by Henry Miller
Our stay at Spetsai was prolonged because the boat for Nauplia failed to appear. I began to fear that we would be marooned there indefinitely. However, one fine day along about four in the afternoon the boat finally did show up. It was an unserviceable English ferry which rolled with the slightest ripple. We sat on deck watching the sinking sun. It was one of those Biblical sunsets in which man is completely absent. Nature simply opens her bloody, insatiable maw and swallows everything in sight. Law, order, morality, justice, wisdom, any abstraction seems like a cruel joke perpetrated on a helpless world of idiots. Sunset at sea is for me a dread spectacle: it is hideous, murderous, soulless. The earth may be cruel but the sea is heartless. There is absolutely no place of refuge; there are only the elements and the elements are treacherous.
We were to touch at Leonidion before putting in at Nauplia. I was hoping it would still be light enough to catch a glimpse of the place because it was this grim corner of the Peloponnesus that the Katsimbalis side of the family stemmed from. Unfortunately the sun was rapidly setting just behind the wall of rock under which Leonidion lies. By the time the boat dropped anchor it was night. All I could distinguish in the gloom was a little cove illuminated by four or five feeble electric bulbs. A dank, chill breath descended from the precipitous black wall above us, adding to the desolate and forbidding atmosphere of the place. Straining my eyes to pierce the chill, mist-laden gloom it seemed to me that I perceived a gap in the hills which my imagination peopled with rude, barbaric tribesmen moving stealthily about in search of forage. I would not have been the least surprised to hear the beat of a tom-tom or a blood-curdling war whoop. The setting was unrelievedly sinister—another death trap. I could well imagine how it must have been centuries ago, when the morning sun pierced the fever-laden mist, disclosing the naked bodies of the slain, their stalwart, handsome figures mutilated by the javelin, the axe, the wheel. Horrible though the image was I could not help but think how much cleaner that than the sight of a shell-torn trench with bits of human flesh strewn about like chicken feed. I can’t for the life of me recall by what weird modulation we arrived at the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, but as the boat pulled out and we installed ourselves at a table in the saloon before a couple of innocent glasses of ouzo Katsimbalis was leading me by the hand from café to café along that thoroughfare which is engraved in my memory as perhaps no other street in Paris. At least five or six times it has happened to me now that on taking leave of a strange city or saying good-bye to an old friend this street, which is certainly not the most extraordinary street in the world, has been the parting theme. There is without doubt something sinister and fascinatingly evil about the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. The first time I walked through it, of an evening, I was literally frightened stiff. There was something in the air which warned one to be on one’s guard. It is by no means the worst street in Paris, as I have hinted, but there is something malignant, foul, menacing, which lingers there like a poisonous gas, corroding even the most innocent face until it resembles the ulcer-bitten physiognomy of the doomed and defeated. It is a street that one comes back to again and again. One gets to know it slowly, foot by foot, like a trench which is taken and retaken so many times that one no longer knows if it is a bad dream or a monomania.
In a few hours we would be at Nauplia, within striking distance of such breathtaking places as Argos, Tiryns, Mycenae, Epidaurus, and here we are talking of dingy holes, lye-bitten side streets, dilapidated whores, dwarfs, gigolos, clochards of the Faubourg Montmartre. I am trying to visualize my friend Katsimbalis sitting in a certain bistro opposite a theatre at midnight. The last time I stood at that bar my friend Edgar was trying to sell me Rudolf Steiner, rather unsuccessfully I must say, because just as he was getting on to group souls and the exact nature of the difference between a cow and a mineral, from the occult standpoint, a chorus girl from the theatre opposite, who was now on the bum, wedged her way in between us and diverted our minds to things less abstruse. We took a seat in the corner near the doorway where we were joined by a dwarf who ran a string of whorehouses and who seemed to derive an unholy pleasure from using the adverb “malment.” The story which Katsimbalis was reeling off was one of those stories which begin as a trifling episode and end as an unfinished novel—unfinished because of lack of breath or space or time or because, as happened, he got sleepy and decided to take a nap. This story, which like all his stories I find it impossible to transcribe, lacking the patience and the finesse of a Thomas Mann, haunted me for days. It was not that the subject was so unusual, it was that with a good stretch of sea before us he felt at liberty to make the most extraordinary digressions, to dwell with scrupulous care and attention on the most trivial details. I have always felt that the art of telling a story consists in so stimulating the listener’s imagination that he drowns himself in his own reveries long before the end. The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with. Though it has been practiced on me time and again I never cease to marvel how it happens that, with certain individuals whom I know, within a few minutes after greeting them we are embarked on an endless voyage comparable in feeling and trajectory only to the deep middle dream which the practiced dreamer slips into like a bone into its socket. Oft en, after one of these suprasensible seances, endeavoring to recapture the thread which had broken, I would work my way back as far as some trifling detail—but between that bespangled point of repair and the mainland there was always an impassible void, a sort of no-man’s-land which the wizardry of the artist had encumbered with shell holes and quagmires and barbed wire.
