeus. This is where he founded a monastery four years earlier and dedicated it to Holy Trinity. The sisterhood of the monastery was made of his disciples, his spiritual children; the first prioress was Xenia, blind and clairvoyant. Nectarios came to be spiritual guardian and priest. ”He spent the rest of his earthly life in fasting and prayer, in spiritual and physical efforts.” People came over the seas, from all sides. Besides everything else, the saint healed with his prayers, opened the heavens for breadly rain, liberated people from devils. ”The holy man hid all these gifts, as well as all his other virtues. However, you cannot hide a city standing on a mountain.”

A FEW PARTICLES OF CONSTANTINOPLE

A hawk’s-eye view from the wreath above Paleochora. The big monastery complex of St. Nectarios, about five kilometers from Aegina Island (on the northwest) towards Hagia Marina (on the northeast), next to the road. A few hundred meters to the east, as if in a ravine, the Monastery of St. Catherine. ”A flash of whiteness and terrace towards timelessness.” In it the hand of St. Catherine, a particle of relics of St. Spyridon and an unusual icon of this saint who has been opening and closing his eyes in the icon for centuries. To the right, in the west, a road we came by is winding through a hilly landscape; down the road we see a small part of the sea, the one between Placencia ridge and Aegina port. If we turn to the other side, to the north, we will see a lowland with scattered small settlements, scarce plants, and on the edge of blueness Souvala, port and Sulphur spa.
”What you see now in the desolate and destroyed Paleochora, all the way to Mesagros village, are remains of remains”, explains old Georgios P., poet and Saronic chronicle-writer, a living model based on whom I wrote a poem in my Island. ”Here in the interior of the island, an hour and a half walk from the coast and hidden from view from the sea, there was a village in the ancient times. Since the IX century, hiding from pirates and robbers, more and more people were retreating here. A place tucked in hills, with good observatories, grew into the center of the island. A legend says that there were as many as 365 small churches in the small city on the hidden slope. One church and one saint or holiday for each day of the year. Today only thirty-six churches remain, like honeycomb on a hill. Some of them still have parts of medieval frescoes. Pay attention, poet, to the Church of the Holy Cross, at the entrance of Paleochora, then the Church of Panagia Fortisi on the past main city square, the Cathedral Church of St. Dionisius, churches of Sr. John the Theologian, St. Demetrios, Dormition of the Mother of God, Church of Metamorphosis… Do not hurry, my dear. Climb slowly, with eyes wide open, as if climbing the Mount of Consecration. There is almost nothing there, only rocks and those strange churches. But, you know, it’s all there. Perhaps even your best book is there, just pick it up. The remains of the fortress on top are Venetian, from the XVII century. You can forget it. When you climb up, know that you are standing on the foundations of a sunken world from which you also originate from. (…)”
According to an old apocryphon, after the fall of Constantinople in the XV century, many of its important inhabitants temporarily settled in Paleochora. Some of the most mysterious sacraments from the city of cities were brought here.
”Paleochora, old city or old land, began dissipating and disappearing in the XIX century, after suppressing the Turks and creating new-age Greece. The people began coming down from the hills to the coast again. The city of Aegina became the center of the island.”
”Do you think I can translate this: There is nothing here anymore, yet everything is here?”
”I don’t know. It’s up to you.”
”Is this where St. Dionisius of Zakynthos led an ascetic life?”
”Yes, here. And three kilometers from here, in the hills, is Chrisoleondis, is a small church where St. Nectarios retreated to loneliness and meditation.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD

