Virginia Burrus CAARI lecture

Literary Cartographies: Hilarion’s Cyprus
How does literature call to places, and how do places respond to the call of literature? Focusing on Jerome’s description of Saint Hilarion’s journeys and of the Cypriot hermitage where those journeys ended, this lecture explores the dynamic relationship of reading and traveling, from the ancient periplous, to the late ancient Saint’s Life, to text of the lecture itself. The inexact correspondence of textual and physical places proves surprisingly productive, as the literary account of a saint who left no lasting mark on the island continues to incite attempts to locate his final dwelling place-whether the mysterious Charbyris of Sozomen’s late ancient history, the Byzantine fortress in the Kyrenian mountains known as the Castle of Hilarion, the cave near Episkopi in the Ezousa valley that became the site of local devotion, the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Palaipaphos, the recently discovered remains of a small basilica at Toumballos just inside the walls of Nea Paphos, the monastery of Agia Moni in the Troodos mountains, or (more fancifully still) the Temple of Apollo of the Woodlands at Kourion. In a time of pandemic related travel restrictions, political turmoil, or simply when seeking out past places, sometimes the only journeys we can take are the ones mediated by literature and the imagination. Some destinations will always elude us. But their memories and the anticipation sparked by those memories may remain powerfully in play nonetheless.