Learning from a Living Cretan Tradition

There are some things about Crete that reveal themselves immediately: the mountains, the sea, the light, the olive groves and the villages set into the folds of the landscape. Others take longer to understand. For me, the mandináda was one of those. Over the past two years I have spent time reading and researching mandinádes, trying to understand not simply how they are constructed but why this small poetic form remains such an important part of Cretan culture.

What began as an interest in a traditional form of verse has gradually influenced my own writing, particularly the way I write about photographs, landscapes and the E-MTB rides that take me through them. There is an important distinction at the centre of what I am doing: I am not writing mandinádes. My work is written in English and is guided by the traditional mandináda form. Perhaps one day, after considerably more reading, listening and studying, I may be able to attempt the traditional Greek form properly. Until then, I am quite content to remain a student of it.

A Cretan Tradition

The mandináda — μαντινάδα — is one of the characteristic forms of Cretan folk poetry. In its traditional form it is a rhyming couplet of two fifteen-syllable lines, each normally divided internally into eight and seven syllables. Within that apparently simple structure, generations of Cretans have found room for love, separation, grief, friendship, humour, satire, landscape, exile, memory and everyday life.

Major modern Greek dictionaries, including those of the Academy of Athens and the Centre for the Greek Language, derive the word mandináda from the Venetian matinada. The connection reflects the centuries during which Crete formed part of the Venetian maritime state, although the poetic metre itself belongs to a much older Greek tradition. The fifteen-syllable dekapentasyllabos was already deeply established in medieval vernacular Greek poetry before the great literary flowering associated with Venetian Crete.

This older poetic inheritance is also where Erotokritos enters my story. Vitsentzos Kornaros’s great Cretan narrative poem, generally dated to the early seventeenth century, consists of 10,012 rhyming fifteen-syllable lines. It would be wrong to describe Erotokritos as a collection of mandinádes: it is a sustained narrative poem of remarkable scale and complexity. Its rhyming dekapentasyllabos, however, belongs to the same broad metrical tradition from which the mandináda draws its characteristic fifteen-syllable line.That distinction has become increasingly important to me because Erotokritos has shown me something beyond the self-contained two-line form. Rhyming couplets need not exist only as individual observations. They can follow one another and move a story forward, allowing people, places, actions and ideas to develop through verse. For somebody interested in journeys through landscape, that immediately suggested possibilities.

Poetry That Still Belongs to Everyday Life

What particularly attracts me to the mandináda is that it is not simply an historical literary form preserved in books. It remains part of Cretan life, associated with music and dancing, weddings and celebrations, village gatherings and other social occasions. Today a verse can travel through a telephone or social media just as readily as it once travelled entirely through memory, singing and oral exchange.

The skilled composer or improviser of mandinádes works within demanding restrictions. Two lines provide only thirty syllables. Metre matters and rhyme matters, but most importantly the thought itself must survive those restrictions. A technically correct verse that says nothing is not rescued by accurate syllable counting.

Improvisation takes that difficulty considerably further. A skilled mantinadologos may respond to another verse immediately, maintaining metre and rhyme while producing an answer that is relevant, witty, moving or occasionally rather pointed. The subjects available are remarkably broad. Love and longing may dominate many collections, but the form can accommodate separation, emigration, family, friendship, mountains, villages, death, humour and social observation. The scale of the poem may be tiny, but the range of human experience available to it is not.

That continuity is important to my understanding of the form. The mandináda belongs to Cretan history, but it has never been confined to history. It remains a living practice, capable of moving from an older oral environment into modern Cretan life without surrendering the characteristics that make it recognisable.

What I Am Trying to Do

My own involvement began with reading, but eventually I wanted to experiment with writing. This is where I need to be precise about terminology because the poems I write are not mandinádes. They are English poems guided by the traditional mandináda form.

That may appear a small distinction, but I think it is an important one. A traditional mandináda belongs to the Greek language and to a particular living Cretan cultural tradition. It cannot simply be reproduced in English by counting fifteen syllables, finding a rhyme and attaching the Greek name to the result.

Greek and English do not behave identically. Their natural rhythms differ, words carry their stresses differently, and the traditional Greek fifteen-syllable line developed within a linguistic, oral and musical environment that cannot simply be transferred intact into English. I therefore work in English rather than pretending otherwise.

What I take from the traditional mandináda is its discipline: compression, rhythm, rhyme, observation and the requirement to decide exactly what I am trying to say. I am particularly interested in its ability to capture one moment, one place or one thought without burying it beneath unnecessary explanation, and that approach fitted naturally with my photography.

During my E-MTB rides around Crete I photograph landscapes, churches, tracks, walls, rivers, ruins, shrines, villages and the smaller things encountered along the way. Many of those photographs already have substantial stories behind them. Some lead into history, others into landscape, mythology or memory, while some simply record something that caught my attention and caused me to stop the bicycle.

I began to wonder whether the central thought behind a photograph could sometimes be reduced to a rhyming English couplet, guided by the economy and structure of the traditional mandináda. The photograph would provide the visual record and the poem would record my response to it. As I experimented, however, I encountered an obvious problem: not every story wanted to stop after two lines.

Beyond the Couplet

Once I understood more clearly the distinction between what I was writing and the traditional mandináda, there was no reason to force every poem into a two-line form. The mandináda could remain the foundation and influence without becoming a restriction that prevented an English poem from developing naturally.

Some photographs may still produce only a couplet, because that may be all they require. Others may need four lines, several verses or something considerably longer. A complete ride presents an entirely different challenge because a ride has movement: there is a departure, a sequence of places, changes in terrain, climbs and descents, discoveries along the track and eventually a return.

There is an interesting precedent within Cretan oral poetry itself for the distinction between the short mandináda and longer narrative compositions. Scholarly studies distinguish the self-contained mandináda from rímes, longer compositions that can employ the same traditional fifteen-syllable rhyming verse for extended narrative. I am not suggesting that my English poems are Cretan rímes — they are not — but the distinction interests me because it demonstrates that the poetic inheritance associated with the fifteen-syllable couplet has never necessarily been confined to two lines.

My reading of Erotokritos has reinforced that interest. I am not attempting to imitate Kornaros, nor am I describing Erotokritos as a long mandináda. What interests me is the principle of narrative movement through successive rhyming couplets. One couplet can lead naturally into another and, over time, carry the reader through a journey.

I had already experimented with exactly that approach in one of my E-MTB ride narratives before I had properly decided how to describe what I was doing. Looking at it again now, I think it demonstrates much more clearly the direction in which my own poetry may develop.

It is an English narrative poem, guided by the traditional mandináda form and influenced by the narrative movement I encountered in Erotokritos. Everything within it is grounded in an actual E-MTB ride through Apokoronas: the route, the villages, the climbs, the river, the tracks and the wartime mapping that accompanied my reading of the ground.

The Ground Decides

An English Narrative Poem Guided by the Traditional Mandináda Form

From Kokkino Chorio we climbed when morning held the sky,
toward Drapanos on tarmac road with ridges standing high.

The old map marked the higher line before our wheels were known,
where village roads held fast to ground cut hard in Cretan stone.

Through Xerosterni we passed on roads the hills had long defined,
where every bend and rising line obeyed the slope assigned.

At Litsarda the ridge ran broad, with open ground ahead,
and older tracks across the fields still showed where movement led.

Then down we dropped to Vryses plain, from ridge to valley floor,
where roads and water gathered men in every age before.

We stopped beside the Cheese Shop there, with coffee, shade, and rest,
before the return climb rose again and put the legs to test.

The Stone Factory climb began where lower ground gave way,
and metre after metre took the valley light away.

The wartime sheet had marked that ground with track and road and line,
not made for sport, but made for men to move by slope and sign.

Down to Koiliaris we rode, where river trees stood still,
and water made its corridor beneath the rising hill.

The river drew the tracks along, as rivers always do,
and old roads bent beside its course where crossing places grew.

Then Kalamitsi called us back from valley floor to height,
a climb of dust and broken stone beneath the hard clear light.

At Alexandrou’s church we passed where walls and fields remain,
a fixed point in the rural ground of worship, work, and grain.

The climb to Litsarda rose steep, the hardest of the day,
where effort met the upper track and stone refused the way.

The dry-stone walls held every field in lines of patient ground,
and by their edges older tracks and donkey paths were found.

Through Enchanted Forest shade the narrow route withdrew,
where trees closed in on hidden stone and cooler air came through.

No tale is claimed beyond the maps, no battle named in pride,
but such ground gives concealment where exposed roads are denied.

At Stoneman Junction tracks converged, as old use made them meet,
where field and ridge and village road joined under turning feet.

Through Kefalas and Paleloni the high road carried on,
with Drapanos ahead of us before the light was gone.

Then back to Kokkino we came, the circuit closed and done,
with ridge and valley crossed again beneath the Cretan sun.

The maps, the tracks, the roads, the walls, the river and the stone,
all showed the same old truth again: the ground decides alone.

Finding My Own Form

Looking at that poem now, I would not describe it as a sequence of mandinádes. That would impose a traditional Cretan name upon something that has become distinctly my own English experiment, but neither would I separate it from the mandináda that helped inspire it.

The influence is there in the couplets, the rhyme, the attempt at economy and the idea that each pair of lines should contain a recognisable thought while still contributing to something larger. What has changed is the scale. Instead of capturing one moment and stopping, the couplets move through the landscape in the same sequence as the bicycle, allowing the geography of the ride to provide the structure of the poem.

That gives me a direction for the photography as well. I no longer intend to impose exactly the same poetic structure upon every photograph, because the image itself should determine what follows. A roadside shrine might need two lines; an abandoned building might require several verses. A photograph connected with a particular historical event may lead somewhere else entirely, while a complete ride may develop into another extended narrative poem.

The common element will not be that every piece is a mandináda. It will be that the poetry is guided by the traditional mandináda form.

That distinction also allows me to remain serious about the tradition that inspired the work. I do not need to claim an authenticity I have not earned, nor do I need to turn the mandináda into an English literary device and pretend that nothing changes when it crosses from Greek into English. I can acknowledge precisely where the influence comes from while allowing my own poetry to develop in my own language.

There is something satisfying about the fact that all of this has grown from my riding. I did not set out to develop a poetic theory. I was riding through Crete, photographing what I encountered and writing about the ground, while reading mandinádes gradually changed the way I thought about how much could be said in very few words.

Reading Erotokritos then suggested another possibility: what might happen if the couplets were allowed to continue, carrying a journey rather than capturing only a single moment.

Still Learning

This remains a work in progress, and I want it to remain that way for some time. I am still reading and listening, and I am still trying to understand what makes a good mandináda work rather than merely what makes one technically correct. Perhaps sometime in the future I will reach the point where I can attempt the traditional Greek form itself with sufficient understanding to call what I have written a mandináda. I am in no hurry to do so.

Until then, I will keep studying the tradition and allow it to influence my own poetry in English. Some poems may consist of two lines beside a photograph; others may extend through several verses or run across an entire ride. The form can change with the subject, while the influence that first set me thinking about poetry in this way remains constant.

I am not writing mandinádes. I am writing English poetry guided by the traditional mandináda form.

For the moment, that is exactly where I want to be.