The Samian wine in Literature

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The wine of Samos is often mentioned in Greek literature as well as in books by modern European writers, such as the widely read Marguerite Yoursenaard: “Wine introduces us to the volcanic mysteries of the soil, to the hidden mineral riches: A midday cup of Samio wine under the sun, or a winter evening when one is in a state of fatigue, allows one to immediately feel in the diaphragm, the warm flow of it, the sour and hot spread along our arteries… it is an almost sacred sensation, sometimes too strong for the human head…” (“Les Memoires d’Hadrien”, novel).

Even Giorgos Veis, award-winning author and ambassador of Greece to UNESCO, writes in his book “Everywhere”, the following passage entitled “Tower of Samos”: “Kufovrasi donation, the pine needles shiver is immediately felt, as long as the first light of noon falls on a vertical rock of a gully, then, with a breath of hidden weather, they begin to creep closer and closer to us all together, you know that from the beginning of course, they are coming for us, will it be souls or perhaps from the nether country words with the meaning of another truth to save us in the light of this untraveled hour without sobs or sorrows, finally our own Samio moments, watered with wine of wisdom, sprinkles the earth until let the world stop in a kiss of rebirth, of courage for the lost goods of the bodies, the stolen…”

Finally, Napoleon Lapathiotis, who had an excellent supervision of the literature of his time, from time to time selected short pieces of prose from world literature, translated them and published them in newspapers. From Schwob’s “Mimes” he translated a passage entitled “Lykythos,” or “The Wine of Samos,” which referred to a story about the Tyrant Polycrates and Samian wine.

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