Very uneven 2.5 stars.

What I can tell after finishing this book after unnecessarily long couple of months is that it is not a travel memoir about Greece per se, but rather a very personal opinion of a very special Henry Miller about his very unique experience in Greece.
While he does have some interesting thoughts on these pages, his others rambling paragraphs range from somewhat odd to straight up nonsense.

I guess I just didn’t vibe with the character after all.

Promised myself to try to get to 1/3 but quit at 1/4 after discovering one could skip 6 pages, not notice and that it made no difference. No plot, no characters, just incoherent babble.

Henry Miller was one of the names of literary giants to which I was introduced in the biography of George Orwell. Miller is best known for his novels "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn". This book was recommended by a friend who is still a friend as he has recommended other books which I have thoroughly enjoyed

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:

“The greatest single impression which Greece made upon me is that it is a man-sized world. Now it is true that France also conveys this impression, and yet there is a difference, a difference which is profound. Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. In France, as elsewhere in the Western world, this link between the human and the divine is broken. The skepticism and paralysis produced by this schism in the very nature of man provides the clue to the inevitable destruction of our present civilization. If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”

And then there's this, as he prepares to go home:

"The moment I stepped on the American boat which was to take me to New York I felt that I was in another world. I was among the go-getters again, among the restless souls who, not knowing how to live their own life, wish to change the world for everybody."

It's the eve of World War II. Dark forces are gathering across Europe, about to tear the continent apart in an unprecedented act of barbarity. Henry Miller travels to Greece, ostensibly to visit a Greek writer but really to reacquaint himself with the humanistic spirit he sees flowing from there--a life-affirming spirit that's the opposite of the impending death everywhere else. Part travelogue, part diatribe, this is a book that's not going to be for everyone. I can certainly understand why some readers will have no patience for passages such as: "It is not enough to overthrow governments, masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the hard-fought trenches we have dug ourselves into and come out into the open, surrender our arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals, classes, nations, peoples." It's bombastic, to be sure, but it's also a reaction to events, a pained cry of: why can't we just act differently? It's an attempt to imagine a different, better world, and I was sympathetic to it, just as I was sympathetic to Miller's imagining of the Greek spirit he wanted to capture, a spirit that was as much a creature of his own mind as anything else.

Lucrul cel mai frumos care mi s-a putut întâmpla într-o vacanță în Grecia.

Taking place just about when WW2 started, Henry miller takes a trip to Greece in overly troubling times. Paradoxically, it turns out to be the exact opposite - a great review of the country of Greece, its people and, most importantly, its down-to-earth demeanour that penetrates all, with the only desire that „our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world“. The plea is to slow down and deflate - now just as important than ever

De schrijver is lyrisch over Griekenland en de Grieken. Enkele fragmenten:
Blz 116,117: en daar ontdekte ik op zekere dag het monster met de zes tenen. Ze stond op haar blote voeten, tot aan de enkels in de modder, een bundel kleren te wassen. Ik kon niet ontkennen dat ze lelijk was, maar er zijn verschillende soorten lelijkheid en die van haar was van het soort dat aantrekt, in plaats van af te stoten. Om te beginnen was ze sterk, fors, levendig, een dier, met een menselijke ziel en onbetwistbaar sexueel begiftigd. Toen ze zich voorover bukte om haar broek uit te wringen, golfde en rimpelde de levenskracht van haar ledematen door de voddige en versleten rok, die haar gebronsde lichaam ontsloot. Haar ogen gloeiden als kolen.... haar lippen waren bloedrood en haar sterke regelmatige tanden waren zo wit als krijt. Haar dikke, zwarte haar hing over haar schouders in rijke, welige strengen, alsof het doortrokken was met olijfolie.....
118: haar glimlach ... was de glimlach van de onverzadelijke, voor wie duizend brandende kussen alleen maar een prikkeling zijn tot hernieuwde omhelzingen. .. ze is bijna het symbool van Griekenland zelf, deze niet te stillen begeerte naar schoonheid, hartstocht, liefde.
214: laat me tot hen, die denken, dat het Griekenland van heden niet belangrijk is zeggen, dat men geen groter vergissing kan begaan. Zowel heden ten dage als voorheen is en was Griekenland van het hoogste belang voor ieder, die zichzelf wil vinden.

