...nwood...

On the advise of Erica Jong (The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry
Miller), I chose The Colossus of Maroussi as my latest Miller
odyssey. I was not disappointed. From page one I was swept away to
undulating hillsides pregnant with generations of ancient warriors,
heatwaves, floods, arks of the covenant, ear-chewing Greek
expatriates drunk on American materialism...and over and and over
again: light. Violent sunsets; Athens swimming in an "electric
effluvia" at dusk; the illumination of the human spirit. Miller is on
fire in the Colossus and reading it at times is like being invited
into his spiritual combustion.

The Colossus of Maroussi centers around the virtuosic story-telling of Miller's
friend Katsimbalis from Amaroussion. Once he builds up a head of steam
Katsimbalis catapults his audience to surprising locations full of
symbol and dawning epiphany. It seems that the listeners get lost in
the Katsimbalistic monologues, which traverse continents and swing from
joy to tragedy, in much the same way that we the reader, get lost in
Miller. Miller's chronology is always fuzzy at best, moods swing from
ecstatic to enraged, people/countries/races fall in and out of favor
with alarming frequency and passion...character's names change... As
Miller states early in Colossus, we are often too attached to
structure, plot, even meaning:

   The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those
   whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I
   never got anywhere with. (pg 71)

The value of Miller's (and Katsimbalis') art is its ability to take us
into the communal experience - something akin to Jung's collective
unconscious. Miller knows how to work the reader. He sings with a
full throat the metaphysics that he finds so omnipresent in Greece, and
then knowing that we can't keep up with his intensity, he entertains
us with anecdote, humor, characters. When we are softened up and
relaxed, he lets us have it again.

While gazing upon colossal statues of Greek gods, Miller reflects that
the Greeks have a tradition of "incarnating the spirit and making it
eternal." (pg 196) My first reaction was that giving concrete form to
an idea would emphasize its transience, as opposed to its eternality,
since concrete objects will eventually move toward decay. But then
again, what better way to communicate the power of the gods and the
immutability of the human laws they enforce than by giving them the
form of a colossal stone statue? Katsimbalis' stories and Miller's
writing are incarnations of experience rich with infinite layers of
meaning. Consider Miller's description of a Katsimbalis story:

   That flower would remain in the memory of the listener as the
   flower which Katsimbalis had picked; it would become unique, not
   because there was anything in the least extraordinary about it, but
   because Katsimbalis had immortalized it by noticing it, because he
   had put into that flower all that he thought and felt about
   flowers, which is like saying--a universe.