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Manaan Alexander
SOSL 27601­ Gender in the Balkans
December 12, 2013

Performative Gender in Zorba the Greek

There is only one dancer, but he has a thousand masks. He is always twenty. He is immortal.1

In many ways Zorba the Greek is a story of evolution, the odyssey of the narrator. The story follows

the unnamed but kindly monikered “Boss” as he moves from a reserved and bookish academic into a

free and true man of the world. In the beginning the narrator represents an entirely Westernized

intellectual. For this reason his partnership, and subsequent friendship, with the impetuous Zorba

appears striking. Zorba begins their relationship by appealing to the narrator’s intellect through his

Chaucerian definition of human reason.2 Together they venture to Crete to run a lignite mine and it is on

the island that Zorba introduces his boss to the worldly pleasures he had previously denied himself.

Before their story concludes the narrator finds balance and reconciles the intellectual with the physical,

or as Nietzsche would describe it, the Apollonian with the Dionysian.

His journey to invigorate his body and soul can be tracked through the story in many ways but it

is the boss’s relationship with dance that will be examined in this paper. Dance is an important theme of

the book and Kazantzakis employs it as an effective tool to separate the type of man Zorba is from the

kind of man the narrator is. Dance becomes the embodiment of the physical boundary between the two

men as one dances and the other does not. The climax of the novel, and the 1964 film by the same

name, occurs when the boss finally asks Zorba to teach him how to dance. Many events occur in the

story, including the complete and utter failure of the mine and their pet projects at the monastery, that

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Kazantzakis: 1952, 243
2
“The backside of the miller’s wife, that’s human reason.” I had read many definitions of human reason. This one
seemed to me the most astounding of all, and I liked it. (Kazantzakis: 1952, 11)
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lead to the boss being ready to the learn how to dance. It it is in learning how to dance that the narrator

comes to terms with himself as a man and finds his place in the world. Once he learns how to dance

Zorba’s job is done and, although this is not the reason given for their parting ways, it is poignant that

dancing together is the last real interaction they have before saying goodbye.

In Kazantzakis’s view Zorba is the ideal guide for a “quill­driver” (1965, 445) such as himself

and the narrator. Zorba is a Virgil of sorts who not only guides the narrator, whose similarity to Dante

cannot be denied, but also teaches him important lessons. Both Dante and the narrator are able to go

beyond their humble beginnings because of their respective mentors. The deliverance of the boss

appears at the end of the story as a transcendence of the mundane. For him Zorba’s dance, and

eventually his own, represents the eternal human struggle; to fight against gravity, to lift oneself up, “to

overcome his own weight.” (Kazantzakis:1952, 290) No matter how hard we attempt ascension we are

inextricably tied to the world, and to our bodies. The dance, and the motions that Zorba so forcefully

embodies, represents a desire for freedom. The body/soul dichotomy is a tension that the narrator feels

very deeply and it is his resolution of the antagonistic relationship between the two that signifies his

“transcendence of the ego.” (Kazantzakis; 1952, 26) This duality is exemplified by Greece, as well as

the narrator.

Hnaraki states that “Greeks create a dialogue between the western­Apollonian­order with the

eastern­Dionysian­chaos.” (2009, 25) The dichotomy that resides in Greece is also depicted by the

characters and themes of the novel. The necessity to reconcile “the two eternal

antagonists.”(Kazantzakis: 1952, 74) represents the personal form of a countrywide discord. The

narrator performs the western aspect of the Greek man. He is bookish with soft hands and possesses

few practical skills. He searches for transcendence, for freedom, through his writing and words and
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those of his books. This transcendence he finds is represented by Zorba in his more Dionysian approach

to life. In all the ways the narrator feels himself repressed and caught up in the day­to­day worries

Zorba lives expressively and vivaciously. Zorba’s dance is representative of this eastern way of life.

The narrator exemplifies the confusion of this dichotomy of the Grecian duality while Zorba lives

comfortably in his own world as just Zorba. The narrator senses the tension between the truly

masculine, almost barbaric, man of Zorba and the quickly westernizing world in which Zorba is forced

to reside. In many ways, Zorba’s dance is not a performance but a true expression of his masculinity.

Zorba must live in his own world and is therefore outside of the world the narrator resides in.

