Zorba the Greek
by Nikos Kazantzakis
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Detailed Notes
Chapter 1
As I looked, an invisible net, woven from sea, air, and my departure, wound its tight meshed round my heart.
How bitter it is to be slowly separated from great friends! Far better make a clean break and remain in solitude – the natural climate for man.
The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh.
"Why! Why!" he exclaimed with disdain. "Can't a man do anything without a why? Just like that because he wants to?"
I'm all right here. May this minute last for years.
The meaning of the words, art, love, beauty, passion, all this was made clear to me by the simplest of human words uttered by this workman.
Chapter 2
As far as I can see, your lordship's never been hungry, never killed, never stolen, never committed adultery. What ever can you know of the world? You've got an innocent's brain your skin's never even felt the sun.
Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice o self to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? That we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?
Chapter 3
Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.
Chapter 4
Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphs; woe to any one who begins to decipher them and guess what they mean...
Young people are cruel beasts, they're inhuman, they don't understand.
My grandfather had never left his village. He had never been even to Candia or Canes. 'Why go there?' he would say, There are Candians and Caneans, peace be with them, who pass here – Candia and Canea come to me, so why do I need to go to them?
I believe in Zorba because he's the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are ghosts. I see with these eyes, I hear with these ears, I digest with these guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you.
Chapter 5
The house appears empty, but it contains everything needful, so few in reality are the true necessities of man.
The old world is tangible, solid, we live in it and are struggling with it every moment – it exists. The world of the future is not yet born, it is elusive, fluid, made of the light from which dreams are woven.