George Zorbas


Georgios Zorbas was a Greek miner upon whom Nikos Kazantzakis based Alexis Zorbas, the protagonist of his 1946 novel Zorba the Greek.

Biography

He was born in 1865 in Kolindros, Sanjak of Salonica, Ottoman Empire. He was the son of Photios Zorbas, a wealthy landowner and sheep-owner and had three siblings; a sister, Katerina, and two brothers, Ioannis and Xenophon. He worked in his fields and flocks at Katafygi, became a woodcutter, and later left for Palaiochori, Chalkidiki, where he spent the most decisive years of his life, 1889–1911. He worked as a miner for a French company in Gisvoro and became friends with the foreman, Giannis Kalkounis. He eloped with Kalkounis's daughter Eleni and eventually had eight children. By the end of this period, war and the death of his wife brought great unhappiness to his family.
After all this, he left Palaiochori for Eleftherohori, Pieria, only 8 km from Kolindros, where his brother Ioannis, a doctor, lived. In 1915, he decided to become a monk and left for Mount Athos. It was there that he met Nikos Kazantzakis and they become close friends. They went to Mani together, where they worked as miners in Prastova. It was their experiences here that Kazantzakis later wrote into The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas, later translated as Zorba the Greek and also adapted into Zorba musical and an Academy Award-nominated film, Zorba the Greek wherein his role was played by Anthony Quinn.
His eventful life continued in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he settled in 1922 with his 10 years old daughter Catherine. He bought mines near Niš and near Skopje and began to deal with mining. In 1940 his daughter married a wealthy merchant with whom he went to live in Belgrade. He died on September 16, 1941, and was buried in the cementry of Vodno near Skopje. Because of the change of the urban plans, the bones of Zorbas were transferred in 1954 to the Butel cemetery, near Skopje. His great-grandson was rock musician Pavlos Sidiropoulos.