Colossus of Maroussi

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Summary: maybe the finest travel book about greece
Review: This may be the greatest travel book ever written about Greece because it is so unpretentious and has none of the romantic tripe that one gets with a lot Philhellenism. It is also wonderful as a narrative of peace before the gathering storm of WWII that would consume most of Europe, including Greece. More than anything, however, it is perhaps the finest writing that Henry Miller ever did because it is simply him traveling around Greece, feeling damn glad to be there, enjoying the frienship of Durrell and Katzimbalis, and taking pleasure in the wine, the sea, and the warmth of the Greek people. If you like this book, try Patrick Leigh Fermor's "Mani" and "Roumeli." He's a bit more scholarly than Miller, but he too taps in to the same essence as Miller and refuses to get sappy about "the glory that was Greece."

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Summary: Barbarian sensitivity and good writing
Review: This must be counted among the most peculiar books ever wrtitten about Greece by an Anglophone writer, but it is also among the most truthful and , at least in part, beautiful. Henry Miller states that he approaches Greece with little book learning (p. 89) and considers himself a savage. He is really no savage but we can perhaps call him a barbarian, in the sense that Walt Whitman and Robert Browning are barbarians. This is an important point that distinguishes him from his friend and fellow philhellene writer Lawrence Durrell, who also wrote a good deal about Greece but with another kind of imaginative but more refined sensitivity. The title of this book refers to someone called Katzimbalis, a magnificent raconteur who seems never to have published anything himself but did a lot to promote the work of some important modern Greek poets. (See Edmund Keeley's books for details of the great English-Greek-American literary friendships of the thirties and forties.) But the book is not really about its purported subject. It is about the changes taking place in Greece during the thirties and changes that took place in Miller as a result of his long stay in that country. He presents the experience as mind-altering. The structural pivots of the book are visits to Knossos, Phaestos, Mycenae and Epidaurus. Each of these visits becomes an occasion for meditations on the meaning of life and death, all delivered in the author's peculiarly masculine and barbarian style. But the best writing is found when he deals with the low-lifes of Syntagma Square in Athens, who offer him whores and beautiful young boys. How innocent life was in the thirties. Listing is an important part of Miller's style. He piles up great numbers of nouns or present participles or finite verbs. Sometimes the reader feels a bit overwhelmed by them. Miller lived in France for quite a while and brings to his work the post-adolescent dislike of American culture and society that used to infect every intelligent American a few generations ago. Everything American is bad...everything Greek is good. Miller is passionate about nearly everything and dosn't try to hide it. He doesn't write to give the reader pretty words but to give a vision of truth as he sees it. I think he sees it well, even though his vision is different from mine.

Rating:
Summary: Miller's closing says it all...
Review: This very well can be described as Miller's ode to the earth and mankind... the men and women who have occupied the island of Greece and the surrounding Greek islands since creation. It is a metaphorically beautiful work which stokes passion in the mind and heart of the reader and can be quite exhillarating in its degree of adventure. Writing an essay or critique about the phenomenal nature of this work could not even possibly do it justice. Read for yourself and allow its magic to mesmerize you and build upon your insight to your relationship to fellow man and the joy of being alive!