There are some
books which are unputdownable, yet they compel you to put them down in order to
contemplate. Every page is a bewitching
invitation to turn over to the next.
Every line captures your fancy and you don’t want to leave the
intoxication. Yet your mind urges you to
stop and take in a line here or a metaphor there more deeply. One of the many books which did that to me
(and will do it again when I read it again) is Zorba the Greek by Nikos
Kazantzakis.
There is very
little by way of plot in this novel.
There is the first person narrator who would rather choose a book on
love than a beautiful woman who offers the experience of love to him. Then there’s Zorba, the protagonist, who is a
sixty year-old man with boundless passion for life. He thinks that a woman sleeping alone is “a
shame on all men.” The intensity of Zorba’s
passion for life can seduce women, notwithstanding his age. He is a lover, fighter, adventurer, musician,
cook, miner, and enlightener.
Happiness, for
him, is as simple as a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, or the sound of the
sea. Probe him a little and he would
define happiness as “to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had
every ambition. To live far from men,
not to need them and yet to love them.
To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right
and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life ... has become a fairy
tale.”
Fairy tale,
yes. In your heart. In actuality, life is trouble. Zorba knows that too well. To live is to embrace trouble. Seeking
enlightenment from books as the narrator is doing is to go on knocking on a
deaf man’s door forever. Ah, but follies
are not just the bookworm’s prerogative.
Every worthwhile man has his folly.
The greatest folly is not to have one.
Without that folly, which Zorba calls madness on another occasion, a
person never dares to cut the rope and be free.
Zorba grows
into your consciousness. Zorba becomes
the consciousness. That’s why the book
is unputdownable. But you have to put it
down. Again and again. Zorba will make you do that.
PS.
Written for Indispire Edition 157: #irresistiblebook
I have heard about the book and it has been on my to read list. It is time i picked up the book and went through it. Thanks for sharing about such an interesting book.
ReplyDeleteI think Zorba has become an icon of epicurean philosophy.
Osho Rajneesh celebrated Zorba the Buddha. Rajneesh was Epicurean too. But there's something beyond epicureanism in Zorba, a touch of profanely profound mysticism?
DeleteThe book seems to be interesting. Zorba's way of looking at life is very inspiring and makes me grab my book as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteGo ahead, you won't regret.
Delete