This book was featured at the recent Greek Australian Writers Festival -
https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/04/09/n ... -festival/
The influence of the gifted Australian writer Charmain Clift was to be the focus of the last two sessions of the festival, the first of which featured Tanya Dalziell, Professor of English and Literary Studies at the University of Western Australia, and Paul Genoni, Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University, who are the co-authors of Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964....
The winner of the non-fiction Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Half the Perfect World tells the story of the expatriate community of writers, painters, and sculptors - the so-called "drifters and dreamers”- that flourished on the Greek island of Hydra in the years 1955-1964 under the influence of the Australian literary adventurers, George Johnston and Charmain Clift.
Clift and Johnston, whilst attempting to pursue a creative life on the island, were nevertheless very hospitable to newcomers, providing meals and shelter as well as introductions to locals. And as the rich photographs of the LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke attest, the Australians were often the centre of conversation, whether it be outside the Katsikas kafenio on the dockside or the Douskos taverna with its famous leaning tree in the front courtyard.
By drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by Burke’s eyewitness photography, the authors delve into the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates on what was half the perfect world:
“Their years in the Aegean may have been half perfect at best, but it was on Hydra that they connected to a place, a lifestyle and a community that allowed them to live and express themselves intensely, and as they wished. They refused to believe their dreams were an illusion, or that boldness, ambition and a leap-of-faith might not allow them to reach beyond the constraints of their birthright.”
One of the writers who was introduced into the Bohemian rhapsody on Hydra was a charismatic but relatively unknown Canadian singer and poet named Leonard Cohen, who like Johnston and Clift, eventually bought a house on Hydra and lived there until 1967....
In The Flame: Poems and Selections from the Notebooks, a valedictory volume published after Leonard Cohen’s death, the legendary artist, who famously dedicated his first show in Sydney to George Johnston and Charmain Clift “who taught me how to write”, penned a notebook entry in which, according to Dalziell and Genoni, Cohen reflected on how singular and enduring his experience on Hydra was:
I could not slip away
without telling you
that I died in Greece
was buried in that
place where the donkey
is tethered to the olive tree
I will always be there
Still no word about the film that was going to be made from this book.
Still wondering who will be playing Leonard in it