In other, more primitive and creative ages, Zorba would have been the chief of a
tribe. He would have gone before, opening up the path with a hatchet. Or else he
would have been a renowned troubadour visiting castles, and everybody would have
hung on his words ­­ lords and ladies and servants… In our ungrateful age, Zorba
wanders hungrily round the enclosures like a wolf, or else sinks into becoming some
pen­pusher’s buffoon. (Kazantzakis: 1952, 74)

It is not clear if Zorba also feels himself to be at odds with the world around him. Part of his intoxicating

nature is implicitly ingrained in his ability to be only himself, regardless of the situations or places he finds

himself. “Zorba is the authentic, almost forgotten Greek self...who has the enviable quality that the

educated European lacks: He is in tune with himself.” (Hnaraki, 31) Through his dance Zorba finds the

truth of his world. It is arguable that Zorba does not belong in Greece, or in any part of the world.

Kazantzakis was a Nietzsche scholar and it has been posited that Zorba is a personification of the

‘Übermensch’. This reading of Zorba’s character accords with his seemingly bizarre antics, e.g. when

he punches his old boss for no reason. He is a man in the world but he lives according to his own rules.

It is no surprise then that Zorba often finds himself unable to communicate with others.

Zorba gets caught up in the trickery of language and is so emotionally enthralled in his stories
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that he often finds it too difficult to express himself in words. Dance is the purest and most truthful

expression of oneself since it incorporates the soul and the body in its statement of a story or feelings.

Dance is both a language, a tool for expression but also an outlet through which the inexpressible can be

expressed. “What came over you to make you dance like that?” “What could I do, boss? My job was

choking me. I had to find some outlet. And what sort of outlet? Words? Pff!” (Kazantzakis; 1952, 71)

Unlike the bookish and intellectual narrator Zorba does not bottle up his feelings. He lives truly and

honestly with no self­repression or shame. His comment that words would not be a suitable outlet for his

joy is striking especially in comparison to narrator’s seeming inability to do anything other than write. His

obsession with his manuscript is maintained throughout the story even though his intention in going to

Crete, in part, was to leave that aspect of himself on the mainland. “Escape from Buddha, rid myself by

words of all my metaphysical cares and free my mind from vain anxiety; Make direct and firm contact

with men, starting from this very moment.”(Kazantzakis; 1952, 55) The narrator is a different man than

Zorba and the part of himself that he needs to let go of is not the writer in him but the coward, the man

who can only write. In the end of the novel it is through writing that the narrator pays homage to Zorba

and finds the balance between east and west within himself.

Dance is also a central part of Greek culture. In traditional Greek culture men express their

masculinity through the performance of dance. Their embodiment and expression of kefi is the social

spirit and connectedness of the men in the community. But it is also a deeply personal thing, directly tied

to their self expression as men. “The configurations of kefi, body and spirits just described are clearly a

male prerogative. These performances are, moreover, fundamentally about masculinity, male

experience, and male relationships.” (Cowan, 112­113) The acting out of ones kefi is partly wild

abandonment to the dance but at the same time an extremely conscious act. “He [the dancer] is at the
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center of the performance. This is when he ‘makes’ or ‘acts out’ his kefi (kani to kefi tu), all the while

appearing ­ and making sure he appears ­ oblivious to all around him.” (Cowan, 109) The kefi is

self­expression and also an intentional gesture of release. In the novel this traditional masculine dance

appears in the character of the shepherd, Sifakas, who appears in chapter 22 during Easter. Sifakas

embodies Kazantzakis expression of the kefi. Sifakas is described as “wild and yet self­disciplined”

(Kazantzakis: 1952, 243) Kazantzakis emphasizes Sifakas’s masculinity by juxtaposing him against the

narrator during the stoning of the widow. The narrator sees the villages traditional ways of handling the

blood feud as barbaric and old fashioned. The boss implores Sifakas to have pity on the woman and

Sifakas laughs in his face. The blood feud represents a cultural expression of masculinity and Sifakas

participates in it as a member of the village, and as a man. The narrator views this scene from a Western

perspective and disapproves of their actions. What is striking is Sifakas’s response to the perceived

effeminacy of the narrator: “D’you take me for a woman? Asking me to have pity! I’m a man!”

