"În Grecia simți dorința să te scalzi în cer. Vrei să-ți dai jos hainele, să alergi și să faci o săritură direct în cer. Vrei să plutești în aer ca un înger sau să te întinzi în iarbă și să te bucuri... Piatră și cerul se unesc aici. Sunt zorii nesfârșiți ai trezirii omului.

N-am știut niciodată că pământul poate oferi atât de mult; am umblat ca un orb, cu pași împiedicați și ezitanți; am fost îngâmfat și arogant, mulțumindu-mă să trăiesc viața falsă, limitată a omului de la oraș. Lumina Greciei mi-a deschis ochii, mi-a pătruns în pori, mi-a amplificat întreaga ființă. "

"Noi toți suntem greci!" ... știa Shelley ce știa

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.

Strange. But anyway, the first part of this book is great. Miller’s great at describing people, places and odd encounters with strangers. I have read a few reviews here making the complaint that this book is not really about Miller’s friend Katsimbalis, whom Miller calls ‘the colossus’, but about Miller himself, which seems to me about as silly as complaining that a singer doesn’t repeat the song’s title in the chorus. Here’s a sample of how Miller describes Katsimbalis, towards the beginning of the book:

I saw that he was made for the monologue…I like the monologue even more than the duet, when it’s good. It’s like watching a man write a book expressly for you: he writes it, reads it aloud, acts it, revises it, savors it, enjoys it, enjoys your enjoyment of it, and then tears it up and throws it to the winds…From the time he met us he was bubbling over. He was always that way, even on bad days when he complained of headache or dizziness or any of the hundred and one ailments which pestered him…Things which happened only yesterday fell into this same nostalgic done-for past. Sometimes, when he talked this way, he gave me the impression of being an enormous tortoise which had slipped out of its shell, a creature which was spending itself in a desperate struggle to get back into the shell which it had outgrown. In this struggle he always made himself look grotesque and ridiculous- he did it deliberately. He would laugh at himself, in the tragic way of the buffoon…He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the true test of the tragic sense.

And a little later: He could galvanize the dead with his talk. He was everywhere at once…If he couldn’t dispose of a thing at once, for lack of a phrase or an image, he would spike it temporarily and move on…All this flurry and din, all these kaleidoscopic prestidigitations of his, was only a sort of wizardry which he employed to conceal the fact that he was a prisoner- that was the impression he gave me when I studied him…Nobody can explain anything which is unique. One can describe, worship and adore. And that is all I can do with Katsimbalis’ talk.

Could you ask for a more vivid and interesting description of a person? What more could you want to know about Katsimbalis?

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:

It was then that I made the discovery that his talk created reverberations, that the echo took a long time to reach one’s ears. I began to compare it with French talk in which I had been enveloped for so long. The latter seemed more like the play of light on an alabaster vase, something reflective, nimble, dancing, liquid, evanescent, whereas the other, the Katsimbalistic language, was opaque, cloudy, pregnant with resonances which could only be understood long afterwards when the reverberations announced the collisions with thoughts, people, objects located in distant parts of the earth. The Frenchman puts walls about his talk…The Greek, on the other hand, is an adventurer: he is reckless and adaptable, he makes friends easily…Of my own experience I would say that there is no more direct, approachable, easy man to deal with than the Greek. He becomes a friend immediately…With the Frenchman friendship is a long and laborious process: it may take a lifetime to make a friend of him. He is best in acquaintanceship where there is little to risk and there are no aftermaths.

If you find that you can enjoy this passage for the way in which it is expressed, for its creativity and clarity and attention to detail, even if you happen to disagree with him, then you are, or are becoming as you read, a little like Henry Miller. It reminds me of a quality a friend of mine has, who also happens to be the only person I know my age who likes, or at least liked, Henry Miller. My friend, like many people, has his share of strong opinions, but I’ve seen him argue a few times with people he’s disagreed with and, after listening to something the other person has said, step back and smile, and shake his head slowly, not sarcastically, but admiring something about the other person’s articulation, delivery, choice of words, style, etc. A lot of people don’t have that capacity. But there’s the same kind of quality in Miller’s writing. He is the kind of person who can get pleasure out of being gypped on taxi fare because of the particular way in which he’s gypped; because it’s an experience in Greece, a place he likes and sometimes finds hard to believe he's in. That’s the kind of person I’d want to be traveling with.

