The Colossus of Maroussi

  It was the soothsayer’s wife who opened the door for us. She had a serene, dignified countenance which at once impressed me favorably. She pointed to the next room where her husband sat a table in his shirtsleeves, his head supported by his elbows. He was apparently engaged in reading a huge, Biblical book. As we entered the room he rose and shook hands cordially. There was nothing theatrical or ostentatious about him; indeed he had more the air of a carpenter pursuing his rabbinical studies than any appearance of being a medium. He hastened to explain that he was not possessed of any extraordinary powers, that he had simply been a student of the Kabbala for many years and that he had been instructed in the art of Arabian astrology. He spoke Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, German, French, Czech and several other languages and had until recently been in the service of the Czechoslovak consulate. The only information he demanded was the date, hour and place of my birth, my first name and my mother’s and father’s first names. I should say that before he had put these questions to me he remarked to Katsimbalis that I was decidedly a Capricorn of the Jupiterian type. He consulted the books, made his computations slowly and methodically and then, raising his eyes, began to talk. He spoke to me in French, but now and then, when things became too complicated, he addressed himself to Katsimbalis in Greek and the latter translated it back to me in English. Linguistically, to say the least, the situation was rather interesting. I felt unusually calm, steady, sure of myself, aware as he talked of every object in the room and yet never for a moment distracted. It was the living room we were seated in and it was extremely clean and orderly, the atmosphere reminding me strongly of the homes of poor rabbis whom I had visited in other cities of the world.

  He began by telling me that I was approaching a new and most important phase of my life, that up to the present I had been wandering in circles, that I had created many enemies (by what I had written) and caused much harm and suffering to others. He said that I had led not only a dual life (I believe he used the word schizophrenic) but a multiple life and that nobody really understood me, not even my closest friends. But soon, he said, all this was to cease. At a certain date, which he gave me, I would find a clear, open path ahead of me; before dying I would bring great joy to the world, to everybody in the world, he emphasized, and my greatest enemy would bow down before me and beg my forgiveness. He said that I would enjoy before my death the greatest honors, the greatest rewards which man can confer upon man. I would make three trips to the Orient where, among other things, I would meet a man who would understand me as no one had and that this meeting was absolutely indispensable for the both of us. That on my last visit to the Orient I would never return, neither would I die, but vanish in the light. I interrupted him here to ask if he meant by that that I would be immortal, through my works or my deeds, and he answered solemnly and most significantly that he did not, that he meant simply and literally that I would never die. At this I confess I felt startled and I glanced at Katsimbalis, without saying a word, to make sure that I had heard correctly.

  He went on to tell me that there were signs and indications given which he himself could not understand but which he would relate to me exactly as they were given. Not at all surprised by this I begged him to do so, adding that I would understand quite well myself. He was particularly baffled, and impressed, it seemed, by the fact that I had all the signs of divinity and at the same time my feet were chained to the earth. He paused to explain himself to Katsimbalis in Greek, obviously quite moved and obviously fearful to offer an interpretation of which he was not certain. Turning to me again he made it clear, both by his speech and by his words, that he considered it a rare privilege to be in the presence of such a one as myself. He confessed that he had never seen the indications for such a splendid career as now lay before me. He asked me pertinently if I had not escaped death several times. “In fact,” he added, hardly waiting for confirmation, “you have always miraculously escaped whenever a situation became desperate or unbearable. You always will. You lead a charmed life. I want you to remember my words, when danger confronts you again—that however perilous the situation you must never give up, you will be saved. You are like a ship with two rudders: when one gives out the other will function. In addition, you are equipped with wings: you can take flight when those about you must perish. You are protected. You have had only one enemy—yourself.” And with this he rose, came round to me and seizing my hand raised it to his lips.

  I give the gist of his words, omitting numerous details concerning my relations with others which would be of no interest to the reader without knowledge of the personalities and relationships involved. Everything he told me about the past was startlingly accurate and for the most part were about things which no one in Greece, not even Durrell or Katsimbalis, could possibly have had any knowledge about. We chatted a few moments before taking leave and during the course of the conversation he begged me, since I was returning to America, to look up his brother in Detroit from whom he hoped to get aid. There was one touch, incidentally, which I forgot and which is worth relating, because it struck me as so Armenian. In telling me of the fame and glory, the honors and rewards I would receive, he remarked in a puzzled way—“But I see no money!” At this I laughed outright. Money has been the one thing I have never had, and yet I have led a rich life and in the main a happy one. Why should I need money now—or later? When I have been desperately in need I have always found a friend. I go on the assumption that I have friends everywhere. I shall have more and more as time goes on. If I were to have money I might become careless and negligent, believing in a security which does not exist, stressing those values which are illusory and empty. I have no misgivings about the future. In the dark days to come money will be less than ever a protection against evil and suffering.

