Read Online The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller - Free Book Online Page B

compressed, scintillating and revelatory. His native flexibility was responding to the cosmic laws of curvature and finitude. He had ceased going out in all directions: his lines were making the encircling movement of embrace. He had begun to ripen into the universal poet—by passionately rooting himself into the soil of his people. Wherever there is life to-day in Greek art it is based on this Antaean gesture, this passion which transmits itself from heart to feet, creating strong roots which transform the body into a tree of potent beauty. This cultural transmutation is also evidenced in a physical way by the vast work of reclamation which is going on throughout the country. The Turks, in their fervid desire to desolate Greece, converted the land into a desert and a graveyard; since their emancipation the Greeks have been struggling to reforest the land. The goat has now become the national enemy. He will be dislodged as the Turk was dislodged, in time. He is the symbol of poverty and helplessness. Trees, more trees, that is the cry. The tree brings water, fodder, cattle, produce; the tree brings shade, leisure, song, brings poets, painters, legislators, visionaries. Greece is now, bare and lean as a wolf though she be, the only Paradise in Europe. What a place it will be when it is restored to its pristine verdure exceeds the imagination of man to-day. Anything may happen when this focal spot blazes forth with new life. A revivified Greece can very conceivably alter the whole destiny of Europe. Greece does not need archaeologists—she needs arboriculturists. A verdant Greece may give hope to a world now eaten away by white-heart rot.
    My talks with Seferiades really began on the high verandah at Amaroussion when, taking me by the arm, he walked me back and forth in the gathering dusk. Every time I met him he came to me with his whole being, wrapping it around my arm with warmth and tenderness. If I visited him at his chambers it was the same thing: he would open all the doors and windows leading to his heart. Usually he would put on his hat and accompany me to my hotel; it was not just a polite gesture, it was an act of friendship, a demonstration of an enduring love. I shall remember Seferiades and all my Greek friends for this quality which is now so rare among men. I shall remember his sister Jeanne too, and other Greek women whom I met, because of their queenliness. It is a quality we scarcely ever meet with in the modern woman. Like the warm friendliness of the men this quality which all Greek women share to a greater or less degree is the counterpart, or shall I say the corresponding human virtue, which goes with the supernal light. One would have to be a toad, a snail, or a slug not to be affected by this radiance which emanates from the human heart as well as from the heavens. Wherever you go in Greece the people open up like flowers. Cynical-minded people will say that it is because Greece is a small country, because they are eager to have visitors, and so on. I don’t believe it. I have been in a few small countries which left quite the opposite impression upon me. And as I said once before, Greece is not a small country—it is impressively vast. No country I have visited has given me such a sense of grandeur. Size is not created by mileage always. In a way which it is beyond the comprehension of my fellow countrymen to grasp Greece is infinitely larger than the United States. Greece could swallow both the United States and Europe. Greece is a little like China or India. It is a world of illusion. And the Greek himself is everywhere, like the Chinaman again. What is Greek in him does not rub off with his ceaseless voyaging. He does not leave little particles of himself distributed all over the lot, as the American does, for example. When the Greek leaves a place he leaves a hole. The American leaves behind him a litter of junk—shoe laces, collar buttons, razor blades, petroleum tins, vaseline jars and so on.