111 Cultural Post #8

[Daniel Matthew Kunath]

One of the last things we will be doing this semester is reading part of a Greek book called Σταυροδρόμι των Ψυχών. This book is a romantic novel, which normally wouldn’t be my choice of genre, but since Smaragda had it on hand, it became my genre. We have only read through about half a page, and I have already filled up a page of notes on new vocabulary. However, I know enough now to understand that it begins with a serene old monk, who had been painting a picture of the front of his monastery, but was interrupted by a storm which had begun to whip up. While most of the churches in Greece are in crowded areas, the monasteries tend to be on rocky cliffs by the sea, as far away from the population as they can be. We discussed how in these few paragraphs, we could see hints of how monasteries are named, and the epithets which are attributed to the Virgin Mary for miracles which have taken place at different places.