  I was of course profoundly impressed by the interview. More than anything I felt chastened. Aside from the enigmatic reference to my not dying nothing he had predicted for my future astounded inc. I have always expected everything of the world and have always been ready to give everything. I had also, even before leaving Paris, the conviction that I would eventually break the vicious chain of cycles which, as he said, were usually of seven years’ duration. I had left Paris before the war knowing that my life there had come to an end. The decision to take a vacation for one year, to abstain from writing during that time, the very choice of Greece which, as I see it now, was the only country which could have satisfied my inner needs, all this was significant. In the last year or two in Paris I had been hinting to my friends that I would one day give up writing altogether, give it up voluntarily—at the moment when I would feel myself in possession of the greatest power and mastery. The study of Balzac, which was my final work in Paris, had only corroborated a thought which had begun to crystallize in me, namely that the life of the artist, his devotion to art, is the highest and the last phase of egotism in man. There are friends who tell me that I will never stop writing, that I can’t. But I did stop, for a good interval while in Greece, and I know that I can in the future, any time I wish, and for good. I feel under no compulsion to do any particular thing. I feel, on the contrary, a growing liberation, supplemented more and more by a desire to serve the world in the highest possible way. What that way is I have not yet determined, but it seems clear to me that I shall pass from art to life, to exemplify whatever I have mastered through art by my living. I said I felt chastened. It is true that I also felt exalted. But above all I felt a sense of responsibility such as I had never known before. A sense of responsibility towards myself, let me hasten to add. Without tasting the rewards which he had spoken of I had nevertheless enjoyed them in advance, enjoyed them imaginatively, I mean. During all the years that I have been writing I have steeled myself to the idea that I would not really be accepted, at least to my own countrymen, until after my death. Many times, in writing, I have looked over my own shoulder from beyond the grave, more alive to the reactions of those to come than to those of my contemporaries. A good part of my l
ife has, in a way, been lived in the future. With regard to all that vitally concerns me I am really a dead man, alive only to a very few who, like myself, could not wait for the world to catch up with them. I do not say this out of pride or vanity, but with humility not untouched with sadness. Sadness is perhaps hardly the right word either, since I neither regret the course I have followed nor desire things to be any different than they are. I know now what the world is like and knowing I accept it, both the good and the evil. To live creatively, I have discovered, means to live more and more unselfishly, to live more and more into the world, identifying oneself with it and thus influencing it at the core, so to speak. Art, like religion, it now seems to me, is only a preparation, an initiation into the way of life. The goal is liberation, freedom, which means assuming greater responsibility. To continue writing beyond the point of self-realization seems futile and arresting. The mastery of any form of expression should lead inevitably to the final expression—mastery of life. In this realm one is absolutely alone, face to face with the very elements of creation. It is an experiment whose outcome nobody can predict. If it be successful the whole world is affected and in a way never known before. I do not wish to boast, nor do I wish to say that I am yet ready to make such a grave step, but it is in this direction that my mind is set. It was my belief before meeting the Armenian, and it still is, that when the honors and rewards shall be conferred upon me I shall not be present to receive them, that I shall be living alone and unknown in some remote part of the world carrying on the adventure which began with the effort to realize myself in words. I know that the greatest dangers lie ahead; the real voyage has only begun. As I write these lines it is almost a year since that moment in Athens which I have just described. May I add that since coming to America everything that has happened to me, one fulfillment, one realization after another, has occurred with an almost clock-like precision. Indeed, I am almost terrified for now, contrary to my life in the past, I have but to desire a thing and my wishes are gratified. I am in the delicate position of one who has to be careful not to wish for something he really does not desire. The effect, I must say, has been to make me desire less and less. The one desire which grows more and more is to give. The very real sense of power and wealth which this entails is also somewhat frightening—because the logic of it seems too utterly simple. It is not until I look about me and realize that the vast majority of my fellow men are desperately trying to hold on to what they possess or to increase their possessions that I begin to understand that the wisdom of giving is not so simple as it seems. Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent upon whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.

  The holidays were approaching and everybody was urging me to postpone my departure until after Christmas. The boat was due to sail in two or three days. Just when I had given up all hope I received word that the boat had been detained at Gibraltar and that we would not be able to sail for at least a week, possibly ten days. Durrell, who had borrowed Max’s car for the holidays, decided to take a trip to the Peloponnesus and insisted that I accompany him and Nancy. If the boat were to sail in a week there was a good chance that I would miss it. Nobody could say for certain when it would sail. I decided to risk the chance that it would be delayed beyond a week.

