Why this book:  Selected by my literature reading group at my suggestion.  I’d read it 3 times previously, two of those times in other reading groups.  I consider it one of  my favorite novels – because the issues it deals with are so meaningful to me.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  An academic of undisclosed age – I assume 30s – has decided to step away from the academic and theoretical life and learn something of real people and real life in his native Crete, by taking some of his family inheritance to rent and run a lignite mine.  On his way to Crete, he meets and is intrigued by an irascible old character – Zorba – in the Greek port of Piraeus,  and hires him on to be his foreman to run his mining operation for him.  The book is about the dynamic between the learned young academic and the older, uneducated, uninhibited, exuberant Zorba, about their interactions with the people of the Cretan village near their mine, and the lessons each of these two very different characters teach each other about how best to live in this world.

My Impressions:  I loved reading this for the fourth time.  I’m impressed that I was mature enough to love it as much as I did when I read it for the first time 40 years ago.   It is a great story,  built around the affection that develops between two very different characters representing on the one hand, the spiritual thinker, who loves ideas, theory, learning and understanding,  and on the other hand, the uneducated romantic and exuberant  connoisseur of life, who embraces the joys of being human, the pursuit of adventure and new experience.  To me the relationship between these two characters represents the conversation between the head and the heart, the mind and the spirit, what Nietzsche referred to as the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses.   But this book is also very much about small village life in early 20th century Crete, the characters who inhabit this insular world, their simple joys and narrow prejudices.

I have described Zorba to friends like this:  Imagine that Kahlil Gibran (author of The Prophet) and Randall Patrick McMurphy (the protagonist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) meet, take a liking to each other, and decide to go into business together.  Gibran is intrigued by McMurphy and seeks to understand him and somehow tap into his energy and exuberance, while McMurphy seeks to cajole the poet Gibran to get beyond his poetic and spiritual nature and embrace life and his humanity.   The two develop a great mutual respect for each other.

Zorba is narrated in the first person by the sensitive young academic, referred to by Zorba  as “the boss.”  The boss is reserved and unsure of himself in dealing with the uneducated, salt-of-the-earth villagers and mine workers, and depends on Zorba to help him understand and relate to them. He admires, and even seeks to emulate the proud, experienced, self-assured Zorba.

The mining operation in Crete, and happenings in the nearby village and monastery are merely a backdrop for the on-going dialogue between Zorba and the boss.  These conversations, before and after work, and on weekends or other times when they are together, are the highlight and meat of the book.  The boss is constantly asking Zorba questions and Zorba is nearly always ready with an impassioned response.   And throughout the book, the boss shares with us, the readers, his perspectives on Zorba, and his struggles to reconcile his admiration of Zorba’s passion and exuberance, with the aesthetic, academic, spiritual life the boss had chosen for himself.

Most interesting were Zorba’s colorful perspectives on religion, philosophy, women (and women, and women, and more about women!)   He backs up his views with stories from  his rich experience living, working, fighting, and loving throughout the eastern Mediterranean region. We learn how Zorba came to be essentially an agnostic, to believe that God and the devil are the same, that war and nationalism are folly, that joy, love, emotion and passion are what make life worth living.   Zorba is honest, loyal and trustworthy,  but can also be undisciplined and impulsive, often choosing to live for the moment, and let the future take care of itself.

In contrast, “the boss” is well educated in the classics, apparently had been a university professor, and is writing a treatise on the Buddha during the day, while Zorba runs the mine and takes care of the business of the lignite operation.  The story has many direct and indirect references throughout the book to the contrast between Zorba’s devil-may-care passionate approach to life, and the more passive and aesthetic Buddhist values that the boss represents.

