And one more...

Somehow, this excerpt found itself on the top of my list and wheedled its way into a post of its own. What was amazing about the book, I realized at this point of reading it, was that the plot - what was really 'happening' was sort-of just on the side and didn't really matter. What really mattered (to the author and thus to me) was the change in his spirit that he was so consciously living himself through.

I woke at dawn and walked rapidly along the beach towards the village; my heart was leaping in my breast. I had rarely felt so full of joy in my life. It was no ordinary joy, it was a sublime, absurd and unjustifiable gladness. Not only unjustifiable, contrary to all justification. This time I had lost everything – my money, my men, the line, the trucks; we had constructed a small port and now we had nothing to export. It was all lost.

Well, it was precisely at that moment that I felt an unexpected sense of deliverance. As if in the hard, somber labyrinth of necessity I had discovered liberty herself playing happily in a corner. And I played with her.

When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage! An invisible and all-powerful enemy – some call him God, others the Devil, seems to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.

Each time that within ourselves we are the conquerors, although externally utterly defeated, we human beings feel an indescribable pride and joy. Outward calamity is transformed into a supreme and unshakable felicity.

I remember something Zorba told me once: ‘One night on a snow-covered Macedonian mountain a terrible wind arose. It shook the little hut where I had sheltered and tried to tip it over. But I had shored it up and strengthened it. I was sitting alone by the fire, laughing at and taunting the wind. “You won’t get into my little hut, brother; I shan’t open the door to you. You won’t put my fire out; you won’t tip my hut over!”’

In these few words of Zorba’s I had understood how men should behave and what tone they should adopt when addressing powerful but blind necessity.

I walked rapidly along the beach, talking with the invisible enemy. I cried: “You won’t get into my little hut, brother; I shan’t open the door to you. You won’t put my fire out; you won’t tip me over!”’

And with this excerpt, Zorba, I bid thee farewell.