4,4

Е, не бях чел подобен пътепис. Добре, само прилича на пътепис. Структурата е типичната за жанра, НО ... всъщност това е ... ода, възхвала, преклонение към света на поезията, баси ... нещо такова. При това тази книга, тази ода е посветена на конкретна личност и може спокойно да се казва "Георгиос Кацимбалис от Амарусион (Маруси)".
Мисля, че това е първата ми среща с Хенри Милър. Хареса ми. Обичам писателите, които рискуват да излязат от комфорта на съобразяването на всяка цена (по модерному влизащи в калъпа на "политкоректността") и да се изразяват откровено и ярко като истински жудожници. Да, рискуват да изглеждат на места твърде крайни и тесногръди, а категоричното им мнение по някои въпроси да ги принизява до боравещите твърде леко с общия знаменател.
Разбира се, че ме подразни на някои места, но възхвалата му по всичко гръцко я възприемам като преклонение към изначалното и дивото, неопитоменото - всичко онова, преди да бъде обездушено от алчността на съвремнния човек - консуматор. Стори ми се един одухотворен Чарлз Буковски, Буковски с вселен у него Уитман и Рембо, колкото абсурдно и нелепо да звучи това. Леко, пък и недотам леко, прекалява със сравненията и метафорите, но все пак това е ода. Набелязах си много цитати. Като цяло книгата впечатлява, а Милър ще се чете.

The good bits are very good indeed! Unfortunately, there's a lot one needs to gloss over to get to them. It's worth the read for those passages which convey the discovery of Greece and the experience of travel with absolute clarity.

So if I'm not mistaken, ChatGPT recommended The Colossus of Maorussi for me when I was asking about books to read before going to Greece, and as I had not read anything by Henry Miller, it sounded great, you know. And it was great. Also, for some reason I've been listening to Sun Kil Moon again lately, as he's going through his cancellation for various acts of what seems like rape. And as he gets more and more canceled, he gets more and more into Henry Miller. And so I guess that also intrigued me in that sense, you know. And I really enjoyed the book when it started out. I felt empathy, or I don't know, empathy's a word. What's that word? I felt that we shared something that not too many people share about being an American in another country, and just really fucking loving that country. And then getting so pissed off. Not pissed off, annoyed, or you know, whatever. When you have people from the country going, ah, but why are you here? Your country's beautiful. Your country's money. You can buy whatever you want, yeah, but people are unhappy. You have money. I have no money. I'm happy. And that constant confusion that people have, and then him coming and finding these people. You don't know how good you have it here. And then of course finding the people who, how great it is when you find the people who are happy with where they are. They do understand what a wonderful place they live in. And so in that way, I think the Greeks are very much like the Argentines. And I kind of got in, you know, that's kind of why I chose Greece. I've always chose southern European places to go because I believe in the southern European dominance about their warmth and humanity as opposed to France or England or Germany. So that was spectacular. And his, you know, just his, well, so then there's many things. First of all, the fact that it's on the eve of World War II, the eve when everything's about to change, you know, and he sees that and we see that. And this dream world is going to be destroyed, but at the same time, it's not. It's going to keep on living. It's gone through, you know. Even if they destroy everything, it's there. It's in the air or something. I guess leads to the next part is his trumped up poetic visions of, you know, seeing these places and being cured. You know, he mentioned that a neurotic goes into the light of a Delphi and is either completely destroyed and goes insane or is completely instantly healed. And so I got to say, you know, to the slightest degree, I had that hope in the back of my mind. And of course, no, I go there. Oh, yeah, it's a nice sunset. Isn't that nice? I'm still a neurotic mess. But, you know, he's a poet. They're allowed those indulges. And I liked when he would, you know, really go off on his poetic indulges, particularly the Louis Armstrong riff he goes on, which, you know, he talks about Louis Armstrong just being so such a fucking madman that he destroys this uptight French woman. And it interests me so much that I bought a vinyl of young Louis Armstrong and it still just sounds like old timey parlor music, which, you know, it's funny what time can do. But, you know, in that time, like those fucking, you know, JPEG Mafia, Danny Brown, just fucking blowing people's minds. And now it's just stuff you have in the background. I can't even pay attention to it. Let's continue.