September 2017. We enter the Monastery of St. Nectarios from the upper side, the old one. The access to the gate, like a rampart, somehow resembles Srem Ravanica. We are in a small yard, paved with expertly hewn stone. In the center is a fountain with potable cold water (there are not many places in the island with water springs without added salt). Next to it is a chapel with a large marble reliquary, the original tomb of St. Nectarios. In front of it is a pine tree, allegedly planted in 1905. On the left is a small church dedicated to Holy Trinity, the one raised by Nectarios himself in 1904.
Many people, but still it’s very quiet. As if they are trying to be alone in thoughts (spiritually), concentrated on the inside. As if they are waiting for a sign from the saint, a voice, even an encounter with him, in that internal infinity. In the cemeterial chapel, where the body of St. Nectarios rested until the manifestation, where the Theotokos Wider than Heavens is watching from the altar wall, it is a custom to put one’s ear on the stone reliquary. Those truly dedicated to prayer often hear the same inside.
”I saw people praying and listening”, tells Valentina Zlatanović Marković, in October 2015. She is a professor in Užice, writer, with a PhD in philology sciences. ”I put my ear down. I hear heartbeats, silence, footsteps, then again silence. I don’t know if I really heard that! How does man feel a need to measure messages from the Almighty with earthly meters?! I reproach myself in my thoughts. I measure my experience with stories of those who experienced the similar. Some heard the same, some heard only walking. It is good there is no surprise. Father Mihajlo says that no one comes here without the invitation of St. Nectarios and that he, the Holy One, will take care of us here. And he does, we all felt it. That is why no one explains anything. Words stumble in such experiences. You simple feel it and thank God for the mercy.”
The entrance to the Church of Holy Trinity is double: male (left) and female (right). In front of the altar, ”in the male part of the church” are the relics of St. Nectarios. A silver reliquary, gilded mitre. Bowing, kissing, whispering in many languages. Paper notes with names, prayers, messages.
An old woman, a nun, stops me on the stairway leading from the lower level of the yard towards the monastery shop. Antiliki, she introduces herself. She asks where we were from.
”Belgrade? Oh, Belgrade! Your city, my son, is an important crossroad, earthly and heavenly. Remember: you are living in one of the most important places in the world. And that is never easy, especially not today.”
She stops me with her hand, and I sit on a stone next to her. A kind of timelessness occasionally passes through her old-young eyes, as in ancient oracles.
”A woman named Jelena, born in your Belgrade, Jelena Popović, often comes here, to mother Teodosia, our prioress. Perhaps you know her. A wonderful creature of God. With God’s help, she will make a movie about St. Nectarios.”

