The Colossus of Maroussi

I've been a fan of Miller's work for decades, mostly because of his big hits, Tropic of Cancer, Capricorn, and The Rosy Crucifixion. Somehow it took a while for me to get to this one, written in 1941.It proceeds in his familiar manner; encountering new and old friends in the myth-drenched land of Greece, exulting in the landscape, being annoyed at idiot tourists, and occasionally lapsing into broad, Whitman-esque sermons.But unlike his big hits there's NOTHING remotely sex-obsessed or gleefully provocative about it -- and the writing is better! He has more command over his rants and riffs. The ending sermon hit me especially hard. He combines his individual spiritual ecstasy with a sincere and passionate lament for humanity as it is poised to descend into unimaginable horror.I'm not giving anything away by telling you this, because with Miller it's all about the ride, the writing, and that unique, free spirit voice of his extrapolating from our pagan past and shouting forward unto the ages.I learned afterward that Miller regards this as his finest work. Boy, do I agree!

In 1939 Henry Miller accepted the invitation of his friend Lawrence Durrell to visit Greece and the island of Corfu. Europe was sinking into World War II. Miller, then 46, had ended one cycle of his artistic life, having written the novels for which he was famous, Tropics of Cancer, Capricorn and Black Spring; now he came to celebrate the Greek experience, with a Whitmanesque openness to this culture andlandscape soaked in its mythic splendour: “The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being. I came home to the world.…" Miller becomes pantheistically resurrected in a non-sexual way; it’s also pre-Christian, another of his betes-noires, just like American civilization, England and technology.“Mechanical devices have nothing to do with man’s real nature-they are merely traps which nature has baited for him”. He loves boats, Katsimbalis almost drowns Miller in a boat, but Miller doesn't mind, because Katsimbalis shows him the Greek earth, the stoic Greek carelessness in the face of death and gives him Greek retsina and cognac to drink while intoning the glories of Greek literature and history.His central anchor in this experience is Katsimbalis,the Falstaffian poet and storyteller.He practically worships this man and reveres him like a god. Katsimbalis tells his group of friends long, rambling stories that have no end, and endless variations. But although Greece is the object and Katsimbalis the subject, Miller’s real story is about himself, his solipsistic reveries that help him escape time and place, and rap to hisown heart’s content. You learn very little in terms of knowledge of Greece or it’s great monuments,sites and archaeology. This is a new kind of travel writing, where he makes rapturous pronouncements about the divinity in man and the possibility of an inner renaissance. We visit Mycenae, Knossos ,Delphi, taking in the rapture of Thebes and Eleufsis. He treats these places as milestones of the Greek spirit.Greece and the Greeks are of the essence,anything that betrays this, whether economic Greeks returned from America with it gospel of progress, money, ambition, or Greeks who became Americans(like the surgeon). Only the poor ones have his sympathy. He berates a French woman, wife to a Greek shop-keeper, about her “civilized” values, who hates Crete.Miller is a guide of the spirit of men beaten down by the coming war, the fear,the repression, the rationalization, he lets rip with incantatory odes to the blue sky or the antaean earth. His anecdotes are gripping, he interactions with the Greeks are human, his love of them is profound. I especially liked it when he brings his love of people together with his love of place, in his trip to Phaestos, where the Minoans worshipped the female divinity.He gives himself up to a Lawrentian rapture,where he becomes resurrected along with the wider world ,”what great happiness lies in store for all of us.” He and Alexandros share a meal and talked “in the deaf and dumb language of the heart”. He becomes a joyous mystic in an Emersonian trance. “ The present way of life,which is America’s, is doomed as surely as that of Europe. No nation on earth can possibly give birth to a new order of life until a world view is established”. Miller becomes our companion as the skies darken and war lours over the horizon. He proffers Jeremiads to the coming American century, is a shaman divining the future of man. This book is his masterpiece wherein he gave his all. He captures the spirit of an earlier, happier age.

A must!