Zorba
In Hania and the Nature of Happiness
“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a
glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the
sea.” Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
Like other
American expatriate friends, I came to live in Greece in the 1980’s with an
indelible image in mind of Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates dancing syrtaki to the
strains of the bouzouki on a barren beach in Crete. As the camera draws away,
you yearn to kick off your shoes, and with hands on shoulders, enter the dance
on that pristine beach in black and white, as the Zorba soundtrack
accompanies you. Could there be greater happiness than to join Englishman Basil, the Apollonian “Boss,” loving books more than
people, as he learns to embrace Dionysian Zorba, lover of life, larger than
humanity? Who could not love Zorba, who lives “life to the lees,” like Odysseus
(or Ulysses), a hero of Kazantzakis, Cretan writer of The Life and Times of Alexis Zorba,
upon which the 1964 film Zorba the Greek was based.
Although I live
in Athens, I’m a frequent visitor to Crete, especially Hania. It was in this
beautiful town where my son rented a floor in a 16th-century Venetian stone
house in the Palia Poli (the Old Town) for nine years while he pursued
his engineering degree at the University there. He eventually got his
degree, but we hadn’t realized that concentration on studies didn’t mix with
living in the Old Town, with its dazzling beauty and history in every stone,
not to mention constant raki get-togethers.
On one visit to
Hania, Zorba was projected behind the Yiali Tzami, the impressive 17th century Ottoman mosque on the picturesque Venetian harbor. The mosque is one
of the town’s landmarks, along with the Venetian lighthouse. Chairs had been set up to watch the film, but not
nearly enough for the crowd that came: curious tourists, young couples, elderly
local women out for an evening stroll. Zorba’s character was as endearing
as ever, though our world today makes certain details a little quaint and
dated. Imagine you’re traveling alone by boat from Piraeus to Crete and a stranger, especially one acting like Zorba,
approaches you and asks if you’ll take him along; you would probably run in the
opposite direction as far as you could....Zorba’s remarks on women get a little
tiring in their exaggerated sexism, and I was disturbed by Basil’s passivity when the Widow was killed; his lack
of action seemed plain cowardly. I also knew some little known details about the film, from having
interviewed cinematographer Walter Lassally, one of the movie’s Oscar winners.
We had met in Stavros, the beach on the Akrotiri Peninsula outside Hania where
much of Zorba was filmed. From Lassally, I learned that Quinn wasn’t much
of a dancer, nor could he pronounce the Greek words easily, and he didn’t take
kindly to being told so!
In the “teach
me to dance” ending in the film, we’re left with the feeling that Basil has changed to Zorba’s way of thinking, but in
Kazantzakis’ novel, although the two friends never see each other again, they
exchange letters where we see that Basil, though he yearns to, still holds onto his Apollonian character.
Kazantzakis’
novel also has much to say about the nature of happiness, our obsession today
as we can see in the plethora of articles found online, for example, 12 steps..., 20 ideas..., 9 tips..., 17
Ways to Shed Negativity and Achieve Happiness... And not only how to
achieve it, how to sustain it, even how to measure it.
For the
characters in the novel, happiness is simple. I was thinking about the movie and the nature of happiness the next day after
the film showing, while sitting with my husband in the early evening, when the
sun loses its harshness, in a shady spot at the harbor. We were having a raki
served with some simple mezedes to
accompany it: a tiny plate of tomatoes, olives and paximadia
(rusks). Simple and lovely. The view in front of us with the
sunlight dancing on the water was one I had seen countless times, but each time
it seems new to
me; each time I see it with
wonder and fresh eyes.
Basil comments that we often don’t understand we’re
happy until later when we look back on our experiences “and realize—sometimes
with astonishment” that we were truly
happy, but he says “on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness
and I knew that I was happy.” I think I knew what he meant, sitting here on my
own Cretan coast. Simple fare and the chance to gaze at the Venetian harbor in
Hania comes pretty close to experiencing and knowing it for what it is: sheer happiness.
Sherri Moshman-Paganos
Sherri Moshman-Paganos is a writer and former educator based in Athens Greece, where she publishes a monthly travel blog. Her poetry and prose have appeared in the GW Review, the Remington Review, Hemlock Literary Journal and others. She is the author of two memoirs: Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change, and Miss I wish you a bed of roses: Teaching Secondary School English in Greece.
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