PEBBLE AND VOICES

There is a small house near the church. Going up a small staircase from the yard, one reaches the cell of St. Nectarios.
”Mother Philothea takes care of the cell of the Holy One. She is Russian and speaks Serbian. Look for her.”
Philothea? Love and God. Love for God. Godly love.
St. Nectarios spent the last twelve years of his early life here. A large stone is standing in front of his living room, under his icon.
”It is a stone from the birth house of St. Nectarios in Silivra, Thrace”, says mother Philothea.
Photos are hanging on the walls, a table and chair next to the window. Books in the bookshelf. Mostly religious literature in Greek. Mother Philothea shows us where the Holy One used to sit while reading and writing. We are holding in our hands a small pebble which he used for pressing handwritten papers, so that the Saronic draft wouldn’t take them away. Is it the same pebble from Ilandža, from Grebenac, from Jadar?
”The round wooden table, full of manuscripts, was made by St. Nectarios himself. He shaped wood, nailed and painted it”, says Philothea. ”The poem ‘Rejoice, oh, unwedded Bride’ was written on this table…”
We touch the saint’s pillow, we sit on his bed, we go through his notebook, as if he were family. Mother Philothea, despite the crowd, tells us to stay as long as we want to.
”Dear God, how intimate and simple everything in Orthodox Christianity is, everything is within reach, without fetishes and religious kitsch, without apparatized religion”, I think, impressed. ”I hope we will not be destroyed by mass tourism and commercial spoiling. That the sacred secrets will not be turned into souvenirs and selfies.”
From the old part of the monastery, a semicircular concrete path and stairway lead down, towards a large new church dedicated to St. Nectarios. A wonderful, Mediterranean garden is next to the path on the slope. The plants set their oils free in the Saronic sun, intoxicating scents enter under the arch of our skulls. We recognize basil, rosemary, thyme, lavender, lemon, bougainvillea, oleander. Above the garden are large monastic quarters, where pilgrims coming from afar can spend the night.
”The Church of St. Nectarios, consecrated in 1994, is magnificent. In some important elements, it reminds of Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia and the Church of St. Sava in Belgrade. Entire Greece participated in its construction”, tell us Rada Sević. ”There are two large bell towers, an enormous dome, four rows of windows decorated with arcades. People say that the silver bell in the church tower is the biggest ever made in Greece. It weighs three tons, and it is 1,75 meters high.”
At the time we stayed here (September 2017), the works on the Church of St. Nectarios’ interior were not completed yet. Scaffolds and workers were in the nave. However, you could already see the entire grandness and beauty of the church, which will soon become one of the most significant ones in the Orthodox Christian universe. When the church is completed, part of the relics of St. Nectarios will be transferred here. Akathists and prayers for help and all kinds of healings will be read in a special parecclesion. All that is done now as well, in the small old church, but more people will be able to attend here.
Before me is a bundle of printed testimonies about miracles that took place above the relics of St. Nectarios. Can a hill be transferred from here to Belgrade? Or placed within a man? Or reduced to one poem, one blaze?
A young man, who got up from his wheelchair three and a half years ago in this place, spread his arms, started crying and began walking again, is passing by me. His steps are now full and weighed, the young man knows the value of each one of them, he is smiling.
I hear the quiet voice of old Nectarios Vitalis, who was cured from cancer by St. Nectarios of Aegina, and who was close friend with St. Porphirius. I have never met him, I know that he is in Kamariza now, far from here, but I am certain it is him. A voice quiet yet clear:
”Child of God, have love, peace and patience towards evil. Be in peace with everyone and have good relations with everyone. Be silent about others’ sins. Do not gossip, do not judge, do not comment actions, behaviors and sins of any human, and God and St. Nectarios will help you always and in everything.”

ODYSSEY ON AEGINA

”Όρτσα, παιδιά, καί πρίμο φύσηξε τοῦ χάρου τό ἀγεράκι.” ”Sail out, children, a favorable Charon’s breeze is stirring.”
I am standing in front of the house of Nikos Kazantzakis in Aegina, where the main boulevard on the seashore, as I said, was named after him. The great Greek writer, strange Cretan, settled in this city in 1927, at the age of forty-four, after wandering the world. This is where he continued writing his Odyssey, begun in 1924 and published its seventh version, written in 1938 in this very house. That epic, continuing Homer’s with the same title, which Kazantzakis called ”the greatest epopee of the white race” has 33.333 seventeen-syllable verses. The writer considered it its best work.
”I was born in Crete, the island which is a synthesis of Greece and Asia. My Odysseus is neither Greek nor barbarian. He is both. He is a Cretan”, he wrote.
Although ”first Cretan, only then Greek”, Kazantzakis wrote his most important works here, in Aegina, in this house. This is where he lived where World War II began. This is where he wrote his novel Adventures of Alexis Zorbas, based on which the movie Zorba the Greek was made in 1964, directed by Michael Cacoyannis. (The leading role was played by Anthony Queen, and music composed by Mikis Theodorakis.) This is where he translated Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Dante’s Divine Comedy, this is where he wrote The Last Temptation of Christ in 1948 (a novel based on which Martin Scorsese made a movie with the same name in 1988).
”Ad tuum, Domine, tribunal appello.” ”Στο δικαστήριό σου ασκώ έφεση, ω Kύριε!” ”I lodge my appeal at your tribunal, Lord.” That is what he wrote in 1954, when two of his novels were enlisted in the Index librorum prohibitorum, and he was ”almost cursed”.
I am looking for someone in the city who could take me down Nikos’ paths on the island.
”You will not find anyone”, says young Georgios, bookshop assistant in Inois Street. ”It was a long time ago. Old people have gone long ago, young people are still gone. And those interested in what you are asking about are almost gone. Perhaps someone will make an app once, which could help you. Nikos Kazantzakis died in 1957 in Freiburg, Germany. He was buried in Heraklion, Crete. Do you know what is written on his tomb?”
I nod my head, thank him and leave. I know. We all know: ”I am not hoping for anything, I am not afraid of anything, I am free.”
I spend the second half of my day on the Hill of Kolona, on monumental remains of the temple of Apollo. The sleepy Archeological Museum is there, whose important advantage is in the island familiarity of the staff. For almost an hour, I am contemplating over Pythagoras’ head made of white marble and a relief profile which could be Plato’s. I feel particular sadness in such places, sadness bigger than the Saronic Sea. The two of them were the last, they are the end, after them is an untransparent curtain, and senile barbarians of the post-West are still defending doctoral theses in which Pythagoras and Plato are at the beginning, at dawn.