On the other hand, I see a connection between this quality (the ability to appreciate things aesthetically) and the aspect of Miller’s writing that I don’t really like: one of the ways it manifests is in the interminable rhapsodies about nothing. I remember these ecstatic rhapsodies from Tropic of Cancer, but especially from Tropic of Capricorn, which I couldn’t even finish. And I finish novels and novelish books about 98% of the time, once I’ve started them. I guess ecstatic rhapsodies were somewhat of a staple of the time, and Miller is a writer of a different time- you notice it as soon as you start to read him. You may even remember the 'Seinfeld' episode in which Jerry still has Tropic of Cancer checked out after something like sixteen years (he'd heard as a teenager that it contained sex scenes), and a librarian comes around to harass him. But I stopped reading Tropic of Capricorn in the middle of what I remember was at least a five-page encomium to ‘the cunt’- the cunt that knew itself, the eternal cunt, the cunt that transcended its own cuntness…it wasn’t offensive, at least not to me, but it was total gibberish. And I’ve found at least a little of this kind of thing in all three of Miller’s books that I’ve read, including, unfortunately, this one. Again, I think his descriptions of people and places and encounters, his thoughts on Greeks, Americans, the British, are great. I like him as long as he stays in the terrestrial realm. But there is a five-page sequence here in which he tries to tell some cosmic jazz origin story that I think may be one of the most annoying passages of prose I’ve ever read. And when he starts telling us that Greece is the land of light, that man will experience war and bloodshed until the ‘old gods’ return, and…sorry, but wake me up when that paragraph is over.

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:

I first met Miller at the end of 1936, when I was passing through Paris on my way to Spain. What most intrigued me about him was to find that he felt no interest in the Spanish war whatever. He merely told me in forcible terms that to go to Spain at that moment was the act of an idiot. He could understand anyone going there from purely selfish motives, out of curiosity, for instance, but to mix oneself up in such things from a sense obligation was sheer stupidity. In any case my Ideas about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney. Our civilization was destined to be swept away and replaced by something so different that we should scarcely regard it as human—a prospect that did not bother him, he said. And some such outlook is implicit throughout his work. Everywhere there is the sense of the approaching cataclysm, and almost everywhere the implied belief that it doesn't matter.

He goes on to compare Miller to Jonah in the belly of the whale- passive, subjective, with no desire to alter the course of world events (and with the knowledge that he couldn’t, even if he wanted to).

I remember reading a quote a while ago. I can’t remember who said it: “no serious person ever thinks about anything except Hitler and Stalin.” That might be an exaggeration, but one would think it would have been less of an exaggeration in 1939. I think Hitler is mentioned once in the book, and the impending war is mentioned a few times, but never with any of the detail that Miller brings to bear, say, on Katsimbalis. Instead, the reference generally sets us up for another long rhapsody. Or anti-rhapsody, whatever that would be called.

I guess that’s okay. After all, what good does it really do anyone to be dejected, or even to closely follow world events that you yourself, inside the whale (as we all are, as even Orwell admits), are powerless to prevent? And there will always be something going on in the modern world that others will want you to pay attention to and think about (although in general slightly less significant things than the beginning of WWII). And yet, there is something about Miller’s worldview that seems to me less admirable and more naïve than Orwell’s; Orwell went to a foreign country to fight, and was shot through the neck and almost died. So maybe this is more of a question of Miller’s worldview than his writing (although I think it would have been very interesting if he’d trained his powers of perception on, say, Hitler, as well as on his friend Katsimbalis), but personally I don’t think the two can always be separated; if I find a writer’s worldview to be somewhat naïve, then it doesn’t really matter how inventive the prose style is.

