The Bellstone: The Greek Sponge Divers of the Aegean: One American's Journey Home (review)

Abstract

This is an unusual work of scholarship and a deeply personal book. The author, a Greek American, narrates his rediscovery of a 23-page poem by the grandfather that he never met, and the ensuing odyssey through which he tries to [End Page 294] understand, contextualize and come to terms with his grandfather's legacy. I do not use the word odyssey lightly, as Kalafatas takes the reader with him on travels into history and across several continents in his personal and scholarly quest. The poem, "Winter Dream" was written by Metrophanes Kalafatas on the island of Symi in 1904. It tells the story of the protests surrounding attempts to abolish the deep-sea sponge diving suit (skafandra), with its yearly harvest of deaths and paralysis from the bends. While the skafandra was the boon of captains and sponge merchants, it was the bane of the local population of Symi, Kalymnos and other sponge diving islands in the Dodecanese. Thus the bellstone (kampanellopetra) of the title refers to the tool for descent of the naked divers, who held their breath to comb the bottom for sponges, a less efficient but far safer—and more romantic—method of diving known as the "first technique." Attempts to ban the equipment were largely unsuccessful, and the scourge of the bends continued well into the twentieth century. Indeed, the author of the poem died soon after its completion, uttering, with his last breath, the Rosebud-like phrase "They have killed me." Was he the victim, perhaps, of the Symiot power elite, eager to dispense with a troublemaker?