In the case of Katsimbalis there was a quality which, as a writer, I feel to be of the utmost importance where the art of storytelling is concerned—the complete disregard of the element of time. He never began in the professional way; he began by fumbling about, sparring for an opening, so to speak. The story usually began when he had come to a knothole, when, in order to really launch himself, he would take a tremendous step backward, figuratively, to be sure, saying as he tweaked his nose—“Look here, did you never notice that…” or “I say, has it ever happened to you that…” and, not waiting for a yes or a no, his eyes becoming glazed by the surge of inward light, he would actually tumble backwards into the deep well in which all his stories had their source and, gripping the slippery walls of his narrative with finger and toe, he would slowly clamber to the surface, puffing, gasping, shaking himself like a dog to free himself of the last remaining particles of wrack and slime and stardust. Sometimes, in taking the backward plunge, he would hit the bottom with such a thud that he was speechless: one could look into the pupil of his eyes and see him lying there helpless as a starfish, a great sprawling mass of flesh lying face up and counting the stars, counting and naming them in fat, unbroken stupefaction as if to make a colossally unthinkable pattern on which to weave the story which would come to his lips when he would catch his breath again.
The great starfish, as I was saying, was sound asleep before ever we got to Nauplia. He had sprawled out on the bench, leaving me to circle about the Parc Monceau where he had dropped me in a taxi. I was dazed. I went up on deck and paced back and forth, purring to myself, laughing aloud now and then, gesticulating, mimicking his gestures in anticipation of recounting the more succulent fragments of his narrative to my friend Durrell or to Seferiades upon my return to Athens. Several times I slipped back to the saloon to take a look at him, to gaze at that tiny mouth of his which was pried open now in a prolonged mute gasp like the mouth of a fish suffocating with air. Once I approached close to him and bending over I explored the silent cavity with a photographic eye. What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearra
nging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, divine? Why should we stop at words, or at planets, or at divinity? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed—since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass. You lying there, I was saying to myself, where has that voice gone? Into what inky crevices are you crawling with your ganglionic feelers? Who are you, what are you now in drugged silence? Are you fish? Are you spongy root? Are you you? If I should bash your skull in now would all be lost—the music, the narcotic vapors, the glissandos, the rugged parentheses, the priapic snorts, the law of diminishing returns, the pebbles between stutters, the shutters you pull down over naked crimes? If I bore into you now with an awl, here at the temple, will there come out with the blood a single tangible clue?
In a few minutes we shall be at Nauplia. In a few minutes he will awake with a start, saying “Huh, I must have dozed off.” He always wakes up electrified, as if he were caught committing a crime. He is ashamed to go to sleep. At midnight he is only beginning to feel thoroughly awake. At midnight he goes prowling about in strange quarters looking for someone to talk to. People are collapsing with fatigue: he galvanizes them into attentive listeners. When he is through he pulls out the plug and departs with his vocal apparatus tucked safely away in his diaphragm. He will sit in the dark at a table and stuff himself with bread and olives, with hard-boiled eggs, with herring and cheeses of one sort or another, and while washing it down by his lonesome he will talk to himself, tell himself a story, pat himself on the chest, remind himself to remember to remember it the next time; he will even sing himself a little song in the dark or, if the spirit moves him, get up and do a few bearish paces or urinate through his pants, why not, he’s alone, he’s happy, he’s sad, he’s all there is, to himself at least, and who else is there and so forth—can you see him? I see him very clearly. It’s warm now in Athens and he’s had a grand night of it with his cronies. The last one he said good-night to is already home and writing it all down in his diary, having no other existence than this auricular attachment, this appendix of a life in the belly of the whale. The whale is tilting back against a wall under a grape arbor near the niche where Socrates passed his last hours. The whale is again looking for food and drink, trying to spirit it out of a man with a 1905 straw hat brought safely back from America together with fine bed linen, rocking chairs, spittoons and a horned phonograph. The phonograph is standing on a chair in the road and in a moment a canned voice will be screeching a poison song from the time of the Turkish occupation….
In a few minutes we shall be at Nauplia. The whale is now electrified and his memory, which had probably been refreshed by the brief nap, is working with diabolical accuracy on the shreds of a detail which he was too lazy to elaborate on before. The passengers are clearing out and we are caught up and carried along like corks to the forward deck. Near the rail, the first to disembark, are two prisoners escorted by gendarmes with rifles. They are chained to one another by handcuffs. The thought occurs to me that he, Katsimbalis, and myself are also chained to one another, he the teller and I the listener, and that we will go to the end of the world this way, not as prisoners but as willing bondsmen.