um now i guess the thing that bothers bothered me is um i guess kind of like the over-romanticization of the greek people especially his friend castambolis whatever his name is um there's the kind of um what is it uh beautiful native thing like i i watched i also watched started tried to watch zorba the greek before i uh went to greece and i couldn't i turned it off as too much of a fucking clown show of you know these beautiful wild creatures in face of a british person and how they love life i mean it's kind of like a roberto benigni kind of thing and i love anthony quinn you know but uh i had to turn it off it's too silly and so miller does this also um and uh just making them kind of yeah beautiful savages uh and the other thing that really got on my nerves with miller is that i guess he's very gen x even though he was born in generations before gen x but in the fact that he's so okay first of all he's trying to be edgy all the time which is obnoxious um but also how he is so adamant about of how enlightened he is uh and uh you know someone so enlightened would not be so fucking adamant about the fact that they're enlightened like jesus stop fucking talking about how fucking uh the light affects you so much more than other people and how great you are for being uh brought to tears by stuff that you know the bestial people don't get it really really uh got on my nerves you know like he you know he mentions walt whitman and all that stuff it's like whitman could see the beauty in all these things but also had a beauty for uh the others around them who weren't as enlightened as him and so his uh his bitterness towards everyone else it doesn't mesh well with his enlightened stance and so that really kind of like got on my nerves quite a bit um as a matter of fact i just wrote a review about artists and models by crank tashland and about how you know that those artists you know that there were artists and they're just working a job i'm an artist this is my job but this is the new kind of artist where my art makes me so fucking special that i am just a fucking alien on this brutal planet and i can't belong here because i'm just so fucking genius and that uh it got on my nerves um but it was uh yeah i enjoyed me i read it you know before we left and then i had like uh an hour left and i read it you know while i was there and uh and it was funny and also about i was thinking that he part of reading this got me into more interested in reading about the minoans and how you know he must have been particularly affected by seeing the minoans because the discoveries came out right when about he was probably growing up as a kid and so it had this mythological uh feeling to it and so for me that did it affect me and add to my reverence at uh the site of kenosis and um i'm not gonna remember the other one right now but uh that like you know that this was something really special uh the idea of this matriarchal pacific peaceful and world traveling uh civilization that was there before the greeks uh there is this uh yeah that kind of awe that comes to you in uh your complete um minisculeness in the universe and time and all these things um there was another thing

That was it. Is that it's kind of silly, you know, it happens, it's kind of cliche that it happens with Miller and happens with Nietzsche and all this stuff, but when you see all these civilizations that existed before Christ and the amazing things that they did, it's hard to not get pissed off about Christianity coming and just destroying all these things which were far more interesting. You know, I got back into the Greek gods and I'm playing, you know, I'm showing them to Felix and all this stuff and how wonderful the mythology and all this stuff is and how, you know, how many different civilizations were and beliefs and gods and things that were and how we're stuck with this kind of mediocre one. And because I remember going to Italy and it's like, god damn, these are beautiful paintings, but I'm sick of this goddamn seven subjects, the Annunciation of the Christ, the Crucifixion of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ. Damn, give me something else that we can talk about here. And also, you know, it makes you realize how little time we're talking about. We talk about 2,000 years of Christ, which, I guess in the end, it's bastante, but the Minoans were there for 2,000 years, the Greeks were there for 1,000 years, you know. That we think that, you know, a way to step out of your thinking that this is, this is gonna last forever, that this is, you know, what everything has been culminating into. No, we're just one more cycle that will be torn down and then a new one will come up from its realms and our God will be consumed by another and transformed into a different one. Just like, you know, I was blown away by, I bought this little statue of Zeus for Felix. I'm like, that had never occurred to me before. Like, don't the Christians think this is quite weird that the Christian God is so exactly like Zeus? He's a giant guy with a white beard. It's the same thing. So, yeah, that was interesting.

"There is something colossal about any human figure when that individual becomes truly and thoroughly human." And then Miller describes what he mean by that, through Katsimbalis from Amaroussion in Athens who is the most human person he have ever met. "He spoke of little things and of great with equal reverence, he was never too busy to pause and dwell on the things which moved him." and so on. Miller is enthusiastic about being in Greece visiting sites in Crete, Peloponnese and Attica and it is refreshing to read about his enthusiasm. The pages are marked by his impressions and expressions and it is really joyful to be in this world.

I can't help but be biased. As an American who has traveled to Greece numerous times, Miller captured the eternal Greek spirit still present today. What amazed me the most was that Miller's personal experiences still resonate today regarding the juxtaposition of American culture vs Greek culture. Miller grew up poor in New York City, a capitalistic, lonely, work-hard, die-young, 1930s Great Depression. When he traveled to Greece, he'd shed light on the misconceptions about America to his Greek counterparts who emigrated or wished to emigrate to America. But many were in disbelief hearing his perspective. Roads were not paved with gold as the immigrants once perceived about America.

Rather, he embraced the Greek ethos of a life lived fully. I even loved how he'd compare it France sometimes too. With the amazing real-life Zorba the Greek, poet, the Colossus himself, George Katsimbalis, came to life by Miller's writing. Katsimbalis changed Miller's outlook on life and left an indefinite mark on him forever. Miller knew this book would mean something post-death. There was only one thing I didn't expect in this book and that was Miller didn't have any accounts on his time spent in Corfu. I was expecting a story similar to the episode I saw on the show "the Durrells". Though he did have a chapter with Lawrence Durrell when they traveled to the Peloponnesos. And even though some reviewers have stated Miller was disorganized chronologically and had long-winded rants in his writing I took this book like it was a personal diary. And to me, that's why Miller's story felt so genuine.