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[[w:Zorba the Greek (novel)|'''''Zorba the Greek''''']] (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά, ''Life and Times of Alexis Zorba'') is a novel written by [[Nikos Kazantzakis]], first published in 1946. In it a young Greek intellectual<!-- (replaced by an Englishman in the famous film adaptation) -->, the narrator, is writing a manuscript about the [[Buddha]]. He meets Alexis Zorba who greatly influences his outlook on life. The novel was translated into English by Carl Wildman in 1952, and a film adaptation was made in 1964, directed by [[w:Michael Cacoyannis|Michael Cacoyannis]] who also wrote its screenplay.

==Chapter 2==
* To cleave [[Aegean Sea|that sea]] in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my [[mind]] the [[joy]] most apt to transport the [[heart]] of [[man]] into [[paradise]].

* You turn the wheel and the mud whirls round, as if you were possessed while you stand over it and say "I'm going to make a jug, I'm going to make a plate, I'm going to make a lamp and the devil knows what more!" That's what you might call being a man: [[freedom]]!

* What kind of a man are you? Don't you even like dolphins!?

* The maimed don't get into Paradise.

* '''A man's a savage beast''' when he's young; yes, boss, a savage, man-eating beast! [...] Oh, he eats sheap too, and hens and pigs, but '''if he doesn't eat men his belly's not satisfied.'''

==Chapter 3==
* '''Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak.''' To act as if [[death]] did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.

*'''Behind each [[woman]] rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of [[w:Aphrodite|Aphrodite]].''' That was the face Zorba was seeing and talking to, and desiring. Dame Hortense was only an ephemeral and transparent [[mask]] which Zorba tore away to [[kiss]] the [[eternal]] mouth.

==Chapter 4==
*Man is a brute [...] It seems everything's been too easy for you, but you ask me! A brute, I tell you! If you're cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you're kind to him, he plucks your eyes out.
*Keep your distance, boss! Don't make men too bold, don't go telling them we're all equal, we've got the same rights, or they'll go straight and trample on your rights; they'll steal your bread and leave you to die of hunger.

==Chapter 6==
* While experiencing [[happiness]], we have difficulty in being conscious of it. '''Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.'''
* Tell me what you do with the [[food]] you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into [[work]] and [[good]] [[humor]], and others, I'm told, into [[God]].
*Is it possible to talk by [[dance|dancing]]? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another.
*In more primitive and creative ages, Zorba would have been the chief of a tribe. He would have gone before, opening up the path with a hatchet. Or else he would have been a renowned troubadour visiting castles, and everybody would have hung on his words &mdash; lords and ladies and servants ... In our ungrateful age, Zorba wanders hungrily round the enclosures like a wolf, or else sinks into becoming some pen-pusher's buffoon.
*It's beyond me. Everything seems to have a soul &mdash; wood, stones, the wine we drink and the earth we tread on. Everything, boss, absolutely everything!

== Chapter 7 ==
* How [[simple]] and frugal a thing is [[happiness]]: a glass of [[wine]], a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the [[sea]]. Nothing else. And '''[[all]] that is required to [[feel]] that here and [[Present|now]] is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.'''
*You must have seen those sails with red, yellow, and black patches, sewn with thick twine, which never tear even in the roughest storms. Well, that's what my heart's like. Umpteen holes, and umpteen patches: it need fear nothing more!
*Woman's something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong.

==Chapter 8==
* '''Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the [[time]]. '''

* You must sometimes rejoice that the dark [[forces]] of destruction are so numerous and invincible: for thus your aim to [[live]] almost without [[hope]] becomes more [[heroic]] and your [[soul]] acquires a more tragic [[greatness]].

==Chapter 11==
* It is a mortal [[sin]] to violate the [[great]] [[laws]] of [[nature]]. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the [[eternal]] rhythm.

== Chapter 12 ==
* '''In [[religions]] which have lost their creative spark, the [[gods]] eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human [[solitude]] and walls.'''
*Action, dear inactive master, '''action: there is no other salvation.'''

== Chapter 13 ==
*I have realized for some time I didn't come into this world to be a horse, or an ox. '''Only animals live to eat'''.
*'''Death is nothing''' &mdash; just pff! and the candle is snuffed out. '''But old age is a disgrace'''.

==Chapter 16==
*The day's for working [...] Daytime is a man. The night-time's for enjoying yourself. Night is a woman. You mustn't mix them up!
* We travel, crossing whole countries and [[seas]] and yet we've never pushed our noses past the doorstep of our [[home]].

* You have seen what happens when you hold a glass out to the [[sun]] and concentrate all the rays onto one spot, Zorba? That spot soon catches [[fire]], doesn't it? Why? Because the sun's [[power]] has not been dispersed but concentrated on that one spot. It is the same with men's [[minds]]. You do [[miracles]], if you concentrate your mind on one thing and only one.

== Chapter 21 ==
* As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute [[trust]]."

==Chapter 23==
*What a [[strange]] [[machine]] [[man]] is! You fill him with bread, [[wine]], [[fish]], radishes, and out of him come sighs, [[laughter]] and [[dreams]]. Like a factory. I'm sure there's a sort of talking-film cinema in our heads.
*"What's strange in that, you idiot? The truth is that''' man is full of worms from the day he's born, but you can't see them.'''"

== Chapter 24 ==
*"Well all those damned books you read — what good are they? '''Why do you read them? If they don't tell you [why we die], what ''do'' they tell you?'''"
* '''The highest point a man can obtain is not [[Knowledge]], or [[Virtue]], or [[Goodness]], or [[Victory]], but something even [[greater]], more [[heroic]] and more [[despairing]]: [[Sacred]] Awe!'''

