Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The only universal experiences are pain and death. Those of
us who are lucky experience a minimum of the former and put off the
latter as long as possible. Sadly, our chances of escaping pain and
evading death are not solely determined by the caprices of an
indifferent nature but are also subject to the folly and more
significantly the cruelty of our own verminous little species. At the
outside, the Marquis de Sade was so convinced of the universality of
cruelty that he made it a principle that cruelty was not only the
shortest route to pleasure, power, fortune, and fame, but itself and
inherently sensual and gratifying exercise. Though in our sunnier
moments we may doubt the wisdom of the Good Marquis' observations, the
dismal history of the past century alone -- an unparalleled
century of mass murder, global conflict, and exquisite torture that
would make a medieval inquisitor blush -- is enough to bolster
the arguments of even the most faint-hearted pessimist. The recent
folly in Iraq, followed by the embrace of torture, secret prisons, and
extraordinary rendition, while it may be a peccadillo compared to the
monstrous crimes of the mid-century past, nevertheless should quiet
any Pollyanna who would exempt us from the general disease of human
cruelty. So is there a reason, as Monte Python so memorably put it,
to "always look on the bright side of life."
Zorba the Greek is an extraordinarily life-affirming story. It
also has an rich appreciation for human folly, cruelty, and
narrow-mindedness. Amidst frigid aristocrats, mad monks, brutish
villagers, and vain adventurers, Zorba stands like a rock of conjoined
masculine power and compassion. A former soldier, he has had his
fill of killing. (An inveterate serial romantic, he has certainly
not lost his interest in women.) As a mine boss, he is first to
share the danger of the miners; as a man, he is the first to stand
against the village on behalf of a persecuted woman. Along with his
backer, a mine owner tormented by a bookish vision of Eastern
mysticism, Zorba cheerfully runs one enterprise after another into the
ground with great gusto and joie de vivre, literally extracting every
ounce of pleasure from wine, women and song, for he is a master of the
Greek instrument the Santuri and is enthralled by dance. Even as the
shadow of the First World War looms, Zorba is undaunted. Better than
his bookish companion or the cloddish villagers, Zorba understands not
only pain and death but life, pleasure, and love. For this, he towers
above the Lilliputians who surround him.