Last evening, we watched “Victoria” on PBS and then I looked
to see if anything else of interest was on TV. Was it ever. I flipped channels
immediately.
Yep, Turner Classic Movies was about to screen one of the classic
films of all times, Zorba the Greek.
Oh, what a flood of memories. Although some of the themes would be viewed as sexist
today, the acting by Anthony Quinn, Lila Kedrova, and
Irene Papas, with Alan Bates as their foil, rated another look. The movie didn’t
purport to portray a perfect man, just a man full of passion for life. I worry
that cell phones and TV “news” are sucking that from our souls these days.
In the movie, the Bates character, an uptight Englishman, awakens
such passion in himself through his association with Zorba. I have friends—I’m sure
we all do—who have that effect on me. It’s one of life’s blessings.
The movie took me all the way back to the Fayetteville,
Arkansas of the mid-1960s. It was a quieter time there, not without its
shortcomings, but a time offering a life of learning, new experiences, and the
promise of raw adventure. It hadn’t been long since architect Edward D. Stone
had described the Fayetteville he knew as “a hotbed of tranquility.” Things would
change, that’s for sure. They always do, whether we want them to or not.
I couldn’t help recalling that I had once done a paper on
the Nikos Kazantzakis novel, The Life and
Times of Alexis Zorba, for the immortal Dr. Ben Kimpel of the U of A
English Department. The “A” he so graciously awarded me is still one of my life’s
great achievements.
The place of women in the world, as expressed by the character
of Zorba, would certainly be suspect today. I haven’t the right to judge, only
contemplate and try to learn. His views on life and the need to accommodate it, sometimes through
anger, sometimes through laughter, sometimes by earthy sensuality, and finally
through dancing, are timeless, though.
Perhaps the most contentious line in the movie occurs when
Zorba bangs a table and says, “God has a very big heart but there is one sin he
will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go. I know
because a very wise old Turk told me.” As Zorba learned from the Greeks’ mortal
enemies, the Turks, we can learn from others, even flawed ones.
In the book, he even pointed out that he had once self-amputated
a finger because it prevented him from playing his beloved “santuri” as he
wished. The man who taught him to play the santuri, incidentally, was a Turk, again,
the deadly enemies of the Greeks. The lesson is that not only must one
sacrifice for art, one must transcend societal hatreds as well.
Oh hell, enough of introspection and analysis. As Zorba would
point out, if we can’t answer the questions to life’s most horrific questions,
what’s the use of all our damn books?