One might say that Miller wanted to preserve an image of a paradise that he worried would soon be lost. But it wasn’t a paradise: Greece, as he mentions only once, was under a military dictatorship at this time. Should he have written about that? I can’t say. Not necessarily. But I can’t help but be reminded of another book, Roberto Bolano’s By Night in Chile, set during Pinochet’s coup, in which the artsy-fartsy folks sit around and talk about art and aesthetics while there’s a torture chamber in the basement.

That being said, there are some sequences in this book that I thought were really great, and there are things that I’ll certainly reread if I ever end up going to Greece.

Self-indulgent blathering.

On the recommendation of his friend and fellow author Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller set out for Greece in 1939. After a decade of frenzied writing in which both “Tropic of Cancer “and “Tropic of Capricorn” were composed, Miller’s intention was really nothing more than to relax in preparation for a journey to Tibet in which he planned to, in a popular phrase Miller himself would have despised, “find himself.”

“Colossus of Maroussi” is pure prosopography, which isn’t of course to say that he does not give flashing insight into the individual lives of others. In fact, the colossus of the title – a Greek poet by the name of George Katsimbalis – has a personality which sometimes threatens to marginalize Miller’s. We also meet as a minor character the poet George Seferis long before he became the first Greek to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

At one point, while Durrell and Miller are staring up into space, Durrell calls him a Rosicrucian. This is no lie. Not only does Miller have a preternatural affinity for the mystical and transcendent, but the various meditative bits of philosophy and courageously inventive speculative prose that dot the book are beautifully conceived, written in a kind of ecstatic encounter with the holy. Speaking of Rosicrucians…

“Saturn is the symbol of all omens and superstitions, the phony proof of divine entropy, phony because if it were true that the universe is running down Saturn would have melted away long ago. Saturn is as eternal as fear and irresolution, growing more milky, more cloudy, with each compromise, each capitulation. Timid souls cry for Saturn just as children are reputed to cry for Castoria. Saturn gives us only what we ask for, never an ounce extra. Saturn is the white hope of the white race which prattles endlessly about the wonders of nature and spends its time killing off the greatest wonder of all – MAN.”

To call this a travelogue is to tremendously devalue it. While its subject of the putative love of Greece and the Greek people, Miller’s approach is more reminiscent of Julian of Norwich’s “Revelations of Divine Love” or Thomas Merton’s “Seven Storey Mountain.” For him, Greece was a religious experience, and all the more precious because it was purely accidental. Miller was a mortal Antaeus whose powers seem like they would have been irrevocably sapped when he was finally compelled to bring himself back to the United States, something he only did because he saw the writing that Hitler was scrawling on the European political wall.

This beautiful and nearly flawless travel memoir is marred by this unfortunate sentence on page 121: "On the way to the library, I made kaka in my pants." Wha? Here's this fabulous surreal narrative about Greece, and suddenly the narrator doesn't just shit himself, he "makes kaka?" Skip page 121.

More than a read: an experience, “…the effort to realize myself in words.” [181] Among the very best “travel books” ever written, the author’s tale of his travel in Greece on the eve of WWII. And so much more.

Henry Miller’ı müstehcen olduğu gerekçesiyle uzunca bir süre yazıldığı dönemin yasaklı kitapları arasında olan Yengeç ve Oğlak Dönencesi ile tanıdım. Kesinlikle doğru, kitaplar fazla müstehcen olmakla beraber edebi değeri ise paha biçilemez bana göre. Aradan geçen bu sürede Marousi’nin Devi’yle karşımda bambaşka bir Hery Miller buldum. Kitabının son sayfalarında da bunu doğrulayan bir cümlesi var; ‘gözlerim bağlı, bocalayan, kararsız, adımlarla yürümüştüm;gururlu, kibirliydim...’
Bu kitabıyla ise daha olgun, büyümüş, aşırılıklarından arınmış bir Miller vardı artık.
***
Marosi’nin Devi, Miller’ın arkadaşı Katsimbalis için yazdığı kitabı, Yunanistan’a seyahati, benliğini genişlettiği deneyimleri... Bu kitapla Yunanistan’ı bir uçtan bir uca gezmeye hazır olun. Genel anlamıyla başarılı bir seyahatname, bir serüven kitabı. Son on sayfası ise muhteşem, okurunu fazlasıyla yükselten bir bitişi var kitabın.
Otobiyografik bu kitaplar, Yengeç Dönencesi, Oğlak Dönencesi ve Marousi’nin Devi sıralamasıyla okunduğunda yazarın hayatı ve gelişim süreci daha anlaşılır ve daha anlamlı olabilir.
***
“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.”
Syf.15
***
“İnsan bir gün tanrı olacağı inancını yitirecek olursa solucandan farkı kalmaz.”
Syf.201
***
“Kişi hazır olmadığı takdirde arzuladığı deneyimin tadına varamaz.”
Syf.202
***
“Bütün insanlığa barış ve daha dolu bir hayat dilerim.”
Syf205