  Between times I went again to Eleusis with Ghika. It was a late afternoon when he called for me in his car. By the time we reached Daphni the sun was setting in violent splendor. I put it down in my memory as a green sunset. Never was the sky more clear, nor more dramatic. We were racing to reach the ruins before dark, but in vain. We arrived to find the gates locked. After a little persuasion, however, the guardian permitted us to enter. Lighting one match after another Ghika led me rapidly from one spot to another. It was a weird spectacle and one which I shall never forget. When we had finished we walked through the shabby streets to the shore of the bay facing Salamis. There is something sinister and oppressive about this scene at night. We walked up and down the quay, buffeted by the strong winds, and talked of other days. There was an ominous silence all about and the twinkling lights of the new Eleusis gave to the place an even shabbier atmosphere than the light of day. But as we rolled back to Athens we were rewarded by an electrical display which for me is without a parallel among the cities of the world. The Greek is just as enamored of electric light as he is of sunlight. No soft shades, as in Paris or New York, but every window ablaze with light, as if the inhabitants had just discovered the marvels of electricity. Athens sparkles like a chandelier; it sparkles like a chandelier in a bare room lined with tiles. But what gives it its unique quality, despite the excessive illumination, is the soft ness which it retains in the midst of the glare. It is as if the sky, becoming more liquescent, more tangible, had lowered itself to fill every crevice with a magnetic fluid. Athens swims in an electric effluvia which comes directly from the heavens. It affects not only the nerves and sensory organs of the body but the inner being. On any slight eminence one can stand in the very heart of Athens and feel the very real connection which man has with the other worlds of light. At the end of Anagnastopolou Street, where Durrell lived, there is a bluff which enables one to overlook a great part of the city; night after night, upon leaving him, I have stood there and fallen into a deep trance, intoxicated by the lights of Athens and the lights above. At Sacré-Coeur, in Paris, it is another feeling that one gets; from the towering height of the Empire State Building, in New York, still another. I have looked over Prague, Budapest, Vienna, over the harbor at Monaco, all beautiful and impressive at night, but I know no city to compare with Athens when the lights go on. It seems ridiculous to say so, yet I have the feeling that in Athens the miraculous light of day never entirely vanishes; in some mysterious way this soft, peaceful city never wholly lets the sun out of its grasp, never quite believes that the day is done. Often, when I had said good-night to Seferiades in front of his home in Kydathenaion Street, I would wander over to the Zapion and stroll about in the dazzling starlight, repeating to myself as if it were an incantation: “you are in another part of the world, in another latitude, you are in Greece, in Greece, do you understand?” It was necessary to repeat the Greece because I had the strange feeling of being at home, of being in a spot so familiar, so altogether like home should be that from looking at it with such intense adoration it had become a new and strange place. For the first time in my life, too, I had met men who were like men ought to be—that is to say, open, frank, natural, spontaneous, warm-hearted. These were the types of men I had expected to meet in my own land when I was growing up to manhood. I never found them. In France I found another order of human beings, a type whom I admired and respected but whom I never felt close to. In every possible way that I can think of Greece presented itself to me as the very center of the universe, the ideal meeting place of man with man in the presence of God. It was the first voyage I had ever made which was wholly satisfactory, in which there was no slightest trace of disillusionment, in which I was offered more than I had expected to find. The last nights in the Zapion, alone, filled with wonderful memories, were like a beautiful Gethsemane. Soon all this would be gone and I would be walking once more the streets of my own city. The prospect no longer filled me with dread. Greece had done something for me which New York, nay, even America itself, could never destroy. Greece had made me free and whole. I felt ready to meet the dragon and to slay him, for in my heart I had already slain him. I walked about as if on velvet, rendering silent homage and thanksgiving to the little band of friends whom I had made in Greece. I love those men, each and every one, for having revealed to me the true proportions of the human being. I love the soil in which they grew, the tree from which they sprang, the light in which they flourished, the goodness, the integrity, the charity which they emanated. They brought me face to face with myself, they cleansed me of hatre
d and jealousy and envy. And not least of all, they demonstrated by their own example that life can be lived magnificently on any scale, in any clime, under any conditions. To those who think that Greece to-day is of no importance let me say that no greater error could be committed. To-day as of old Greece is of the utmost importance to every man who is seeking to find himself. My experience is not unique. And perhaps I should add that no people in the world are as much in need of what Greece has to offer as the American people. Greece is not merely the antithesis of America, but more, the solution to the ills which plague us. Economically it may seem unimportant, but spiritually Greece is still the mother of nations, the fountainhead of wisdom and inspiration.