Zorba the Greek

This book had the most visceral impact on me of anything I had read when I first encountered it 40 years ago. When I finished it, I sat up in bed crying all night, certain that I would soon be dead. Fred Streng called it Makyo--illusions--and told me to forget about it. And yet I lived with the conviction that I would soon be dead for quite some time. 

I wanted to live the siren call to life of Zorba--or was it the movie or was it the album? Hard to say now. It still reads like the call to live the essential life unfettered by mind, by convention, by reason. But there is no glorification of the common man or of any innate goodness in man--the Cretans make short shrift of that argument. 

The book is not really about Zorba. It is about Boss. It's about his struggles to escape the bookish life and to be free in his own mind. He sets up Zorba and the Buddha as diametrically opposed forces, seeking to exorcize the Buddha while emulating Zorba. Zorba is certainly no saint--he has killed, he has robbed, he has lied, he has cheated. He has just taken on life as it has come at him. But he is presented as the epitome of freedom, free to do as he chooses when he chooses. It just takes a bit of madness, a lot of courage, a willingness to pursue an action whatever the cost, the damages, the difficulties, to be consumed by the passions of the life. Zorba was consumed in the moment, whether making love to Bouboulina, or shoring up the walls of the shaft, or rigging up the cable system, playing the santouri, dancing on the beach, or locked in mortal combat with Manolakas. The boss does feel freed from the constraints of his life, even as he leaves Zorba.

So do we live the vitalist life--open to passions and desires and dangers--this was the climbing life for me--or do we seek detachment and use mindfulness to escape the illusions and being caught up in the world, subject to the rages and the fears and the loneliness and depression of being alive? I'm afraid that Zorba did not speak to me this time like he did when I was 20 years old. And it's a huge loss for me. I've settled into old age and mediocrity, sliding into death and afraid of dying a bitter old man.

Author: Kazantzakis, Nikos

Date Published: 1946

Length: 320 pp

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