the greatest travel book ever written?? O.K, Invisible Cites is probably number one. But this is a close second. I know many people are not really into miller. He can get kind of tiring if read one after the other. But even if you dont care for Miller; you really should try this one. Those over-the-top rants he always has in his books are truely inspiring when applied to traveling. To see someone so in love with the spirit of a place is such a wonderful thing. But this is not one of those Miller books that just goes over the deep end and keeps free-falling. His almost blind love for Greece is so tempered by his angry(?) insight and commentary. Instead of just gushing at length of his travels; he really tries to get at the "authen tic" spirit of a place and its people.
I only everyone could aproach travel this way!!!!

Este es un H. Miller más íntimo y cautivador que lo que nos acostumbra en sus Trópicos. Aquí no es ese tipo en apariencia aborrecible y que buena parte de sus lectores confunden con su persona, que aparenta ser odiosa (nada más lejos de la realidad tras leer este libro) con un enorme creador.

El final del libro es impresionante, y un apéndice final de dos páginas..ohhh..
La claridad de ideas que plasma, me encantaron esas últimas páginas del libro, de las que subrayaría todo y lo enmarcaría con letras de molde.  

"Estamos construyendo un mundo abstracto y deshumanizado a partir de las cenizas del materialismo ilusorio. Estamos demostrándonos a nosotros mismos que el Universo está vacío, tarea justificada por nuestra propia lógica vacía. Estamos decididos a conquistar y lo conseguiremos, pero la conquista es la muerte"

Miller ofrece una auténtica oda al pueblo griego. Su generosidad, amistad y entrega al forastero en sur de Europa, en clara contraposición con los países anglofonos.
 
Otro detalle, este H M no es al que estamos acostumbrados y que lo hizo célebre, antes de este libro ya había escrito lo más grande de su obra y era referencia de la generación beat, Kerouak, Burroughs etc, así como tambien después para Bukowski o Mailler con su estilo sucio y característico. Sin despreciar algún toque de surrealismo tan propio suyo, pero aquí escribe bello. ¿Que quiero decir con esto? Es como si a Picasso se le encargara hacer un bodegón o un retrato realista, lo haría mejor que nadie, olvidando cubismo etc. Aquí a Miller lo veo así, haciendo un enorme fresco realista de Grecia y sus gentes y el amor que surgió en él por todo lo heleno.

"Al cabo de unos minutos tendría que marcharme. No me daba pena; hay experiencias tan maravillosas, tan excepcionales, que la idea de prolongarlas parece la forma más vil de ingratitud".

"Hay hombres que están tan llenos, son tan ricos, se entregan tan completamente, que, siempre que te despides de ellos, sientes que carece de la menor importancia que la separación sea por un día o para siempre. Llegan hasta ti rebosantes y te llenan hasta rebosar. No te piden nada, salvo que participes en su sobreabundante alegría de vivir. Nunca te preguntan de qué bando eres, porque el mundo en el que viven carece de bando. Se hacen invulnerable exponiéndose habitualmente a todos los peligros. Se vuelven más heroicos en la medida en que revelan sus debilidades"

A veces se gusta y se regodea, se abstrae y le da un plus a su escritura. Una maravilla.

