talking of cities, of how he had gotten a mania for Haussmannising the big cities of the world. He would take the map of London, say, or Constantinople, and after the most painstaking study would draw up a new plan of the city, to suit himself … Naturally a great many monuments had to be torn down and new statues, by unheard-of men, erected in their place. While working on Constantinople, for example, he would be seized by a desire to alter Shanghai … It was confusing, to say the least. Having reconstructed one city he would go on to another and then another. There was no let up to it. The walls were papered with the plans for new cities … It was a kind of megalomania, he thought, a sort of glorified constructivism which was a pathologic hangover from his Peloponnesian heritage. Some critics call "The Colossus of Maroussi"--Henry Miller`s account of his trip to Greece on the eve of World War II--the greatest travel book ever. But, like all great travel books, it's much more than mere depiction of beautiful landscapes, missed connections, bad weather, and surly waiters--though Miller recounts those as well. Rather, the book stands as a compelling paean to the Greek spirit, to liberty, and to life--as well as a barbaric yawp prefiguring the coming cataclysm.

No, this is not your grandmother's travel writing, with its propriety, politeness, and "realistic" depictions, but word-pictures of an emotional landscape. That's the essence Miller strives to show: his subjective, experiential, inner reality. The subject here is Henry Miller, and what matters most is how these objects--the world--affect him.On an idyllic Greek island, the garden of sixties icon Leonard Cohen inspires a poet to question and ultimately celebrate the meaning of his own life. English poet Roger Green left the safety of God, country, and whiskey to immerse himself in an austere and sober life on the Greek Island of Hydra. But when Green discovered that his terrace overlooked the garden of sixties balladeer Leonard Cohen, he became obsessed with Cohen’s songs, wives, and banana tree. Hydra starts with a poem the author wrote and recited for his fifty-seventh birthday (borrowing the meter of Cohen’s “Suzanne,” and ripe with references to the song), with Cohen’s ex-partner Suzanne, who may or may not be the subject of Cohen’s song, in the audience. By turns playful and philosophic, Green’s unconventional memoir tells the story of his journey down the rabbit hole of obsession, as he confronts the meaning of poetry, history, and his own life. Beginning as a poetic meditation upon Leonard Cohen’s bananas, Green’s bardic pilgrimage takes the reader on various twists and turns until, at last, the poet accepts the joy of accepting his fate. A great book, made greater by my travels. Athens is one of my new favourite European cities. Efcharistó Miller. I'll probably write some more stuff here once the holiday has brewed a little longer.

After his life-changing journey to Greece, Miller returned to the United States. The Colossus of Maroussi was published in 1941. It was his third book and his favorite. The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being.” Miller attributes to his friends and their work many characteristics that he considers quintessentially Greek. Katsimbalis, the “Colossus” of the title, is passionate, a bon vivant with a strong sense of the tragic. As he talks “unhurried, unruffled, inexhaustible and inextinguishable”, he grows out of his human proportions, becoming a Colossus. Ghikas is a “seeker after light and truth”. Seferis is, according to Miller, the man who has caught and embedded in his work “the spirit of eternality which is everywhere in Greece”. Seferis’ passion for his country is, for Miller, a special and thrilling peculiarity of the intellectual Greek who has lived abroad. We followed the blue-collar dogs to the Temple of Olympian Zeus and the National Gardens. Inspired by what I had seen, the casts of the missing Parthenon marbles, I felt the strength of the argument for their return. The experience of the actual Acropolis, windswept, expensive, hustled by tour gangs, is grim: far better to stroll the floors of the museum, to take coffee in a room with a view. Police cars screech around the tight curves of the Acropolis ascent, and the peddlers, Asians with cheap guidebooks and concertinas of photographs, scatter into the bushes to regroup in time for the next coach. Through Durrell, he met and befriended some of the most emblematic representatives of the group of poets, artists and intellectuals that became known as the Generation of the ’30s. It is in Athens, a city “still in the throes of birth”, against the “light and splendor of the Attic landscape”, that Miller makes the acquaintance of intellectual George Katsimbalis, the 1963 Nobel Prize winner George Seferis and of painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas. The war was on, but forgotten in the company of those men. The trips and the evenings shared among them in tavernas, between intellectual conversations, fine food and lots of retsina, render The Colossus a book on friendship.Yes," I said, "a very strange country," and I thought to myself that it was wonderful not to be there any more and God willing I'd never return to it. On the eve of Clean Straw for Nothing’s publication, Clift overdosed on barbiatuates in Sydney. In a posthumously-published essay, My Husband George, Clift wrote: “I do believe that novelists must be free to write what they like, in any way they liked to write it, and after all who but myself had urged and nagged him into it?” Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-12-19 21:56:40 Boxid IA175401 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor

One of those travel books that is as much about the traveler as the country traveled to. It's a paean (and there's no other word for it) to Greece on the part of Henry Miller, better known for his "Tropic" books even though he considered this one his best. Maybe that's because his personality and opinions play such a large role. He can be cynical and no-nonsense, for sure, and favors simplicity and genuineness over, um, all things American. Other countries don't stand up to Greece's near-perfection, either. This quote, near the end, about sums it up: The Canadian critic Northrop Frye once said that the "story of the loss and regaining of identity...is the framework of all literature." That certainly applies well to travel literature, where the journey often occurs within the narrator as well as over the Earth, and in particular to The Colossus of Maroussi. At its core lies Miller's spiritual transformation through welcomed encounters with warm-hearted, generous, high-spirited Greeks, particularly the "colossus" Katsimbalis.Hoffmann, Andy (2007). "On The Colossus of Maroussi: A Meditation on the End of War" (PDF). Salt Flats Annual. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 14 August 2021. Marosi’nin Devi, Miller’ın arkadaşı Katsimbalis için yazdığı kitabı, Yunanistan’a seyahati, benliğini genişlettiği deneyimleri... Bu kitapla Yunanistan’ı bir uçtan bir uca gezmeye hazır olun. Genel anlamıyla başarılı bir seyahatname, bir serüven kitabı. Son on sayfası ise muhteşem, okurunu fazlasıyla yükselten bir bitişi var kitabın. The lawyer pulls out his wallet, extracts five Benjamins and slaps them on the counter. "Five hundred dollars doesn't begin to pay for my contempt of this court," he responds. Like most of Miller's writing, from the joyous novel "Tropic of Cancer" to his trenchant essays, this book succeeds thanks to his freewheeling iconoclasm, his divine madness, and his inimitable language: