Past Perfect: A Novelist Among the Ruins
As nations careened toward World War II, the American writer Henry Miller undertook a pilgrimage into Greece’s heroic past.
In 1940, with fascism, communism and democracy colliding violently around it, Greece was hardly an ideal tourist destination. But for Henry Miller, whose bold and sexually frank novels Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1938) had fueled an uproar in the United States, it was the perfect time for a sojourn in another world. He spent much of his five-month stay with the English writer Lawrence Durrell, traveling back and forth between Athens and the Mediterranean island of Corfu, where Durrell lived with his wife. Despite the intense summer heat, Miller fell in love with Greece—and with its people; he soon began to loathe the company of foreigners. His friend Durrell aside, Miller especially detested the Englishmen he met in Greece, who he felt were unimaginative and effeminate compared to the lusty and heroic peasants of the Greek countryside. With the Greek poet George Katsimbalis as his guide, Miller visited the ruins of ancient Greece and later wrote about them in The Colossus of Maroussi (1941). Though Miller felt ashamed for being “merely” an American in such an old and storied land, he experienced a mystical rebirth there and was overcome by the “sense of eternality” that pervades the majestic Lion Gate at Mycenae and the sacred temples at Delphi. The muscular yet supple prose of The Colossus of Maroussi seems inspired by this feeling for the limitlessness of time and space.—Ed.
The ride from [the port of] Piraeus to Athens is a good introduction to Greece. There is nothing inviting about it. It makes you wonder why you decided to come to Greece. There is something not only arid and desolate about the scene, but something terrifying too. You feel stripped and plundered, almost annihilated It was about eleven o’clock [at night]. People were swarming in all directions to the park. It reminded me of New York on a sweltering night in August I sauntered slowly through the park [the Zapion] towards the Temple of Jupiter. There were little tables along the dusty paths set out in an absent-minded way: couples were sitting there quietly in the dark, talking in low voices, over glasses of water The dust, the heat, the poverty, the bareness, the containedness of the people, and the water everywhere in little tumblers standing between the quiet, peaceful couples, gave me the feeling that there was something holy about the place, something nourishing and sustaining. I walked about enchanted on this first night in the Zapion At night, coming upon it from nowhere, feeling the hard dirt under your feet and hearing a buzz of language which is altogether unfamiliar to you, it is magical—and it is more magical to me perhaps because I think of it as filled with the poorest people in the world, and the gentlest
It was dry in Athens, and unexpectedly hot. It was as though we were going back to Summer again. Now and then the wind blew down from the encircling mountains and then it was as chill as a knife blade. Mornings I would often walk to the Acropolis. I like the base of the Acropolis better than the Acropolis itself. I like the tumble-down shacks, the confusion, the erosion, the anarchic character of the landscape. The archaeologists have ruined the place; they have laid waste big tracts of land in order to uncover a mess of ancient relics which will be hidden away in museums. The whole base of the Acropolis resembles more and more a volcanic crater in which the loving hands of the archaeologists have laid out cemeteries of art. The tourist comes and looks down at these ruins, these scientifically created lava beds, with a moist eye. The live Greek walks about unnoticed or else is regarded as an interloper. Meanwhile the new city of Athens covers almost the entire valley, is groping its way up the flanks of the surrounding mountains
It was a Sunday morning when [poet George] Katsimbalis and I left Nauplia for Mycenae. It was hardly eight o’clock when we arrived at the little station bearing this legendary name. Passing through Argos the magic of this world suddenly penetrated my bowels
You become immediately aware that the earth is sown with the bodies and the relics of legendary figures. Even before Katsimbalis opened his mouth I knew they were lying all about us—the earth tells you so There are two distinct worlds impinging on one another—the heroic world of daylight and the claustral world of dagger and poison Mycenae is closed in, huddled up, writhing with muscular contortions like a wrestler. Even the light, which falls on it with merciless clarity, gets sucked in, shunted off, grayed, beribboned. There were never two worlds so closely juxtaposed and yet so antagonistic
