Holidays...
Piana ...
These Monsters
which defy
the Sea
The Calanches
[Ph. Desjobert ]
An Evocation of Piana ...
I was in the Calanches of Piana, whose Guy de Maupassant
gave a so beautiful picture:
"I stopped stunned in front of these amazing rocks
of pink granite, of four hundred metres high, strange, tortured, eaten
into by the time, bloody under the last fires of the twilight and taking
every forms, like a fantastic people of a fairy tale, petrified by a supernatural
power."
[...]There are some places where the most convinced rationalism wonders
in spite of itself about the mysterious powers which govern the nature.
The geography provides an explanation to this petrified tempest.
The legend tells its creation :
Satan, fallen angel, madly fell in love with a shepherdess.
He observed her for weeks from the bottom of hell, falling in love with
her more and more everyday.
One morning, he went on earth and undertook the conquest of the beauty.
And there instead of giving way to the Prince of darkness, the young woman
insulted him, hit him and called her husband. The last mentioned came
and found himself gripped by rage. He armed himself with a stick in oak
and dealt a hidding the poor devil who had to escape with his tail between
his legs, he did not even try to kill the husband and his wife.
Not likely! It would have been too easy.
He decided to make the place uninhabitable.
Then, he hit, split, broke, pushed and knocked down, anyway, turn the
rock upside down with nevertheless, a distinct artistic concern, for the
old Corsican assert that with a touch of imagination we can see the shepherd,
the shepherdess and her dog, sculpted in the cliffs.
Saint-Martin came through there and decided to bless these cliffs.
By noticing that he would not manage to chase away the fury from there,
he called a wave which caressed the rock.
Thus the gulf of Porto was born.
Extract of Terres
de Corse Gabriel-Xavier Culioli
Holidays in Piana - South Corsica
- The Rambles around Piana
- Sports
For any information contact The
Tourist information Centre
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