CURE FOR MEMORY

On the boardwalk and small squares, which open opposite from the coast, on the edge of the commercial part of the city, in a myriad of colorful houses, on stands and market stalls, the September Pistachio Fair is taking place. Pistachio tree forests are as great as olive tree forests in Corfu and pine tree forests in Evia. It is amazing what islanders in Aegina can make from pistachios. Several dozens of first-class products. We try creams, jams, liqueurs, biscuits similar to nut cookies, pistachios in caramel.
For a long time, we wander the narrow stone streets of this little city, which is, they say, more than five and a half millennia old. While listening to the laughter in branches and inner yards, I look for any remains of Aristophanes, the famous ancient comediographer born in Aegina (as he hinted in his Acharnians).
”All right, you already know: Minoans, Achaeans, Dorians, Byzantines, crusaders, Venetians, Turks, New Greeks… From 1827 to 1829 capital city of Greece. Ioannis Kapodistrias and the building of the first modern Greek government. Capralos Museum, Pink Tower of Markellos, former seat of the first postrevolutionary government, today cultural center and gallery … You have seen it all and all tourist guides are babbling about it. It’s boring. You belong to a nation who gave Crnjanski, don’t listen to that”, Georgios P. waves his hand. ”Listen, rent a carriage and go to the fish market, buy calamari. We will make a grill above Suvala tonight, we have good Saronic wine. You must see the night fall over Peloponnesus, you have to feel the island well. Only that way you can write it.”
Suvala is, as I mentioned, a town and spa on the north of the island, on the very coast, with a view over Salamina and Piraeus in the distance. Sulphur spa. A spa that cures memories. And when you cure memories, you see through ages and differentiate spirits.
”Yes, I see”, I tease Georgios P., old joker. ”That is why I know that you, present Greeks, have almost nothing in common with the old world you are referring to. Racially, culturally, linguistically or artistically. They were a spiritual order, scientia sacra, and you are just souvenir sellers. They were Hyperborean and you are Levantines. They were mystical poetry and you are trivial literature.”
Georgios is laughing with his entire body, almost starting to cough (without putting away his pipe). He wipes his tears and winks to me:
”And Dorians were Serbs, of course, just like Orpheus? And Hyperborea was in the central Danube valley once, exactly next to the coffee shop where you have coffee in spring? And Apollo came there to spend the winter, with a carriage pulled by swans?”
I don’t laugh, I smile.
”Who knows, my Georgio, who knows! Perhaps you have just touched great truths. If it’s caused by Sulphur, its worth going to Suvala.”
”Please, go get the calamari. Here’s the carriage coming”, he’s still laughing. ”Your condition is worse than I thought. Saronic wine is no good, I have to get some from Thessaly or some other province which was part of Dušan’s Empire.”

