Colossus is Miller's account of his time in Greece in 1939 where he had gone at the invitation of Lawrence Durrell who was living on the island of Corfu. Miller has promised himself that he is going to do no writing for a year, and this gives him opportunity to reflect on his life in France, as well as further reflect on America having written about his years there before going to France in Tropic of Capricorn. In Colossus Miller contrasts the ancient world - perhaps more accurately, timeless world - of Greece with both old world Europe and new world America, both of which he sees as in decline. With an impending war - already (published in 1941) recognized as a "world war" - we see much of the same ambivalence towards it that we find in Merton's Seven Storey Mountain of the same period, though perhaps Merton identifies himself more as part of the problem than does Miller. Both writers see the deteriorating world situation as not simply to do with specific powerful individuals like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, but rather emanating from "civilization" itself.
Both Miller and Merton at this time of the late-1930s were disenchanted with America, with western-civilization, with the conventional mores, values, aspirations and appetites of the world. Merton's response was to turn to Catholicism and ultimately to enter the monastery as a way of rejecting the "world" in order to find an alternative path. Miller's rejection of "civilization" (a word he uses rather than the "world") is equally robust and goes back much further to his quitting a regular job with Western Union back in the early 1920s to become a writer, if not earlier still, and is evident in his move to Paris, France later that decade and his life and writings there. Like Merton, Miller articulates and even embodies a radical rejection of conventional life with its values and expectations. Reading The Colossus of Maroussi one can see many places where Merton would indeed be applauding and resounding with a loud "Amen!"
In Miller we find the same distrust and disdain for technology that that we often find in Merton:
"One should not race along the Sacred Way in a motor car - it is sacrilege. One should walk, walk as men of old walked, and allow one's whole being to become flooded with light." (COL, p.45)
But unlike Merton there is an explicit rejection of Christianity which describes at one point as "blight." The passage above continues:
"This is not a Christian highway: it was made by feet of devout pagans on their way to initiation at Eleusis. There is no suffering, no martyrdom, no flagellation of the flesh connected with this processional artery. Everything here speaks now, as it did centuries ago, of illumination, of blinding, joyous illumination." (COL, p.45)
Yet Miller is clearly familiar with the teachings of Jesus and with the Old and New Testaments, and often seems to speak approvingly of Jesus, and even seems to have a profoundly Christian voice as well as a deep spiritual consciousness. There seems to be more of a rejection of the structures of authority and institutional religion than there is of Jesus himself, and in this he would no doubt find sympathy in Merton.
As part of Miller's rejection of conventional society (and with it Christianity too, in as much as it has become identified with that society), there is a profound disdain for money and wealth:
"I have seen Greeks walking about in the most ludicrous and abominable garb imaginable - straw hat from the year 1900, billiard cloth vest with pearl buttons, discarded British ulster, pale dungarees, busted umbrella, hair shirt, bare feet, hair matted and twisted - a make-up which even a Kaffir would disdain, and yet, I say it sincerely and deliberately, I would a thousand times rather be that poor Greek than an American millionaire." (COL, pp.49-50)
There is something reminiscent of St. Francis in these words, another figure that Miller is often found referring to with approval.
An example of Miller's use of powerful Christian imagery is found in his experience of the light he found in Greece. Light is a recurring theme throughout the book, and there is clearly a parallel between the light that Miller describes outwardly and what is going on inwardly in his heart during these months. He writes:
"The light is no longer solar or lunar; it is the starry light of the planet to which man has given life. The earth is alive to its innermost depths; at the center it is a sun in the form of a man crucified. The sun bleeds on its cross in the hidden depths. The sun is man struggling to emerge towards another light. From light to light, from calvary to calvary. The earth song. . . ." (COL, p.57).
For Miller, the "man crucified" is an emblem for all humanity, as it is in Christianity too, rightly understood; but the "man struggling to emerge towards another light" is not only humanity in general but Miller himself as he struggles to be born anew.