== Chapter 25 ==
*Sometimes the earth becomes transparent and we see our ultimate ruler, the grub, working night and day in his underground workshops. But we quickly turn our eyes  away, because men can endure everything except the sight of that small white maggot.
*Happiness is doing your duty, and the harder the duty is the greater the happiness.

==Unsorted by chapter ==
:<small>Chapter citations should be provided for these. </small>

* Wife; children; house; everything. The full catastrophe.

* Live [[life]] and enjoy it!

*Boss, everything's simple in the [[world]]. How many times must I tell you? So don't go and complicate things!

* I'm sorting out my own brand of [[folly]] here in Candia.

*You want to build a monastery. That's it! Instead of monks you'd stick a few quill drivers like your honored [[self]] inside and they'd pass the [[time]] scribbling [[day]] and [[night]]. [...] Well, I'm going to ask you a favor, holy abbot: I want you to appoint me doorkeeper to your monastery so that I can do some smuggling and, now and then, let some very [[strange]] things through into the holy precincts: [[women]], mandolins, demijohns of raki, roast sucking pigs ... [[All]] so that you don't fritter away your [[life]] with a lot of [[nonsense]]!

* '''It's all because of doing things by halves, saying things by halves, that the world is in the mess is in today.''' Do things properly by [[God]]! One good knock for each nail and you'll win through! God hates a halfdevil ten times more than an archdevil!

* "Alexis," he said, "I'm going to tell you a [[secret]]. You're too small to [[understand]] now, but you'll understand when you are bigger. '''Listen, little one: neither the seven stories of [[heaven]] nor the seven stories of the [[earth]] are enough to contain [[God]]; but a man's [[heart]] can contain him. So be very careful, Alexis — and may my [[blessing]] go with you — never to wound a man's heart!'''

* What d'you lack? You're young, you have [[money]], [[health]], you're a [[good]] fellow, you lack [[nothing]]. Nothing, by [[thunder]]! Except just one thing — [[folly]]! And when that's missing, boss, well ...

*“What’s your favorite dish, granddad?” 
:“Everything, everything, my son. It’s a great sin to say that this food is good, that food not good.” 
:“Why? Can’t we choose?” 
:“No, we really cannot.” 
:“Why?” 
:“Because there are people who are hungry.”

*"Perhaps I'll stay here with you ..." I said, appalled by Zorba's desperate affection for me. "Perhaps I shall come away with you. I'm free."{{pb}}Zorba shook his head.{{pb}}"No, you're not free," he said. "The string you're tied to is perhaps no longer than other people's. That's all. You're on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you're free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don't cut that string ...{{pb}}"I'll cut it some day!" I said defiantly, because Zorba's words had touched an open wound in me and hurt.{{pb}}"It's difficult, boss, very difficult. 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. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! 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!"

* One day in Berlin came a telegram: <small>FOUND A WONDERFUL GREEN STONE. COME IMMEDIATELY, ZORBA.</small>

== Quotes about ''Zorba the Greek'' ==
*''' ''Zorba the Greek'' resists easy definition. Like the [[Homer|Odyssey]] and [[Don Quixote]], it is nearly plotless but never pointless.''' Like the [[heroes]] of those fictional sagas, its hero, Alexis Zorba, casts a larger [[shadow]] on the [[world]] than the world does on him. … Who is Zorba? He is [[w:Everyman|Everyman]] with a Greek accent. He is [[w:Sinbad|Sinbad]] crossed with [[w:Sancho Panza|Sancho Panza]]. He is the [[George Bernard Shaw|Shavian]] [[Life]] [[Force]] poured into a long, lean, fierce-mustached Greek whose 65 years in the Mediterranean sun have neither dimmed his hawk eyes nor dulled his pagan [[laughter]]. …  Zorba is a great unbeliever in everything but the abundant life. Pockmarked with bullet scars, he has no [[faith]] in [[war]]. Full of reverent awe before the [[universe]], he cannot stomach organized [[religion]] or priests ("[They] even fleece their fleas"). Child of instinct, Zorba defines the hours as if he had created them. "Daytime is a man," he explains, "night is a woman." <br /> On many a night Zorba heads for the home of Bouboulina, a blowzy, scow-bottomed "old siren," once the darling of admirals and of fleets. When his boss refuses to make [[love]] to a young, appetizing widow, Zorba warns him: "'''Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one.'''" The boss takes Zorba's advice to [[heart]] and the young widow to bed. Meanwhile, Zorba never misses a chance to ask such puzzlers as: What is a woman? Who made the [[stars]]? Why do men [[die]]? The boss's widow is murdered by puritanical peasants, Bouboulina dies, the lignite mine fails — '''and all these calamities lead to the heart of Zorba's message: live as if one were to die the next minute.'''  <br /> Zorba is too full of juice to die onstage. Author [[Nikos Kazantzakis|Kazantzakis]] tries to kill him off in a letter. His last [[words]]: "I've done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough . . . Good night!" But Author Kazantzakis reckons without his own talent. '''He has created Zorba, but he cannot kill him.'''
** Review in [[w:Time (magazine)|''Time'']] (20 April 1953)

== External links ==
{{wikipedia|Zorba the Greek (novel)}}
* Carl Wildman, tr. [https://archive.org/details/zorbagreek00kaza/page/n5/mode/2up ''Zorba the Greek''] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953)

* Peter Bien, tr. [https://archive.org/details/zorbagreeksaints0000kaza/page/n7/mode/2up ''Zorba the Greek: The Saint's Life of Alexis Zorba''] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014)  

[[Category:Greek novels]]
[[Category:Existentialist novels]]

[[fr:Alexis Zorba]]
[[uk:Грек Зорба]]