HARVESTING POEMS

Hagia Marina, in the northeast of the island, in the bay with the same name, shallow and wide, is exactly opposite from the city of Aegina in the northwest. The small Church of St. Marina, Blazing Mary, whom Greeks celebrate on July 17, is on the spike of a long sand beach, the biggest on the island, where the coastline begins rising towards the central hills. It stands like a white boat with blue edges. This is where middle-class Athenians run away to on weekends and holidays from the agony of metropolization and touristic occupation. They have a small ferry and hydrofoil line, a dock for yachts, villas on the hill pasted like clams, among pine and oleander trees. The pressure is great, the demony of money and frenzied time machine, but Athenians do not renounce this getaway and sanctuary.
Here, in Hagia Marina, is where most Serbs are accommodated.
At the end of the mountain wreath above the town, in the north, are two sacral jewels.
The first is the beautiful, not so big Monastery of St. Minas, hidden and farsighted, from the XIV century, as they say, with a valuable icon of this saint, very respected among Greeks, and a particular timeless peacefulness among blossoming cactuses.
Then you continue along the same road towards a plateau on the top. When The Temple of Aphaia appears before you, a shock is inevitable. A shock caused by the beauty of only the remains of this Dorian temple, a shock caused by the extraordinariness of this place. I read:
”… Raised in 570 B.C. and dedicated to Aphaia, destroyed six decades later. A new temple was later built here on its remains, to encourage Greeks in the Trojan War (including the people of Aegina, who joined the army with their ships). The one whose remains we see today was built in 490 A.D. and served as role model for many temples, from Sicily to Asia, including the one in Athens’ Acropolis. (…)”
I return here several times during my stay in Aegina. This is where at least three poems from my Island were created. Preserved internal colonnades with dozens of Dorian pillars, the monumentality of this divine mirage, ”ancient speech over ancient waters” always return me ”down a goat’s path, with elevated eyes and fingers with an ability to see”. ”Triangle” in the Notebook:
”From the Parthenon in Athens to Aphaia in Aegina and Poseidon in Sounion, in the golden ratio, in the geometry of the nucleus, under ruins and rocks, there still stands the last rune of the Archaean age, the window towards the beginning, a prologue for the history of salvation. There are mysterious moments, at some time of the day and serenity, when a path opens up for the sight and it vividly establishes that triangle, the space trinity. That harmony of shrines, the whispering of heavens, the primordial feature. You, the small one, are also waiting for all that this summer.”

***

Sublime Raids
In the remains of the Temple of Apollo in Kolona, in Aphaia above Hagia Marina, and elsewhere in the island, it can be clearly noticed that sculptures, objects, decorations… are missing.
”You are noticing well”, says a young woman, curator of the Archeological Museum in Aegina. ”The most beautiful exhibits from the Temple of Aphaia are in the Munich Glyptothek, those from Apollo’s temple in the British Museum and elsewhere. We are a country subject to raids, both in the past and now. In the past they used to rob us, load their ships, carry away, while today they are doing it in a different way, through debt bondage and blackmails.”

***

The First Altar
We are cruising the island in a rented car. In the south, we climb up Mount Oros, as far as we can on a mountain road cut with gullies and sharp stone. We get out of the car and continue on foot up an insecure path. The oldest preserved altar of the old world is on the Hellanion peak. A white little church of Elijah the Thunderer next to it was raised much later. (That is how Greeks call each other in distances, over open seas, that is how they mark and tie their scattered lands, difficult to defend.) A miraculous feeling: dug into the sky, over a great water, as if we are reaching the end of the world and the beginning of time. We see a large part of Peloponnesus and Attica, Poros, Hydra, Methana, Epidaurus, Agystri, Glyphada… If we stayed here a bit longer, who knows who’d appear to us.

***

Perdika
Already from Oros, we enchantedly watched the wonderful small town in the southwest of Aegina, a white scarf fluttering towards Agistria and Epidaurus, the Old and the New.
”We’ll have lunch there.”
We barged to a local fair, but we decisively bypassed the sad stands full of Chinese kitsch. We are walking to the coast, where a necklace excellent inns and small restaurants with plaid tablecloths and blue wooden chairs is waiting for us. Wherever you sit, you will not be mistaken. The fish is fresh, wine acceptable, English bad. However, there will be no misunderstanding. Everyone understands Arabic numbers well.