(Kazantzakis: 1952, 243) To have pity is to be effeminate. In this way it appears Sifakas is equating the

boss’s Westernness, his sympathy for the widow, with the feminine. Sifakas is a man and knows his

place and his duty as such. This form of traditional masculinity is included in the boss’s transcendence at

the end of the novel. Like Zorba, who steps in to defend the widow, the narrator’s transformation

places him in a new position compared to the villagers. He becomes this new form of masculinity, of

Greek­ness, which Hnaraki describes as the new life of the narrator, and the new life of Greece. “He

[the boss] wrote a book on him [Zorba]...succeeding, once more, Greece’s mission toward western

civilization throughout the ages: To bring together the eastern instinct (pathos) with the western

reasoning (logic).” (2009, 33)

Unlike the dances during the wedding celebrations Cowan describes, and somewhat contrary to
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Kazantzakis’s Sifakas, Zorba uses his dance in entirely unstructured settings. There is the same

eghoismos the purpose and aim of the dance has shifted. The men and boys that are the object of the

anthropologist's gaze and the shepherd are situated within strict cultural settings, traditionally public

performances. Their performances of masculinity are, as noted earlier, exactly that. They are strictly

performances. The are selfless in so far as the men are dancing for the community but they are equally

selfish. They tread the line between complete self­awareness and escape from self­constraint. While

removing the shackles of the community by their self­expression they are also performing for it. The

double nature of this type of performance appears to be a counterpoint to Zorba’s dance. He

wholeheartedly performs the wild aspect of the kefi, but more importantly he embodies the “morally

ambivalent qualities of eghoismos,” (Cowan, 111) or as Campbell puts it, “sentiment of self­regard.”

(1964, 307) Zorba is Zorba and can only be Zorba. The community aspect of the kefi is mostly lost on

him because he is the only man in his universe. “All the rest are ghosts, I tell you. When I die,

everything’ll die. The whole Zorbatic world will go to the bottom!” (K, 54) His dance is just another

expression of his pure Zorba­ness. The egoistic nature of this dance is pure self­expression.

Zorba’s dance expresses these emotions that Zorba feels will overcome him. Zorba explains this

to Boss by attempting to telling him the story of his first son’s death. Zorba danced in order to not “have

gone mad ­­ from grief” (Kazantzakis: 1952, 72) He uses dance as a release from overwhelming

emotions. Zorba’s dance is also a means of communication. It is the most universal language, capable of

communicating across language barriers, and expressing the most true sentiment of the dancer. It is

through dance that Zorba can communicate to his Russian friend. The true communication that rises

above oral language. “Anything we couldn’t say with our mouths we said with our feet, our hands, our

belly or with wild cries: Hi! Hi! Hop­la! Ho­heigh!” (Kazantzakis: 1952, 73) Zorba has found a way to
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remove dance from its cultural constraints. He speaks through his body the same way other men speak

through their mouths. His dance not only expresses his emotions and his masculinity, but also his

experiences. This is possible because Zorba is not mind or body but mind AND body. “The way his

body and soul formed one harmonious whole, and all things ­­ women, bread, water, meat, sleep ­­

blended happily with his flesh and became Zorba.” (Kazantzakis: 1952, 132) Zorba’s language is not

tied down to one tongue or another. His body possesses his life as much as his mind and for that reason

he is not bound to oral expression, to speak a specific language. Zorba believes his bodily expression is

not just ideal for him but for all men. He admonishes others for allowing their bodies to lose their

potency:

They’ve let their bodies become mute and they only speak with their
mouths. But what do you expect a mouth to say? What can it tell you? If
only you could have seen how the Russian listened to me from head to
foot and how he followed everything!
(Kazantzakis: 1952, 73)

In this personal language, which is also completely universal, Zorba’s dance represents an aspect of the

kefi. The fraternal bond between Zorba and the Russian allows them to communicate through their

dance.

This same bond exists between Zorba and the Boss. Their journeys, both individually and

together, may involve women but they are necessarily the journeys of men. For Kazantzakis women

play the role of the “other”.3 Zorba’s world is a purely masculine one in which women play a role similar

to bread or sleep. They are an unfortunate, yet oft’ times pleasing, necessity of life. Because of this

placement of women among means of sustenance Zorba’s true relationships are those with other men.

