The Colossus of Maroussi 2e (New Directions Paperbook)

Product Information

In addition to the occasional breathtaking passage (for me, anyway), there are some things about Henry Miller’s worldview that I admire and enjoy. Here’s another quote that I think speaks to both: One of those travel books that is as much about the traveler as the country traveled to. It's a paean (and there's no other word for it) to Greece on the part of Henry Miller, better known for his "Tropic" books even though he considered this one his best. Maybe that's because his personality and opinions play such a large role. He can be cynical and no-nonsense, for sure, and favors simplicity and genuineness over, um, all things American. Other countries don't stand up to Greece's near-perfection, either. This quote, near the end, about sums it up: Note: "Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue, doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips..." William Shakespeare, Richard II.) They thought it a very interesting story. So that's how it was in America? Strange country ... anything could happen there. Through Durrell, he met and befriended some of the most emblematic representatives of the group of poets, artists and intellectuals that became known as the Generation of the ’30s. It is in Athens, a city “still in the throes of birth”, against the “light and splendor of the Attic landscape”, that Miller makes the acquaintance of intellectual George Katsimbalis, the 1963 Nobel Prize winner George Seferis and of painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas. The war was on, but forgotten in the company of those men. The trips and the evenings shared among them in tavernas, between intellectual conversations, fine food and lots of retsina, render The Colossus a book on friendship.

Soon enough, a circle of artists, poets, and writers formed around Miller, Katsimbalis, and Durrell. The intellectual company was joined by Nobel laureate poet Giorgos Seferis and the renowned painter, sculptor, and writer Nikos Hatzikyriakos Ghikas. Greece has been sneaking up on me lately. First, it was just reading about the debt crisis in the paper and discussing it with my father, whose take is that ‘the Greeks have gotten lazy.’ Then I agreed to read Herodotus’s The Histories with my buddy Kareem. All well and good- still nothing terribly suspicious. But then I started to read Henry Miller’s account of traveling throughout Greece in 1939, while sitting in a diner near my house. As I read, I heard one of the owners of the diner, a very tall and broad bald guy I hadn’t seen for a while, talking to his nephew behind the counter in a foreign language. Occasionally, he would lapse into English. I heard him say, “so someone drinking a Heineken, it’s like driving a Lamborghini…”, and “another thing is that now everyone tips…” Remembering that this guy was Greek, I concluded that he was probably speaking Greek to his nephew, and probably describing a trip he’d recently taken, perhaps to Athens (which made sense, since, again, I hadn’t seen him at the diner for a while), the same city that I was reading Miller’s account of visiting. There's a famous story about a lawyer who's been getting sniped at by a judge over and over for meaningless trivialities. Finally, after running afoul of the rules for the umpteenth time, the judge raps his gavel on the podium and says, "I am fining you five hundred dollars for contempt of court!"Yes," I said, "I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs. And I also believe that if you have light, such as you have here, all ugliness is obliterated. Since I've come to your country I know that light is holy: Greece is a holy land to me." Lccn 58009511 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7999683M Openlibrary_edition I don't miss anything," I said, pressing the point home. "I think this is marvellous. I don't like your gardens with their high walls, I don't like your pretty little orchards and your well-cultivated-fields. I like this …" and I pointed outdobrs to the dusty road on which a sorely-laden donkey was plodding along dejectedly. "But it's not civilized," she said, in a sharp, shrill voice which reminded me of the miserly tobacconiste in the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire. How can one escape the gloom and dejection that dominate modern literature? Why, by reading Henry Miller of course. We are told that happiness writes white and perhaps it does, but isn Miller’s case it’s a supernal, brilliant white and I could use more of it. As the second World War erupted, pushing 50 and fancying a break after two decades of writing, Miller travelled to Greece to visit his young friend Lawrence Durrell. The luminous, blissful book that resulted from his transformative time there was Miller’s favourite of his own works and it may be mine too. He underscores this view of us, as animals caught in a steel maze of our own making, by his frequent metaphoric mixing of nature's fecundity and manmade tawdriness, as when he describes the approach to Delphi:

No, this is not your grandmother's travel writing, with its propriety, politeness, and "realistic" depictions, but word-pictures of an emotional landscape. That's the essence Miller strives to show: his subjective, experiential, inner reality. The subject here is Henry Miller, and what matters most is how these objects--the world--affect him.Greece herself may become embroiled as we ourselves are now becoming embroiled, but I refuse categorically to become anything less than the citizen of the world which I silently declared myself to be when I stood in Agamemnon’s tomb. From that day forth[,] my life was dedicated to the recovery of the divinity of man. Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant! Return to the United States The Colossus of Maroussi is an impressionist travelogue by American writer Henry Miller that was first published in 1941 by Colt Press of San Francisco. Set in pre-war Greece of 1939, it is ostensibly an exploration of the "Colossus" of the title, George Katsimbalis, a poet and raconteur. The work is frequently heralded as Miller's best. Lots of people get boring or overblown at times. No one’s perfect. But there is something else that I started to think about as I read parts 2 and 3, neither of which I liked as much as part 1, related to his appreciation of aesthetics, that I find a little more interesting. I’m not sure if it’s a fair criticism, or a criticism at all. I’m also not sure to what degree it would have stood out to me if I had never read Orwell’s ‘Inside the Whale’, which is ostensibly a review of Tropic of Cancer. But I have. The visit that Miller is describing to Greece, as I mentioned, took place in 1939. There were some pretty significant things happening in Europe at that time. Orwell, who published ‘Inside the Whale’ in 1940, says that while a contemporary writer is not required to write about world events, a writer who completely ignores them is generally an idiot. One of the things that seems to fascinate him about Miller is that Miller, who completely ignores world events, is clearly not an idiot, and that Tropic of Cancer is good. Orwell doesn’t reveal until part 3 of the essay that he and Miller have met:

Miller, Henry (18 May 2010). The Colossus of Maroussi (Seconded.). New Directions Publishing. p.210. ISBN 978-0-8112-1857-3 . Retrieved 31 May 2013.Yet, at the same time, he manages to wrap himself in the beauty he encounters, dive into it without holding a breath and resurface a new, more complete being, spellbound by his experience. If only there were more writers like him - ahh, wishful thinking. Hayatımda ilk kez mutlu olmanın bütün farkındalığıyla mutluydum.Sadece mutlu olmak iyidir, mutlu olduğunu bilmekse daha iyidir; fakat mutlu olduğunu anlamak, bunun neden ve nasıl hangi olayların koşulların bir araya gelmesi sonucunda gerçekleştiğini bilmek ve yine mutlu olmak, varlığında bir bilincinde mutluluk duymak- işte bu mutluluktan öte, saadettir.” Here, as always, we see Miller as primitive shaman, awed and humbled by nature and humanity, disdainful of modernity and materialism: "Mechanical devices have nothing to do with man's real nature--they are merely traps which Death has baited for him."

Henry Miller's reputation as a writer needs little verification from the likes of me. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to be able to confirm the abilities of a truly great author. This example of his work is in some ways a peculiar one since it was written during a turning point in modern history, namely the Second World War, and was inevitably a turning point in Miller's own life as well. His idealizing the Greek character and landscape and his tendency towards myth-making may at times seem over the top and naïf. Soon though the reader realizes that it is more of an internal landscape that Miller so emotionally describes and that his journey is one of rebirth. Newspapers got short shrift for spreading lies, hatred, greed, envy and malice; lawyers, technologies, capitalism, communism and Catholicism were all excoriated. He dismissed Christmas as "sour, moth-eaten, bilious, crapulous, worm-eaten and mildewed" and denounced America for its obsessions with wealth and power. His passions burst at the seams, his prose streamed in long paragraphs, words falling over themselves in their haste to be read.

Retailers:

Traveling at times with Katsimbalis, the poet Seferiades, and/or Lawrence Durrell, Miller moves from Athens and Corfu to Knossus and Delphi as if in search of dead Greek gods--and finds them reincarnate. The Colossus of Maroussi is an impressionist travelogue by American writer Henry Miller that was first published in 1941, by Colt Press of San Francisco. Set in pre-war Greece of 1939, it is ostensibly an exploration of the "Colossus" of the title, George Katsimbalis, a poet and raconteur. The work is frequently heralded as Miller's best. Yes, yes," said Tsoutsou, clapping his hands, "that's the wonderful thing about America: you don't know what defeat is." He filled the glasses again and rose to make a toast "To America!" he said, "long may it live!" Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light' It's on paper a travel book, but if you are looking for some sort of in-depth, detailed account of Greece and it's history, then this will not be the book for you, as that's not really the kind of book it is. It is more a journey of self-discovery for Miller and revelation, and although he does talk about the places he visits and gives a good account of them in his own poetic way, it's more about how Greece makes him feel, than anything else. He clearly has quite a spiritual awakening while spending time there, and he writes in a very effusive way, seeming as if he's becoming almost ecstatically happy and joyous as he travels around; philosophising with rapturous delight half the time, unless he's caught in a downpour, or being bothered by the odd tedious individual, here and there...