Z O R B A T H E GREEK

Type of work: Novel

Author: Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)
Time: The present
Locale: Crete
First published: 1952
Principal characters:
ZoRBA, a Greek miner, a man of great physical vigor and lusty appetites
THE NARRATOR, called "Boss," Zorba's employer and friend
MADAME HORTENSE, an aging courtesan
T H E VILLAGE WIDOW

STAVBIDAKI, the Narrator's close friend

The story of Zorba the Greek is that of
life against death. The central figure is
Zorba, a miner of about sixty, who refuses to let age and approaching death
keep him from the celebration of being
alive. Zorba is employed by a man who is
an intellectual in spite of himself, a man
bound to the contemplation of books and
landscapes, and cut off from the traditional snares of wine, women, and song.
Zorha the Greek is about the conversion
of this man; it is the story of the passion
for life raised by the old man in the spirit
of the younger.
These are the circumstances of the
narrative: the Narrator, whose entire life
has been bound up with the rather sterile
worship of ideas, decides to go into business on the island of Crete. To this purpose he rents a strip of land, assembles
equipment, and forms a mining company. To supervise the miners he brings
with him Zorba, a man of immense physical presence and corresponding physical
appetites. The Narrator is reserved, intellectual, introspective; Zorba is barbarous
and noisy, a lover of wine and chaser of
women. Their encounters and misadventures on the island of Crete are the substance of this book.
Upon their arrival on Crete the two
find an aging woman cast ashore by
whatever fates determine the careers of
broken-down courtesans. She is a woman
who has known a great deal of pleasure,
even something of love. In her youth she
has been the mistress of admirals and
princes, and a good many others besides.

She is about to invest her old age in the

repentant contemplation of her past when
Zorba arrives to bring her back to life.
He proves that there is a good deal of
life left in both of them, even though
they are at the end of their colorful
spans. Zorba and Madame Hortense set
up a menage a deux, and the Narrator,
to whose age such attachments are more
natural, becomes the amused witness of
their late passion.
As for the Narrator himself, he is
deeply stirred, but not by love. The idea
of love has the power to move him, as
does the sight of birds, the memory of
lines of Dante, the thought of his platonic attachment to a departed friend.
But he shrinks from real, physical attachment; it is only with an effort that he
even brings himself to understand why
Zorba delights in eating and drinking too
much. He sings the praises of Dante on
the island of Crete, surely a case of doing
the right thing at the wrong time. For the
island of Crete is a fertile island, and its ancient history and mythology lose nothing
in the symbolic relation of Kazantzakis.
The island is a place where vines grow in
abundance. Wine flows easily; it is likened to blood, and its drinking to a feast
of cannibals. The island is a place of
olives and grain, growing lushly out of
the earth under hot Libyan winds. And it
is pre-eminently a place of passion, whose
rulers are the young women of its countryside. All of these the Narrator tries
desperately to avoid, until he undergoes
a ceremonial baptism in all of them.

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Zoiba the Gieek / KAZANTZAKIS

He is first awakened to life by the

musings of Madame Hortense, who reveals in her immoral but fascinating stories the motives that make men both sinful and magnificent. Her rhapsodies over
her past lovers seem at first merely amusingshe goes on forever over their curly,
silky, dark, perfumed beardsuntil the
Narrator becomes aware of the power of
life behind her experiences. He realizes
that what has kept her alive, indeed what
has redeemed the nature of her life, is
her capacity to take the deepest pleasure
from the memory of love. And he sees
this same capacity operating in Zorba,
who refuses to let his age stand between
him and life. It is the great failing of
Zorba, and perhaps his strength, as he
admits, that the older he grows the less
he is able to control his desires.
Gradually the story of Zorba's life
comes out. He has been married, and he
has been free. He has been at times a father and a lover, a man of property and a
beggar. Yet he is perhaps by definition a
man who is completely free. When he
likes something he stays with it; when he
grows tired he moves on to some other
experience. He does so not out of a decadent sense of pleasure but because he is
convinced that this is the way of all living things. Zorba, in short, is an animal,
and he is astute enough to recognize this
fact, and not to wish he were something
else. He lives without ordinary morals
because that is his nature. Gradually, the
Narrator comes to realize that this simple
and primitive existence holds the key to a
real truth, for whenever he attempts to
argue with Zorba, the issue is reduced to
realities, and he loses. Hunger, Zorba
shows him, can only be appeased by eating, even if the food belongs to someone
else. Women, Zorba explains, can only
be understood by their use and their desires, even if they are married to someone
else. The cardinal sin, in fact, is to disappoint a woman who is ready for love, for
this denies the whole purpose of her creation.
This theology may be too primitive for