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Women are human but experience the world in such a different way that for Zorba they may as well be other. “If
women are human beings or not?’ ‘Oh! That’s settled!’ answered Zorba, waving his hand. “A woman’s human, too, a
human like us­­only worse!” (Kazantzakis: 1952, 178)
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The narrator learns a lot about Zorba’s world from their life together on the island.

At the end of Chapter 19 the narrator imagines Zorba as Zeus, potent, virile, life­giving, and

Dame Hortense as the Earth. Kazantzakis employs women in the novel to achieve a counterpoint the

male characters. They have no real dialogue and possess no being outside of the cursory treatment of

the narrator. All in all, they are mostly satellite characters, as important to the men of the novel as food

or wine. Petropoulou recognizes something similar in her treatment of the gender in the novel:

The question of the Other as a correlate of the Self appears when

Women are distinctly other and cannot partake in the world of men, in Zorba’s world, or the world of

dancing; of masculine performance. The stage Kazantzakis builds for the evolution of the narrator is

populated by an all male cast. It is important to remember that a traditional form of masculinity is

expressed through performance. Butler argues that “There is no gender identity behind the expressions

of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its

results.” (Butler, 25) The women of the novel serve as a counterpoint to the men’s expressive gender

performances.

The only direct interaction the narrator has with a woman, Dame Hortense aside, is the widow.

It can be argued that his plea to Sifakas to take pity on her is based in his own feelings for her. These

feelings help justify the claim to blood feud that the men of the village take against her. She is a

seductress, who introduces the carnal pleasures of the world to the narrator. To him the woman is a

“wild beast.” (Kazantzakis:1952. 236) Their relations initiate the release of his repressed self and he is

able to let go of the problems that hounded him. This carnal event coincides with the boss finishing his
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manuscript on Buddha. At this point on his journey he has begun to shed the more Western aspects of

his life and moves into the position of a true novice of Zorba’s. It may seem that the Boss, who at the

beginning of the story does not dance, resides in a position to Zorba more similar to his female

conquests. The boss, however, is more similar to a boy than women. He is distinctly male but has not

learned how to express his masculinity. His journey, with Zorba as his Virgil, leads him to dance, and to

the masculine performance and self expression that entails. The narrator originally treats all bodily

related activities in the same vein. He is resistant to the pleasures of the flesh, even going as far as to say

he had despised them for many years. The body’s needs are seen as shameful to him, and so sex, food,

and dance (self­expression) had been repressed by his Western ideology of the purity of the soul. Zorba

introduces him to the world of pleasure, the Dionysian.

Like the narrator, Greece is understood as torn between east and west but also the place of the

synthesis of the two. The dance presented in the film is arguably a contrived and westernized exemplar

of life in Greece. “We will argue that this dance is an invented ‘Western­orientated’ dance, loaded with

specific ideological messages aimed at balancing the rhetoric of the East and West, prevalent in the

Greek context.” (Zografou, 118) This understanding of Zorba’s dance specifically references the dance

as the portrayed in the film but is still valid in its understanding of the unstable situation Greek culture

finds itself in. In the novel Zorba starts of the boss’s lesson by teaching him the Zéimbékiko, “a wild,

military dance.” (Kazantzakis; 1952, 290) In the film more recognizable choreography was chosen and

the actors dance a mix between a traditional Cretan dance, the syrtos, and a hasapiko dance. The

hasapiko was chosen in order to be recognizable to western audiences. Many dances similar to the

hasapiko “(hora, kasapsko horo, kasaska, etc)” (Zografou, 125) contain elements, choreographic

patterns, that feel at home both in Greece and in the West. Zografou and Pateraki point out that the
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choice of dance was not entirely based on inculcating a western feel to the dance but also because the

Zéimbékiko itself “would be technically prohibitive.” (2007, 125). The dance is an excellent choice of

Zorba’s to indoctrinate the narrator into dance since it requires what Herzfeld terms “cultural intimacy”

(2004). Both the narrator and Zorba live in their own world, one of ideas and one of reality. Zorba lives

in the real world but it is still to his view a “Zorbatic world.” (Kazantzakis; 1952, 54) In addition to the

cultural implications of a foreign actor performing the Zéimbékiko the dance itself is also a more

complicated dance than the hasapiko. The hasapiko is “permeated by a symbolic context of familiarity,

joyfulness, and solidarity.” (Zografou, 125) The dance as a visual trope contains the familiar and also the

exotic without estranging the western audience.

