The Reader Travels

My fifth trip for the The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge took me to the island of Crete, one of the many treasures of Greece. Since Zorba the Greek was written before the tourist industry started booming in Crete, Nikos Kazantzakis gives us an unspoiled look at the land and the culture. We see beautiful blue waters, birds and carob trees. We take a trip up into the forested mountains to a burned out monastery, along the coast to a convent and into some ruins left by the ancient inhabitants of the land.

Zorba the Greek is at once a celebration of and an apology for the misogyny that had its roots in ancient Greece and gained a new flavor with the transition to Christianity. I never read a book that had more to say about how wretched and disgusting women are. Zorba who claims to love women can’t say enough about how evil, and at the same time pathetic, they are. He takes pity on them.

We see all of this feminine vileness as a contrast to the beauty of the Platonic ideal of two men, one older, one younger, sharing a higher love with one another than could ever be achieved with a woman. Zorba the Greek explores the history of Greece, from the ancient religion to the philosophies of Plato to the Greek Orthodox faith to the politics of nationalism.

The book is thin on plot but strong on characterization. It seems as though nothing really happens until the last four chapters of the book, and then it’s over, back to the philosophical meanderings of the narrator.

On the other hand, the vivid characterization of Zorba makes him a perfect candidate for both stage and screen. He is Zeus and Dionysus and Eros, his life a celebration of women and wine and song. He is to be immortalized.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Continental Europe, competetive reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.