Word: zorba
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Dates: during 1953-1953
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...Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. A man of action confronts life with one of the most affirmative philosophies in recent fiction; a modern Greek masterpiece by last year's runner-up for the Nobel Prize (TIME, April...
...kicks a stone "downhill, Zorba turns to the scholar and asks: "Boss, did you see that? On slopes, stones come to life again." Sometimes he is a mythmaker: "My grandfather had a white beard and used to wear rubber shoes. One day he leapt from the roof of our house, but when his feet touched the ground he bounced like a ball and bounced up higher than the house, and went higher and higher still till he disappeared in the clouds. That is how my grandfather died...
...Night Is a Woman." When Zorba is too full for words, he dances in wild leaps like a trout or unslings his santuri (a kind of dulcimer) and plucks from it the haunting laments of the Levant. Zorba is a great unbeliever in everything but the abundant life. Pockmarked with bullet scars, he has no faith in war. Full of reverent awe be fore the universe, he cannot stomach organized religion or priests ("[They] even fleece their fleas"). Child of instinct, Zorba defines the hours as if he had created them. "Daytime is a man," he explains, "night...
...many a night Zorba heads for the home of Bouboulina, a blowzy, scow-bottomed "old siren," once the darling of admirals and of fleets. When his boss refuses to make love to a young, appetizing widow, Zorba warns him: "Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one." The boss takes Zorba's advice to heart and the young widow to bed. Meanwhile, Zorba never misses a chance to ask such puzzlers as: What is a woman? Who made the stars? Why do men die? The boss's widow is murdered...
...Zorba is too full of juice to die onstage. Author Kazantzakis tries to kill him off in a letter. His last words: "I've done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough . . . Good night!" But Author Kazantzakis reckons without his own talent. He has created Zorba, but he cannot kill...