The dance Zorba teaches the boss serves as a bridge between the western and the eastern,

both by connecting the western viewer to the eastern film but also by combining the disparate parts of

the narrator. “Despite the deeply European orientation of the dance, Zorba’s dance stands­­ as a

stereotype at least ­­ for the celebration of the East, the celebration of human passion, and the

enjoyment of earthly desires.” (Zografou, 127) By appealing to the western audience Zorba’s dance on

the silver screen “is an invented ‘Western­oriented’ dance, loaded with specific ideological messages

aimed at balancing the rhetoric of the East and West, prevalent in the Greek context.” (Zografou, 118)

These ideological messages are the invisible dimension of the dance that Zografou and Pateraki argue

fills the act out as a “holistic entity.” (2007; 117)

The story of Zorba and the narrator comes to a climax when Boss asks Zorba to teach him to

dance. The next day they part ways for the first, and last, time. Zorba has imparted his most meaningful

wisdom. He has taught the narrator how to dance, and through that dance, how to be a man. In order to

learn the dance the boss must give up his Western ideals of success. It is only after their project fails
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miserably and they have nothing left for them on Crete that the narrator is ready to dance. The narrator

is no longer caught up in the trivial minuteness of the worries of lesser men. does not become Zorba but

Zorba brings out the narrator’s own flavor of masculinity.

The boss becomes the master of his intellect. “His Apollonian powers, hitherto either paralyzed

or misdirected,can now turn to the task of redeeming Dionysiac reality, rescuing Zorba from

dissolution.” (Bien, 155) He is no longer at the whim of his manuscripts but in control of the world he

inhabits. His journey, and his relationship to Zorba, become the text that follows this journey. The book

becomes an ode to Zorba, “an Apollonian parable of Dionysiac knowledge, the classically pure third

mode.” (Bien, 162) This third mode is similar to the position of Greece itself, caught between the East

and West. The boss moves into the space left between the two and asserts himself as a Grecian man.

The narrator’s journey is towards a new form of masculinity for himself and for Greece. By

asking Zorba to teach him how to dance the boss is asking him to familiarize or refamiliarize that part of

himself that has been lost to the repressed Western/Apollonian life of the intellectual. The boss must

learn how to be a corporeal being but this lesson does not come at the expense of the narrator’s mind.

He is not supposed to become Zorba, since to a certain extent Zorba does not belong in this world. He

achieves the necessary balance between the East and West. He serves as an exemplar of the new

Greece. He may never dance again but it is through dance, and other bodily experiences, that the

narrator learns to live in the world. Without Zorba the narrator would have spent his life caught up in his

manuscript on Buddha, forever despising the pleasures of the flesh. However, in the same way Virgil

must return to hell after guiding Dante through the many levels, Zorba must leave the boss once he has

found his body. The narrator cannot live life as Zorba but Zorba teaches him how to live his life as a true
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man, “how to face the contradictions...with happy disposition.” (Hnaraki, 33) The boss learns to

acknowledge, but also control his Dionysian enthusiasm.

There are many forms of masculinity in the novel, both traditional and nontraditional. The

narrator is presented with many ways of living life as a man: like Sifakas, Zorba, or even the sailors from

the opening scenes. But the reader knows he has become a true man when his performance of his

masculinity because uniquely his. The boss is neither Zorba nor any other kind of man and he leaves the

traditional forms of masculine performance to the villagers. Dance, in both forms it is presented,

becomes the catalyst for the maturation of the narrator.

WORKS CITED

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Routledge, 1990.
Campbell, John Kennedy. Honour, Family, and Patronage; a Study of Institutions and Moral Values in
a Greek Mountain Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
Cowan, Jane K. “Wedding Celebrations.” In Dance and The Body Politic in Northern Greece, 16.
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Herzfeld, Michael. Cultural Intimacy : Social Poetics in the Nation­State. 2nd ed. New York:
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(2009): 25–35. doi:10.2298/GEI0902025H.
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———. Zorba the Greek. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1952.
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Zografou, Magda, and Mimina Pateraki. “The ‘Invisible’ Dimension of Zorba’s Dance.” Yearbook for
Traditional Music 39 (January 1, 2007): 117–131. doi:10.2307/20465014.