The Colossus of Maroussi
by Henry Miller
The Gods Are Dead, Long Live the Gods
A review by Jill Owens
Henry Miller is one of those authors that I'd just never gotten around to reading
-- and, at this point in my life, thought I probably never would, as he certainly
wasn't high up on my list of overlooked classic authors. In my experience, Henry
Miller fans were all too often also Bukowski and Kerouac fans, which is often
a signal that, to put it mildly, our tastes don't overlap much. But last week,
I was talking about Greece with a friend who recommended Miller's The Colossus
of Maroussi as one of the best books set in Greece that he'd ever read. And
as it turns out, I agree.
The Colossus of Maroussi is enchanting -- and so, by extension, is Henry
Miller, as the book's exuberant, irrepressible protagonist. The book is a love
letter to Greece, both a travelogue and a character study; strangely enough,
one of the most refreshing things about it is its unadulterated praise. (Reading
mostly new fiction and nonfiction, it seems a long time since I've read a hymn
so untempered by cynicism or even the hint of objectivity.) After living in
Paris for several years, Greece seemed to Miller a place where he felt the most
intensely alive, peaceful, and balanced -- fully human. As he describes it,
"Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence
still makes itself felt."
In this mood, Miller is an enthusiastic, likable writer. He's the kind of character
you'd be happy to stay up with all night, drinking ouzo and debating whether
or not to take a swim. His prose is joyous, at times bursting its seams, and
he has a gift for extended metaphor (his musings on the planet Saturn alone,
for example, are three pages of tumbling, rich associations), but also, unusually
for a writer of this style, quite precise. I had to stop and look up words occasionally
(examples include "carrefour" and "corybantic"), and am
happier for knowing them. And though he veers into hyperbole frequently (which
is part of the pleasure), his sense of pacing is exact; having a rather short
attention span himself, Miller's philosophical monologues are interspersed with
character, action, and drama -- sometimes as lively as a life-threatening boat
ride in a spine-tingling storm.
Miller crawled all over Greece -- literally, at times -- uncovering and reveling
in its secrets. From Knossos to Delphi, Athens to Thebes, his descriptions are
imbued with both immediacy and historical context (even if the historical context
is mythic rather than actual). He sees the past in the present and extends both
to the future, creating a luscious, continuous whole. World War II is beginning,
and beginning to encroach, and the contrast between the physical and symbolic
light of Greece and the darkness and destruction of the war remains a tension
throughout The Colossus. Miller defines peace not as an absence of war
but as a dynamic, conscious surrender of conquest, and his meditations on these
and other archetypal subjects ring true and relevant today.
The "Colossus," in the title, refers to Katsimbalis, Miller's outsized
Greek friend who was a master of conversation, observation, and hedonistic pleasure.
His portraits of Katsimbalis and other characters -- poets, bureaucrats, and
shepherds -- are superb, and the book is worth reading for those alone. And
if you're at all interested in Greece, in language, or in an intelligently rendered
ecstatic experience, you should certainly not, as I almost did, let The Colossus
of Maroussi slip under your radar.
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