Zorba the Greek, written by Nikos Kazantzakis, is a story that focuses on the relationship of a writer and intellectual, modelled on Kazantzakis, and an uneducated man, Zorba, who drinks, works, loves and lives like a force of nature. His character has been seen as the personification of Henri Bergson's ideas of �lan vital. He doesn't care about books, he values more experience and understanding than scholarly learning. By precept and example Zorba educates a British academic to folly, passion, and the Arcadian basics: "How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea."
The lesson-giving goes both ways. When pressed to reveal what he has learned in all his books, the "Boss" says that "We are little grubs, Zorba, minute grubs on the small leaf of a tremendous tree":
Some men -- the more intrepid ones -- reach the edge of the leaf. From there we stretch out, gazing into chaos. We tremble. We guess what a frightening abyss lies beneath us. In the distance we can hear the noise of the other leaves of the tremendous tree, we feel the sap rising from the root of our leaf and our hearts swell. Bent thus over the awe-inspiring abyss, with all our bodies and all our souls, we tremble with terror. From that moment begins. . . the great danger, Zorba. Some grow dizzy and delirious, others are afraid; they try to find an answer to strengthen their hearts, and they say: 'God'! Others again, from the edge of the leaf, look over the precipice calmly and bravely and say: 'I like it.'!
Kazantzakis wrote Zorba during WWll, when he was in his sixties and Greece was under German occupation -- enduring starvation conditions so severe that he and his wife would stay in bed to conserve energy. His letters convey a similar resolve and passion; his The Last Temptation of Christ, published just two years before his death in 1957, was written to show man "that he must not fear pain, temptation or death"; his tombstone inscription in hometown Heraklion reads, "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."
These are pretty much Zorba's last words too. Zorba the movie ends with the famous beach-dance, but in the book Zorba moves on to further adventures. He has heard the Boss say that he has learned to be "a man with warm blood and solid bones, who lets tears run down his cheeks when he is suffering, and . . . does not spoil the freshness of his joy by running it through the fine sieve of metaphysics," but Zorba is not quite convinced. One of his last communications is "a card from Rumania showing a very buxom woman wearing a low-necked dress":
I'm still alive, I'm eating mamaliga and drinking vodka. I work in the oil mines and am as dirty and stinking as any sewer rat. But who cares? You can find here plenty of all your heart and belly can desire. A real paradise for old rascals like me. Do you understand, boss? A wonderful life ... plenty of sweetmeats, and sweethearts into the bargain, God be praised! All the best.
Alexis Zorbescu, sewer rat
~Today in Literature |