Nauplia is dismal and deserted at night. It is a place which has lost caste, like Arles or Avignon. In fact, it is in many ways suggestive of a French provincial town, at night more particularly. There is a military garrison, a fortress, a palace, a cathedral—and a few crazy monuments. There is also a mosque which has been converted into a cinema. By day it is all red tape, lawyers and judges everywhere, with all the despair and futility which follows in the train of these blood-sucking parasites. The fortress and the prison dominate the town. Warrior, jailer, priest—the eternal trinity which symbolizes our fear of life. I don’t like Nauplia. I don’t like provincial towns. I don’t like jails, churches, fortresses, palaces, libraries, museums, nor public statues to the dead.
The hotel was a bit of a madhouse. In the lobby there were engravings of famous Greek ruins and of Indians from the Amazon and the Orinoco. The dining room was plastered with letters from American and English tourists, all praising the comforts of the hotel in extravagant language. The silliest letters were signed by professors from our celebrated universities. Katsimbalis had two beds in his room and I had three. There was no heat because we were the only guests.
We awoke early and hired a car to take us to Epidaurus. The day began in sublime peace. It was my first real glimpse of the Peloponnesus. It was not a glimpse either, but a vista opening upon a hushed still world such as man will one day inherit when he ceases to indulge in murder and thievery. I wonder how it is that no painter has ever given us the magic of this idyllic landscape. Is it too undramatic, too idyllic? Is the light too ethereal to be captured by the brush? This I can say, and perhaps it will discourage the overenthusiastic artist: there is no trace of ugliness here, either in line, color, form, feature or sentiment. It is sheer perfection, as in Mozart’s music. Indeed, I venture to say that there is more of Mozart here than anywhere else in the world. The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation. One stops searching. One grows silent, stilled by the hush of mysterious beginnings. If one could speak one would become melodious. There is nothing to be seized or treasured or cornered off here: there is only a breaking down of the walls which lock the spirit in. The landscape does not recede, it installs itself in the open places of the heart; it crowds in, accumulates, dispossesses. You are no longer riding through something—call it Nature, if you will—but participating in a rout, a rout of the forces of greed, malevolence, envy, selfishness, spite, intolerance, pride, arrogance, cunning, duplicity and so on.
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 that 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, an 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. There is no mystery in my mind as to the nature of the cures which were wrought at this great therapeutic center of the ancient world. Here the healer himself was healed, first and most important step in the development of the art, which is not medical but religious. Second, the patient was healed before ever he received the cure. The great physicians have always spoken of Nature as being the great healer. That is only partially true. Nature alone can do nothing. Nature can cure only when man recognizes his place in the world, which is not in Nature, as with the animal, but in the human kingdom, the link between the natural and the divine.
To the infra-human specimens of this benighted scientific age the ritual and worship connected with the art of healing as practiced at Epidaurus seems like sheer buncombe. In our world the blind lead the blind and the sick go to the sick to be cured. We are making constant progress, but it is a progress which leads to the operating table, to the poor house, to the insane asylum, to the trenches. We have no healers—we have only butchers whose knowledge of anatomy entitles them to a diploma which in turn entitles them to carve out or amputate our illnesses so that we may carry on in crippled fashion until such time as we are fit for the slaughterhouse. We announce the discovery of this cure and that but make no ment
ion of the new diseases which we have created en route. The medical cult operates very much like the War Office—the triumphs which they broadcast are sops thrown out to conceal death and disaster. The medicos, like the military authorities, are helpless; they are waging a hopeless fight from the start. What man wants is peace in order that he may live. Defeating our neighbor doesn’t give peace any more than curing cancer brings health. Man doesn’t begin to live through triumphing over his enemy nor does he begin to acquire health through endless cures. The joy of life comes through peace, which is not static but dynamic. No man can really say that he knows what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandoned us in order that we might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts. All this whimpering that is going on in the dark, this insistent, piteous plea for peace which will grow bigger as the pain and the misery increase, where is it to be found? Peace, do people imagine that it is something to be cornered, like corn or wheat? Is it something which can be pounced upon and devoured, as with wolves fighting over a carcass? I hear people talking about peace and their faces are clouded with anger or with hatred or with scorn and disdain, with pride and arrogance. There are people who want to fight to bring about peace—the most deluded souls of all. There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and mind. Murder is the apex of the broad pyramid whose base is the self. That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man has fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man. Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain, in every realm our conquests bring only death. We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies. 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.