This year's Kythera Summer Edition has been released and this year marks the 29th anniversary of its first issue. Read it below.
The welcome message in Greek and English:
The mythical beauty
We have no description of the beauty of Helen of Sparta. Only a few words have been handed down to us, and these are from a father and a son. The father is Priam, who in Tichoscopy, seeing Helen, admires her in words: “aino immortal divine to thee” (verse 158). He goes on to say, “O thou who to the gods dreadfully resembles in appearance!” And the son is Paris. This one on his way to Troy makes a stop somewhere here in Kythera, the legend says. And when the adulteress asks him if he sees her beautiful, he compares her to a flower of Kythera. An amaranth endemic flower with a golden head and a stalked body. You can see this flower still growing in Chytra. So on your departure from Kythera, take a bouquet of this flower with you and offer it to whomever in your eyes it appears as divine and amaranthic beauty. You can even address it with the verse of Elytis: ’my amaranth rose’ or with... Greek words ’o my amaranth rose“.
Come on in, the water's fine
Kythera welcomes you into her hushed embrace. The silence and stillness is palpable. The migratory birds fly through it, the winds amplify it while the ancient rock walls absorb it.
Kythera, our Tsirigo, is a soothing time warp of old-world charm that follows the beat of the natural world. A beacon for lovers since time immemorial, is it any wonder that Helen of Troy and Paris frolicked here in those same Kytherian seas where Aphrodite, the ancient goddess of love, was born? Philosophers and poets, musicians and artists, ancient and modern, have been and continue to be entranced by the island's natural beauty, its rugged coastline and wild mystery. As you walk the time-worn pathways, through long abandoned fortresses, citadels and monasteries, remember the toil and courage of those that came before, the hands that endured with the placement of each and every stone from the most impressive hillside villages to the humble terraces and orchids of ancient groves.
The team at Kythera Summer Edition welcomes you to share in the precious balance of the silence and rhythms of Kythera.