Absolutely, for me, this is still the most definitive book about Greece - written in 1939, published 2 years later as the II war raged on. Henry Miller was known for writing racy books that were Not in public or school libraries during my youth, so I didn't know his work at all. Before I discovered his book, I'd already fallen in love with the country and then moved to the small island of Poros that captured my heart. Some years later, when I was reading and 'on the way with Miller' to my chosen island, my heartbeat was raised...and my fears...what would the brilliant author say?? He loved it! And for many of the same reasons I do. His chapter about this island is one of the most beautiful passages I have ever read, and I have quoted it, as a travel director, to thousands of American alumni. Although the islands and sites he visited have changed through the years, like people, they still have the same personalities. I'm only sorry he missed seeing 'Kimomene' while he was here - or I believe he would have stayed on Poros for the rest of his life too. If you've wanted to come to Greece, or live here, or travel here, The Colossus of Maroussi is a must read!

First part is wonderful but after that you realise the man is a colossal idiot. The joy of the holiday against the coming war is very good though, and Miller never quite uncharmed me in the way I thought he would

Embora não me sinta muito atraída pelas edições mainstream da obra de Henry Miller publicadas em Portugal (nunca me seduziu a leitura do Trópico de Câncer ou do Trópico de Capricórnio, assim como a trilogia Sexus, Plexus e Nexus, títulos de referência deste autor americano), foi através dos trabalhos, digamos, secundários, que optei por iniciar a abordagem à sua obra.

“Big Sur e as Laranjas de Hieronymus Bosch” transportou-me para a génese da Beat Generation donde viriam a despontar nomes como Jack Kerouac ou William S. Burroughs, entre outros, que ficaram célebres pela adoção de uma consciência underground que se tornaria fundamental para a compreensão do movimento literário americano dos anos cinquenta e sessenta.

“Dias de Paz em Clichy” interessou-me fundamentalmente por ter sido o primeiro livro de Miller escrito em Paris (sua cidade de adoção), assim como um dos seus primeiros trabalhos dentro do género da literatura erótica, género esse que o rotularia como “escritor maldito” já que as suas obras mais célebres e acima referenciadas foram censuradas no seu país natal, durante muitos anos, “devido ao seu conteúdo sexual explícito”. Também não me emocionou por aí além.

“O Colosso de Maroussi”, é completamente diferente de tudo o que lera, de tudo o que ouvira sobre o conjunto da obra de Miller. Não consiste numa “literatura de viagem”, pese embora o caráter descritivo da narrativa mas antes num memorável périplo de descobertas e experiências do ser, na paisagem ora maravilhosa, ora inóspita da Grécia pré segunda Guerra Mundial; configura, antes, um relato de uma viagem que nos transporta para uma dimensão de conhecimento interior do próprio autor, enformado por um sentido quase epifânico já termina a narrativa com a seguinte declaração: “Desse dia em diante, passei a dedicar a minha vida à recuperação da divindade do homem. Paz a todos os homens, é o que eu desejo, e uma vida mais copiosa”.

E será nesta temática da divindade do homem que devemos entender parte deste trabalho. A mitologia grega que sempre nos garantiu que os deuses foram criados à imagem e semelhança do homem, Miller contrapõe precisamente o contrário: “A impressão mais forte que me deixou a Grécia foi a de ser um mundo à medida do homem. A Grécia é o berço dos deuses … os deuses tinham proporções humanas : foram criados pelo espírito humano (…). Dizemos erradamente que os gregos humanizaram os deuses. É precisamente o contrário. Foram os deuses que humanizaram os gregos. Houve um momento em que se teve a sensação de apreender o verdadeiro significado da vida, um momento de expectativa em que pareceu estar em jogo o destino de toda uma raça humana”.

“O Colosso de Maroussi” considerado pela crítica e pelo próprio autor o melhor livro da sua bibliografia, não possui uma estrutura literária simples: embora esteja dividido em três grandes partes, possui uma narrativa elíptica o que, em determinadas alturas, torna a leitura cansativa. Mas é um livro curioso, carregado de humor e a felicidade que irradia do autor nas suas deambulações por Atenas, Cnossos, Hidra, Esparta, Delfos e por outras ilhas dos arquipélagos gregos, é fantasticamente, contagiante.