Corfu

Map of Corfu. Its satellite islands of Othoni, Ereikoussa and Mathraki counterclockwise NW, WNW and W respectively (with respect to the northern part of the island at the top of the map) and Paxos and Antipaxos on the SE side, are visible.

Corfu or Kerkyra (Greek: Κέρκυρα) is an island of Greece, in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Albania (anciently Epirus). Together with its small satellite islands, Corfu forms the margin of Greece's north-western frontier.

Quotes

the country ... was most beautifully cultivated and planted —Xenophon

• A hoary gleam through boughs prevailing
    Tells me how near the ocean lies,
      Here caged in many a waveless lake
      By cypressed ridge and shadowy brake:
  Far off the nightingale is wailing:
    More near the watery grot replies.
  The forest growths are rocked and dandled
    By airs with midnight odours faint,
      Soft, separate airs, o’er feathered grass
      That pass me often and repass,
  Like naked feet of nymphs unsandalled
    That tread each lawn and alley quaint.
  * * * * *
  I see not now those hills whose summits
    In August keep their ermined robes;
      But feel their freshness, know that round
      They gird the steely gulfs profound
  With feet that mock the seamen’s plummets,
    And foreheads crowned with starry globes.
  But see! vast beams divide the heaven;
    The orange-groves their blossoms shew;
      Over yon kindling deep the Moon
      Will lash her snowy coursers soon:
  Now, by her brow the east is riven!
    And now the west returns the glow!
  • Aubrey Thomas de Vere, from "A Night at Corfu", in The Search after Proserpine, Recollections of Greece, and Other Poems (Oxford, 1843), p. 41

• The sea lifted smooth blue muscles of wave as it stirred in the dawn light, and the foam of our wake spread gently behind us like a white peacock's tail, glinting with bubbles. The sky was pale and stained with yellow on the eastern horizon. Ahead lay a chocolate-brown smudge of land, huddled in mist, with a frill of foam at its base. This was Corfu, and we strained our eyes to make out the exact shapes of the mountains, to discover valleys, peaks, ravines, and beaches, but it remained a silhouette. Then suddenly the sun lifted over the horizon, and the sky turned the smooth enamelled blue of a jay's eye. The endless, meticulous curves of the sea flamed for an instant and then changed to a deep royal purple flecked with green. The mist lifted in quick, lithe ribbons, and before us lay the island, the mountains as though sleeping beneath a crumpled blanket of brown, the folds stained with the green of olive groves. Along the shore curved beaches as white as tusks among tottering cities of brilliant gold, red, and white rocks. We rounded the northern cape, a smooth shoulder of rust-red cliff carved into a series of giant caves. The dark waves lifted our wake and carried it gently towards them, and then, at their very mouths, it crumpled and hissed thirstily among the rocks. Rounding the cape, we left the mountains, and the island sloped gently down, blurred with the silver and green iridescence of olives, with here and there an admonishing finger of black cypress against the sky. The shallow sea in the bays was butterfly blue, and even above the sound of the ship's engines we could hear, faintly ringing from the shore like a chorus of tiny voices, the shrill, triumphant cries of the cicadas.
  • Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals (1956), The Speech for the Defence

• Now doth not summer’s sunny smile
  Sink soft o’er that Ionian isle,
  While round the kindling waters sweep
  The murmured music of the deep,
  The many melodies that swell
  From breaking wave and red-lipped shell?
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, from "Corfu", in Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country (November 1834), p. 609, and Poetical Works (Philadelphia, 1839), p. 287

• Τρία μὲν ὄντα λόγου ἄξια τοῖς Ἕλλησι ναυτικά, τὸ παρ᾿ ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ ἡμέτερον καὶ τὸ Κορινθίων.
  • The Hellenes have only three fleets that are worthy of mention, yours, ours, and that of the Corinthians.
  • Thucydides, I, 36 (tr. Charles Forster Smith), quoting Corcyrean emissaries at Athens in 435 BC
  • See also: Epidamnian Affair

• Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀπέβη, ἐκράτει τε τῆς γῆς καὶ ἐδῄου ἐξειργασμένην μὲν παγκάλως καὶ πεφυτευμένην τὴν χώραν, μεγαλοπρεπεῖς δὲ οἰκήσεις καὶ οἰνῶνας κατεσκευασμένους ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγρῶν· ὥστ᾿ ἔφασαν τοὺς στρατιώτας εἰς τοῦτο τρυφῆς ἐλθεῖν ὥστ᾿ οὐκ ἐθέλειν πίνειν, εἰ μὴ ἀνθοσμίας εἴη.
  • Now when he had disembarked he was master of the country, laid waste the land, which was most beautifully cultivated and planted, and destroyed magnificent dwellings and wine-cellars with which the farms were furnished; the result was, it is said, that his soldiers became so luxurious that they would not drink any wine unless it had a fine bouquet.
  • Xenophon, Hellenica, VI, ii, 6 (tr. Carleton L. Brownson), on the rape of Corcyra by Mnasippus in 373 BC