I love Greece. I love Greeks. I can safely state that these affections started long before I met my boyfriend Panda, who is also Greek. Though he has certainly helped further increase my admiration of this Hellenic land immeasurably. Serene sailing around the islands and a generous dash (read months) of mayhem in Mykonos help. Yet this cradle of civilisation, gifted with beauty and ancient wisdom is taking a rather uncivilised knocking at the moment. It makes one wonder where did it all go wrong?
It probably does not help to know a diplomatic English lord managed to leg it with your national treasure a few centuries ago. Not only did Lord Elgin succeed in increasing the British Museum's visitor rate with the Parthenon marbles, somehow history has allowed them to be more commonly known as the Elgin marbles. The Greeks are obviously unimpressed by this insult to injury. Though when the question as to whether they were paid for and indeed who was paid, silence falls like lead pig trying to fly off Mount Olympus.
Last summer the new Acropolis museum opened to much fanfare and national pride. Quite rightly so, it is a spectacular modern creation designed by Bernard Tschumi located next to the Acropolis in Athens, filled with masterpieces of Greek history, until you get to the top floor. A huge open space entirely encased in glass affording a perfect view of the Parthenon. Named "Parthenon Hall", its measurements mirror those of the Parthenon, and was especially designed to house the borrowed/stolen/absent Parthenon marbles. The Greeks have been demanding them back for decades, constantly rejected on the grounds that there was nowhere to keep them, until now. More excuses are expected.
Seeing the Parthenon without it's marbles is like seeing Big Ben without its clock faces, or the Queen of England without her crown. It is not quite how you imagined it, though impressive nonetheless. It has witnessed more than a millennium, weathered the heights of the Greek empire to today's current turmoil and financial distress. Naked or not, it still draws the crowds, tourists from across the globe and lately Greek protesters, the controversy continues.
Considering the devastation Greece is in right now, it might be diplomatic to give them back the Parthenon marbles, for a bit at least. Then they could, perhaps, be sold legitimately to the British Museum, to chip into paying back Greece's financial debt.
People are divided, history and its creations are divided. The head of one the moon goddess Selene's horses is at the British Museum in London, while Selene's surviving torso is in Athens. The sculpture of the horse captures perfectly it's exhaustion after having drawn a chariot all through the night. Reeling it's head, jaw gaping, eyes wide it just needs a break.
Poignantly, right now so does Greece.
"Jetset Violet"
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