At the Corner of Byron and Shelley
Few other revolutions have been so interwoven with poets and poetry. On a bicentennial mostly without pomp, poetry steps again to the fore.
I WAS WALKING DOWN Byron Street one day this past spring, heading to the post office in downtown Athens (an allowable outing under the lockdown—reason #2). It is a pleasant street, with one- and two-story neoclassical buildings in various stages of renovation or dilapidation, plus the odd souvenir shop and little hotel, leading up to the square of the Lysicrates monument, which was once used as a study in the Capuchin monastery. Lord Byron and his friend John Cam Hobhouse had stayed at the monastery in 1809. Byron Street abuts Shelley Street, both not far from the road known as the Street of the Philhellenes. Normally the area would have been thronged with souvenir-purchasing tourists, but Covid had left it strangely empty.
Byronworks so nicely in Greek that it even has a declension. (The “Byron” of Byron Street—Vironos—is in the genitive.) Shelley,though, cannot even be written phonetically, since Greek lacks a “sh” sound. It takes a moment, looking at the street sign, to figure out what it is: SΈΛΛEΫ, “Selley.” Shelley remains distinctly foreign and un-Greek.
Walking along, I paused at the window of one