Along with light, peace (and, in some places, the lack of peace) is another powerful motif, particularly in face of the gathering storm clouds over Europe and the early weeks and the War. On the day he went to Epidaurus he writes:
"It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing I was using a counterfeit. Peace is not the opposite of war any more than death is the opposite of life. The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man's imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false. I am talking of course of the peace which passeth all understanding. There is no other kind. The peace which most of us know is merely a cessation of hostilities, a truce, and interregnum, a lull, a respite, which is negative. The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions, requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a voluntary surrender, to be sure." (COL, p.76)
A couple of pages later he concludes:
"At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world."
Miller journeys from one illumination to another. When he passes through the Straits of Poros he describes it as passing through a womb; his inner experience of re-birth is reflected in his outer journey. The peace he experiences at Epidaurus reflects the advent of a deep inner peace within himself, where he is prepared to let go of the struggling and striving with the world and with himself: "all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism." (COL, p.80). "Epidaurus," he says, "is merely a place symbol: the real place is in the heart, in every man's heart, if he will but stop and search it." Words that could easily have been spoken by Merton too.
Miller's move from New York to Paris and his writing of Tropic of Cancer, based on his experience there, was a journey of self-discovery as an artist. In the follow-up, Tropic of Capricorn, where he turned from the present to the past for literary inspiration, he wrote that his deepest desire was not to live, "but to express myself." (CAP, p.13) In contrast, The Colossus of Maroussi tells how he, as an artist, discovers a greater self; the Colossus tells of the movement from art to life. Towards the end of the book (pp.205-206) Miller writes, "I shall pass from art to life, to exemplify whatever I have mastered through art by my living." He speaks of feeling "a growing liberation, supplemented more and more by a desire to serve the world in the highest possible way."
Here we see, in the same way that Merton's turning away from the world by becoming a monk was followed by a turning towards the world in the late-1950s and 1960s - most clearly manifested in his epiphany on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, so also we see Miller turning towards the world in his desire to find fulfillment not so much in art but more importantly in life. "To live creatively," he writes, "...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." He then goes on to compare the role of art to that of religion in relation to the more important business of life: "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." Miller's journey has been about his own liberation, becoming free from the demands and expectations of the world, ultimately in order to assume a growing responsibility towards the world.
It is striking that at a time of Merton's growing openness to the world he should be exposed to such material from Miller as The Colossus of Maroussi, detailing such a transformational and regenerative experience in Miller's life journey, and the books that followed, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, The Wisdom of the Heart and, later, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, all of which are both prophetic and profoundly religious in the best sense of the word. Merton clearly had an appetite for and enjoyed such writing, finding aspects of his own way of thinking affirmed and reflected in it, which likely contributed further to his broadening vision.
Miller concludes his Colossus with a kind of benediction:
"The Greek earth opens before me like the Book of Revelation. I never knew that the earth contains so much; I had walked blindfolded, with faltering, hesitant steps; I was proud and arrogant, content to live the false, restricted life of the city man. The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being. I came home to the world, having found the true center and the real meaning of revolution. No warring conflicts between the nations of the earth can disturb this equilibrium. Greece herself may become embroiled, as we ourselves are now becoming embroiled, but I refuse categorically to become anything less than the citizen of the world which I silently declared myself to be when I stood in Agamemnon's tomb. From that day forth my life was dedicated to the recovery of the divinity of man. Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant."
Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi. Published in 1941 by New Directions.
Merton's response: "a tremendous and important book" - letter to Henry Miller dated July 9, 1962.
Sources:
Merton, Thomas. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers (ed. Christine M. Bochen). New York: Harcourt Brace (Harvest edition), 1994. (CFT)
Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961. (CAP)
Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. New York: New Directions, 1941. (COL)
Sources:
Merton, Thomas. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers (ed. Christine M. Bochen). New York: Harcourt Brace (Harvest edition), 1994. (CFT)
Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961. (CAP)
Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. New York: New Directions, 1941. (COL)
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