It’s a pity nobody reads Miller, because it’s all there: the damaged, wine-fired poet playing with utopian blueprints, constructing fabulous cities on overscribbled sheets of paper. De Quincey nightmares that fade in the cold Athenian dawn. Dreams that know they are dreams. All too soon the Germans would arrive and the craziest (and most frustrated) architect of them all, Adolf Hitler, would salute the proud ruins.

Miller, Henry (18 May 2010). The Colossus of Maroussi (Seconded.). New Directions Publishing. p.210. ISBN 978-0-8112-1857-3 . Retrieved 31 May 2013.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. Yet, the protagonist in the book is the Colossus Katsimbalis although some critics say that the book is a self-portrait of Miller himself on a journey of a lifetime in an unforgettable place.

Greece had done something for me which New York, nay, even America itself, could never destroy. Greece has made me free and whole…To those who think that Greece to-day is of no importance[,] let me say that no greater error could be committed.Hayatımda ilk kez mutlu olmanın bütün farkındalığıyla mutluydum.Sadece mutlu olmak iyidir, mutlu olduğunu bilmekse daha iyidir; fakat mutlu olduğunu anlamak, bunun neden ve nasıl hangi olayların koşulların bir araya gelmesi sonucunda gerçekleştiğini bilmek ve yine mutlu olmak, varlığında bir bilincinde mutluluk duymak- işte bu mutluluktan öte, saadettir.” 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. 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.

A fertile setting for writers in need of inspiration, Hydra’s bohemian artistic community in the ’60s provided fodder for the literary wizards who’d adopted the island as their muse. From George Johnston’s barely-disguised biographies to Henry Miller’s transcendental ramblings, Daniel Klein’s epicurean musings and Charmian Clift’s poetic writing, all beautifully brought together in Polly Samson’s latest literary offering, Hydra plays protagonist and muse. The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller 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. And I wanted to like it. Miller was close friends with Lawrence Durrell, who I know well as "Larry" from his younger brother Gerald's hilarious books about his childhood running wild in Corfu. My desire to recapture a bit of that magic was dashed over and over as Miller drones on about Agamemnon or whatever the hell. On the content side, he outright orientalizes Greece conflating modern poverty with mythological romance in his ham-fisted attempt to indict America for all sorts of modern ills. And then there's the misogyny: "... I was impressed by the absence of those glaring defects which make even the most beautiful American or English woman glaringly ugly. The Greek woman even when she is cultured, is first and foremost a woman. She sheds a distinct fragrance; she warms and thrills you." UGH.Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi was tinder for the blaze to come. I had found a dog-eared copy and, knowing nothing of the man or his reputation, devoured it. Written in 1939 as all Europe prepared for inevitable war, it was superficially a travelogue and a character study of the great Greek poet George Katsimbalis. In fact it was a celebration of friendship, spirit and life – all that seemed authentic and valuable and which was on the point of being destroyed. I would set out in the morning and look for new coves and inlets in which to swim. There was never a soul about. I was like Robinson Crusoe on the island of Tobago. For hours at a stretch I would lie in the sun doing nothing, thinking of nothing. To keep the mind, empty is a feat, a very healthful feat too. To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven't the faintest idea what it's about or why people should enjoy killing one another; you look at a place like Albania—it was constantly staring me in the eyes—and you say to yourself, yesterday it was Greek, today it's Italian, tomorrow it may be German or Japanese, and you let it be anything it chooses to be. When you're right with yourself it doesn't matter what flag is flying over your head or who owns what or whether you speak English or Monongahela. The absence of newspapers, the absence of news about what men are doing in different parts of the world to make life more livable or unlivable is the greatest single boon. If we could just eliminate newspapers a great advance would be made, I am sure of it. Newspapers engender lies, hatred, greed, envy, suspicion, fear, malice. We don't need the truth as it is dished up to us in the daily papers. We need peace and solitude and idleness. If we could all go on strike and honestly disavow all interest in what our neighbor is doing we might get a new lease of life. We might learn to do without telephones and radios and newspapers, without machines of any kind, without factories, without mills, without mines, without explosives, without battleships, without politicians, without lawyers, without canned goods, without gadgets, without razor blades -even or cellophane or cigarettes or money. This is a pipe dream, I know. People only go on strike for better working conditions, better wages, better opportunities to become something other than they are.“

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. 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. He underscores this view of us, as animals caught in a steel maze of our own making, by his frequent metaphoric mixing of nature's fecundity and manmade tawdriness, as when he describes the approach to Delphi: Could you ask for a more vivid and interesting description of a person? What more could you want to know about Katsimbalis?Miller drew his Colossus from events that occurred and landscapes he encountered while living for nine months in Greece. His portrayal of poet Katsimbalis and the country is tempered by the outbreak of the Second World War, which forced him to leave for the United States in December 1939. [2] Miller wrote the book in New York, and it reflects his resentment at having to return to America, as well as his feeling of isolation there. [2] Content [ edit ] a b The Colossus of Maroussi By Henry Miller, Introduction by Will Self, Ian S. MacNiven, pp.10-11. 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?”