I did a bit of research and learned that Kazantzakis was born in Crete and spent many of his early years there.  As a young adult, Kazantzakis met and became good friends with George Zorbas, a somewhat older, uneducated fellow with a wide variety of experience, to include mining.  During WW1 the price of coal skyrocketed and Kazantzakis engaged Zorbas to run a lignite mine for him in the Peloponnese.  Kazantzakis had indeed been a student of Buddhism and did write a book on Buddhism.  He was also a devotee of Nietzsche and translated Thus Spake Zarathustra into Greek.  This novel was written in the 1940s and it appears is very much based on Kazantzakis own experience with George Zorbas, and Kazantzakis himself was indeed the young academic.

Some the other memorable highlights in the book are:

Zorba charms an aging cabaret singer, Dame Hortense, who runs a small cafe and hotel in the village.    Zorba names her his “Bouboulina”  and to him, she is not an old washed-up cabaret singer; she represents “women,” and what he loves about women,  and he treats her with the love he has for women in general.

There is a beautiful widow who lives just outside the village, who protects herself from the leering eyes of the men in the village by remaining aloof and distant.  Because they want but can’t have her, they come to hate her beauty and aloof unavailability, as do the village women.  Zorba insists that it is the boss’s “duty” to overcome his timidity and woo her.

Zorba and the boss discover sordid doings at a nearby monastery and Zorba uses that discovery to his and the boss’s advantage.

Zorba makes a memorable trip to a nearby larger town to buy supplies, which results in romantic and other adventures which help fill out Zorba’s character outside of the context of his relationship with the boss in the mining venture.

Zorba was an impassioned player of the santouri – a Greek instrument that resembles a hammered dulcimer – and he loved to dance.  When he was filled with passion, enthusiasm, excitement, he had to express it either with the music of the santouri, or by dancing. He would sometimes have to tell his stories simply through dance.

Zorba hatches a scheme to make a lot of money by moving timber from the mountain down to the sea to be able to ship it to other markets.

There is a village idiot, a parrot, a wonderful musician, a wild and crazy shepherd who can dance like no one else, monks and self-important clergy, and children and legends  – all the sorts of things that make up the eccentricities of life in remote rural villages anywhere in the world, but here with a Cretan flavor.

The movie staring Anthony Quinn does a credible job of capturing this book.  Hollywood does take some liberties with the story, but it captures the essence of Zorba, the boss, and their relationship with each other and the Cretan village well.  I recommend it.

I love this book, and recommend it to anyone who has wrestled with the tension between  passion and reason as guides to life.  It is a wonderful story, about two memorable characters, taking place in a fascinating corner of the earth, filled with wisdom and fascination.

Some quotes I like – from an older translation:   (I include chapter numbers to help you find the quote in the more recent translation. Page numbers are for my benefit alone to help me find these quotes in my copy.)

The boss about Zorba: That man has not been to school, I thought, and his brains have not been perverted. He has had all manner of experiences; his mind is open and his heart has grown bigger, without his losing one ounce of his primitive boldness. All the problems which we find so complicated or insoluble he cuts through  as if with a sword, like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian knot.  It is difficult for him to misss his aim, because his two feet are held firmly planted on the ground by the weight of his whole body.  Chap 5 p 63

The boss: I was happy, I knew that. while experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize –  sometimes with astonishment – how happy we had been.  But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.   Chap 6 p 65

Zorba to the boss:  “You’re young, you can still afford to be patient. I can’t.  But I do declare, the older I get, the wilder I become! Don’t let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven!  The longer I live, the more I rebel.  I’m not going to give in;  I want to conquer the world!”  Chap 6  p 76

The Buddhist comes out in the boss – as it does throughout the book:   We stayed silent by the brazier until far into the night. I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wrested little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.  And all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.  Chap 7 p80

Zorba on women:  You can say what you like, woman is something different, boss….something different. She’s not human!  Why bear her any grudge? Woman is something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong. They shouldn’t act like that towards a woman. They’re too harsh, boss, too unjust.  If I ever had to make laws, I shouldn’t make the same laws for men and for women.  Chap 7 p88

The boss referring to Zorba: From time to time he eyed me slantwise. I felt that what he could not or dare not tell me in words he was saying with the santouri. That I was wasting my life, that the widow and I were two insects who live but a second beneath the sun, then die for all eternity. Never more! Never more!  Chap 8 p 102

Zorba telling a story from when he was a young man known as Roumi and an old Turk visits and speaks to him:) “Roumi, there ‘s a pasha’s daughter who’s like spring water. She’s waiting for you in her room. Come, little Roumi!”  But I knew that at night they murdered Christian infidels in the Turkish districts. “No, I’m not coming,” I said. “Don’t you fear God?” he asked me.  “Why should I?”   “Because, little Roumi, he who can sleep with a woman and does not, commits a great sin. My boy, if a woman calls you to share her bed and you don’t go, your soul will be destroyed! That woman will sigh before God on judgment day and that woman’s sigh, whoever you may be and whatever your fine deeds, will cast you into Hell!” Chap 8  p 102

Zorba to the boss: Don’t laugh boss! If a woman sleeps all alone, it’s the fault of us men. We’ll all have to render our accounts on the day of the last judgment.  God will forgive all sins, as we’ve said before – he’ll have his sponge ready. But that sin he will not forgive. Woe betide the man who could sleep with a woman and who did not do so! Woe betide the woman who could sleep with a man and who did not do so!  Chap 9 p 106

The boss about Zorba: I looked at Zorba in the light of the moon and admired the jauntiness and simplicity with which he adapted himself to the world around him the way his body and soul formed one harmonious whole and all things – women, bread, water, meat, sleep – blended happily with his flesh and became Zorba. I had never seen such a friendly accord between a man and the universe.  Chap 11 p 132

(The Boss’s challenge with Buddhism) The last man – who has freed himself from all belief, from all illusion and has nothing more to expect or to fear – sees the clay of which he is made reduced to spirit, and this spirit has no soil left for its roots, from which to draw its sap.  The last man has emptied himself; no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in his utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.  ….I started. “Buddha is that last man!?” I cried.. Buddha is the “pure” soul which has emptied itself; in him is the void, he is the Void… Chap 12 p 134

Zorba on old age: What scares me, boss, is old age.  Heaven preserve us from that! Death is nothing – just pff! and the candle is snuffed out. But old age is a disgrace… I consider it a deep disgrace to admit I’m getting on, and I do all I can to stop people seeing I’ve grown old: I hop about, dance, my back aches but I keep dancing.  I drink, get dizzy, everything spins round, but I don’t sit down, I just act as if everything’s hunky-dory.  I sweat, so I plunge into the sea, catch cold and want to cough – to relieve myself but I feel ashamed, boss, and force back the cough.  Chap 13 p 144

The boss on Zorba:  Like the first men to cast off their monkey skins, or like the great philosophers, he is dominated by the basic problems of mankind.  He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities. Like the child, he sees everything for the first time.  He is forever astonished and wonders why and wherefore. Everything seems miraculous to him, and each morning when he opens his eyes, he sees trees, sea, stones and birds and is amazed.  Chap 13 p 151

The boss: Once more there sounded within me, together with the cranes’ cry, the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other, and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chanced will be given us. chap 15 p 169

The boss: As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and into quite a number of other words too – “love,” “hope,” “country,” “God.””  As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.”  Chap 15 p175

(Zorba on how he rids himself of addictions.)  “And I did the same thing later with wine and tobacco. I still drink and smoke, but at any second, if I want to, whoop! I can cut it out.  I’m not ruled by passion. Its the same with my country. I thought too much about it, so stuffed myself up to the neck with it, spewed it up, and it’s never troubled me since.”  “What about women?” I asked.  “Their turn will come, damn them! It’ll come! When I’m about seventy!”  He thought for a moment, and it seemed too imminent.  “Eighty,” he said, correcting himself.  “That makes you laugh boss, I can see, but you needn’t.  … How do you expect to get the better of a devil, boss, if you don’t turn into a devil-and-a-half yourself?” Chap 17 p 196