It was still early morning when we slipped through the lion’s gate. No sign of a guardian about. Not a soul in sight. The sun is steadily rising and everything is clearly exposed to view. And yet we proceed timidly, cautiously, fearing we know not what We walk between the huge slabs of stone that form the circular enclosure. My book knowledge is nil. I can look on this mass of rubble with the eyes of a savage. I am amazed at the diminutive proportions of the palace chambers, of the dwelling places up above. What colossal walls to protect a mere handful of people! Was each and every inhabitant a giant? What dread darkness fell upon them in their evil days to make them burrow into the earth, to hide their treasures from the light, to murder incestuously in the deep bowels of the earth? I am a native of New York, the grandest and the emptiest city in the world; I am standing now at Mycenae, trying to understand what happened here over a period of centuries. I feel like a cockroach crawling about amidst dismantled splendors
For twenty years it had been my dream to visit Knossus. I never realized how simple it would be to make the journey I took the bus [from Heraklion, in Crete] in the direction of Knossus. I had to walk a mile or so after leaving the bus to reach the ruins. I was so elated that it seemed as if I were walking on air. At last my dream was about to be realized. The sky was overcast and it sprinkled a bit as I hopped along. Again, as at Mycenae, I felt that I was being drawn to the spot. Finally, as I rounded a bend, I stopped dead in my tracks; I had the feeling that I was there. I looked about for traces of the ruins but there were none in sight. I stood for several minutes gazing intently at the contours of the smooth hills which barely grazed the electric blue sky. This must be the spot, I said to myself, I can’t be wrong. I retraced my steps and cut through the fields to the bottom of a gulch. Suddenly, to my left, I discovered a bald pavilion with columns painted in raw, bold colors—the palace of King Minos. I was at the back entrance of the ruins amidst a clump of buildings that looked as if they had been gutted by fire. I went round the hill to the main entrance and followed a little group of Greeks in the wake of a guide who spoke a boustrophedonous language which was sheer Pelasgian to me.
There has been much controversy about the aesthetics of Sir Arthur Evans’ work of restoration [of the palace in the early decades of the 20th century]. I found myself unable to come to any conclusion about it; I accepted it as a fact. However Knossus may have looked in the past, however it may look in the future, this one which Evans has created is the only one I shall ever know. I am grateful to him for what he did, grateful that he had made it possible for me to descend the grand staircase, to sit on that marvellous throne chair the replica of which at the Hague Peace Tribunal is now almost as much of a relic of the past as the original.
Knossus in all its manifestations suggests the splendor and sanity and opulence of a powerful and peaceful people. It is gay—gay, healthful, sanitary, salubrious. The common people played a great role, that is evident. It has been said that throughout its long history every form of government known to man was tested out; in many ways it is far closer in spirit to modern times, to the twentieth century, I might say, than other later epochs of the Hellenic world. One feels the influence of Egypt, the homely human immediacy of the Etruscan world, the wise, communal organizing spirit of Inca days. I do not pretend to know, but I felt, as I have seldom felt before the ruins of the past, that here throughout long centuries there reigned an era of peace
Finally it was decided that we would go to Delphi, the ancient navel of the world We climbed up the hill to the theatre whence we overlooked the splintered treasuries of the gods, the ruined temples, the fallen columns, trying vainly to recreate the splendor of this ancient site The world which passed away with Delphi passed away as in a sleep. It is the same now. Victory and defeat are meaningless in the light of the wheel which relentlessly revolves. We are moving into a new latitude of the soul, and a thousand years hence men will wonder at our blindness, our torpor, our supine acquiescence to an order which was doomed
After wandering about amidst the broken columns we ascended the tortuous path to the stadium on high The setting is spectacular. Set just below the crest of the mountain one has the impression that when the course was finished the charioteers must have driven their steeds over the ridge and into the blue. The atmosphere is superhuman, intoxicating to the point of madness. Everything that is extraordinary and miraculous about Delphi gathers here in the memory of the games which were held in the clouds
In Greece one is ever filled with the sense of eternality which is expressed in the here and now; the moment one returns to the Western world, whether in Europe or America, this feeling of body, of eternality, of incarnated spirit is shattered. We move in clock time amidst the debris of vanished worlds, inventing the instruments of our own destruction, oblivious of fate or destiny, knowing never a moment of peace, possessing not an ounce of faith, a prey to the blackest superstitions, functioning neither in the body nor in the spirit, active not as individuals but as microbes in the organism of the diseased.
—From Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi. Copyright © 1941 by Henry Miller. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.