the mainland, but it is appropriate to

Crete. The gods have abandoned Crete,
and their representatives, the monks in
the monastery nearby, encourage no faith
in their beliefs. When the Narrator approaches them to confront the earthiness
of Zorba with disinterested wisdom, he
finds that they too have their fierce appetites, their depravities, and their moral
ugliness. Zorba, he begins to see, is perhaps more true to the forces that really
rule this savage island. They are the
forces of fertilityand Zorba is one of
the last of the Greek demigods of nature.
He is a passionate dancer and player on
the stringed santuri, and when he finds
language inexpressive, which is often, he
simply leaps to his feet and dances until
he reaches a state of frenzy and exhaustion. In all of his excesses he is like some
natural force. Kazantzakis evidently is
comparing him to magnificent nature
gods of Greek mythology. That he is old
and near death is significant, for the author intimates that he is the last of such
men.
In this long and lyrical book there is
not a great deal of action to accompany
the reflections of the Narrator. What
there is, however, makes up in intensity
what it lacks in volume. T h e Narrator
finally succumbs to the nature-worship of
Zorba and, however reluctantly, arrives at
the bed of the woman for whom he is
destined. Crete, however, is not the kind
of place to let matters end in so rational a
way. In a terrible scene ushered in by a
celebration and dancing, she is cornered
by an angry mob of jealous women. They
incite their men to attack her. In the
presence of Zorba and his friend she is
pinioned in a re-enactment of some ancient sacrifice and beheaded. With a special irony her head is thrown onto the
steps of the church.
It is the advent of death that brings
another kind of enlightenment to the
Narrator. He realizes that he is in the
midst of a kind of life that is nowhere
described in books, not even in Dante.
He has accepted the orgiastic celebration

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Zoiba the Greek / KAZANTZAKIS

of life, and now this ritual murder brings

him to understand the onmipresence of
death. It is this which completes his vision of things. Yet Zorba the Greek does
not end here, for it is in the nature of
Zorba scarcely to end at all. He leaves
the island and, as the Narrator later
hears, travels through the countries of the
Balkans, leaving behind him a decided
swath of empty bottles and rejoicing
women. Finally, in his seventies, he marries a magnificent young Serbian woman,
fathers her child, and dies even while

protesting his sickness.

Throughout Zorha the Greek, Kazantzakis concentrates on the language of
abundance. He describes the things of
the earthwine, oil, the bodies of beautiful womenwith a passion and with an
accuracy that is all too often lacking in
the denatured realism of the present. He
deals with ideas, but only as they become
concrete and specific in action. His accomplishment is to have made Zorha the
Greek a fitting structure for the symbolic
weight it carries.

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ZULEIKA DOBSON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)
Type of plot: Romantic satire
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Oxford, England
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
ZuLBiKA DoBSON, a charmet
THE WARDEN OF JUDAS COLLEGE, her grandfather

THE DUKE OF DORSET, an Edwardian dandy

KATIE BATCH, daughter of his landlady

NoAKs, a poor student

Critique:
Sir Max Beerbohm, caricaturist, critic,
novelist, and essayist of distinction, is
one of the great wits of the century, a
writer and artist whose cleverness is balanced by moral insight and whose irony
is matched by gentle humor. Zuleika
Dohson is his only novel. On one level
it is a burlesque of Oxford undergraduate
life, on another a quiet thrust at affectation and absurdity wherever they may be
found. Set in the university town of Oxford during the reign of King Edward
VII, the novel leads the reader a fantastic
chase as he follows Zuleika's romantic
achievements among impressionable undergraduates. Perhaps Beerbohm's main
purpose was to ridicule sentimental novels of the Edwardian period. H e does
much more. T h e characters, especially
the figure of Zuleika herself, are pointed,
memorable, and fascinating. The plot is
a wonder of extravagant imagination, the
ending unexpected but appropriate. This
novel has a place of its own in twentiethcentury fiction.
The Story:
Left an orphan, lovely Zuleika Dobson became a governess. Because the older brothers of her charges always fell in
love with her, however, she lost one position after another. She moved unhappily
from job to job until one enamored elder
son taught her a few simple tricks of
magic. Then she became an entertainer
at children's parties, where she interested

older men if not the children.

Before long she received an offer to
go on the stage, and during a long European tour she crowned success with success. Paris raved over her. Grand dukes
asked her to marry them. T h e pope issued a bull against her. A Russian prince
had her magic devices, such as the demon
egg cup, cast in pure gold. Later, traveling in America, she was pursued by a
fabulous millionaire. But Zuleika ignored
her admirers. She wanted only to find a
man impervious to her charms; with him
she felt she could be happy.
Between theatrical seasons she went to
visit her grandfather, the Warden of
Judas College at Oxford. As usual, every
man who saw Zuleika fell in love with
her. One night her uncle had at dinner
the wealthy, proud, handsome Duke of
Dorset. Although the duke fell in love
at first sight, his pride and good manners
kept him from showing his true feehngs.
During dinner he was only casually attentive and on one occasion actually rude.
Zuleika was captivated. Thinking him a
man who did not love her, she herself
fell in love for the first time in her life.
Later that evening the duke discovered
that his studs had turned the same colors as Zuleika's earrings, one black, the
other pink. Abashed, the duke fled.
The next morning, paying a visit to
his rooms, Zuleika was let in by his landlady's daughter Kate. When the duke,
unable to restrain himself, confessed his

Z U L E I K A D O B S O N by Max Beerbohm. By permission of the publishers, Dodd, Mead Ic Co., Inc. Copyright,
I 9 I 1 , by Dodd, Mead S Co., Inc. Renewed, 1938, by Max Beerbohm.

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