Zorba to the boss: Have you noticed boss, everything good in this world is an invention of the devil? Pretty woman, spring, roast suckling, wine- the devil made them all! God made monks, fasting, camomile-tea and ugly women…pooh!  Chap 19 p. 213

Zorba on why he doesn’t write a book: Why not? For the simple reason that I live all those mysteries, as you call them, and I haven’t the time to write. Sometimes it’s war, sometimes women, sometimes wine, sometimes the santouri: Where would I find time to drive a miserable pen? That’s how the business falls into the hands of the pen-pushers! All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven’t the time to write, and all those who have the time don’t live them! Chap 19 p 217

Zorba to the boss: “Christ is reborn, my friend! Ah! if only I was as young as you!  I’d throw myself headlong into everything!  Headlong into work, wine, love – everything and I’d fear neither God nor devil!  That’s youth for you!”  Chap 21  p 234

The boss: I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe! Chapter 24 p 269

Zorba on Death: “You know, ” he said at last, “I think of death every second. I look at it and I’m not frightened. But never, never do I say I like it.  No, I don’t like it at all! I don’t agree!….No, I’m not the sort to hold out my neck to Charon like a sheep and say: ‘Cut my throat, Mr Charon, please: I want to go straight to Paradise!'” Chap 24 p 270

The boss: Who was the sage who tried to teach his disciples to do voluntarily what the law ordered should be done? To say”yes” to necessity and change the inevitable into something done of their own free will?  That is perhaps the only human way to deliverance.  It is a pitiable way, but there is no other….

But what of revolt? The proud, quixotic reaction of mankind to conquer Necessity and make external laws confirm to the internal laws of the soul, to deny all that is and create a new world according to the laws of one’s own heart, which are contrary to the inhuman laws of nature – to create a new world which is purer, better and more moral than the one that exists. Chap 24 p 270-271

Zorba to the boss: I’ve stopped thinking all the time of what happened yesterday. And stopped asking myself what’s going to happen tomorrow. What’s happening today, this minute, that’s what I care about.  I say: ‘What are you doing at this moment, Zorba?’  ‘I’m sleeping.’ ‘Well, sleep well.’ ‘What are you doing at this moment Zorba?’  ‘I’m working.’ ‘Well, work well.’  ‘What are you doing at this moment, Zorba?’ ‘I’m kissing a woman.’ ‘Well, kiss her well, Zorba! And forget all the rest while you’re doing it; there’s nothing else on earth, only you and her! Get on with it!’ Chap 24 p 273

Zorba to the boss:  A real woman – now listen to this and I hope it helps you – gets more out of the pleasure she gives than the pleasure she takes from a man.  Chap 24 pa 273

(The boss, after Zorba shared a story of using his determination and will power to overcome a hazard in a storm)  In these few words of Zorba’s, I had understood how men should behave and what tone they should adopt when addressing powerful but blind necessity… I walked rapidly along the beach, talking with the invisible enemy. I cried: “You won’t get into my soul! I shan’t open the door to you! You won’t put my fire out: you wont tip me over!”  Chap 25 p 292

Zorba to the boss:  You need a touch of folly to do that;  folly, d’you see? You have to risk everything! But you’ve got such a strong head, it’ll always get the better of you. A man’s head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I’ve paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head’s a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string.  But if a man doesn’t break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea.  Nothing like rum – that makes you see life inside out!”  Chap 26 p 300

Zorba to the boss:  What d’you lack? You’re young, you have money, health, you’re a good fellow, you lack nothing.  Nothing, buy thunder! Except just one thing -folly!   And when that’s missing, boss, well…Chap 26 p301

The boss: Reason, the eternal grocer, laughs at the soul, as we ourselves laugh at witches and old women who cast spells.   Chap 26 p303

I found more great quotes from this great book.  These from a different translation of the book than I have.  https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1560878  

And here are some great quotes from the movie:

Quotes from the movie: