Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis by Helen Kazantzakis ;

Published byzantakis Simon and Schuster ; Pages 589 ;

Price US $ 12/-

 **********************************************************************

The world over many are aware of Zorba the the Greek—especially after the film where Anthony Quinn performs the role of Zorba and dances delightfully. But very few are aware of the author Nikos Kazantzakis ---who is a rich and powerful writer.

What Kazantzakis wrote about Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”------"it is all wind, sea, light, joy""--is applicable to his work as well. "Kazantzakis was to believe more and more in the omnipotence of the spirit: If one knows how to desire a thing, one obtains it. One even creates it out of the void. . ." .

The book under review is written by his wife and is based on his letters to her and to his friends, reproductions of which fill up much of the text. In essence, this "spirit" mentioned above was embodied in Kazantzakis’s Grecian heritage, Christianity, and the idea of world revolution. Kazantzakis spent a great deal of his life in salvation-minded journeys through contemporary history: Lenin's Russia, the Spanish Civil War, the eruptions in Asia. It is the contradictory pull between his own ravaging individualism and his commitment to the masses that has made him seem intellectually suspect. Kazantzakis remains less a modern figure than a nineteenth-century giant attempting to stave off the technological era.

Kazantzákis was born during the period of revolt of Crete against rule by the Ottoman Empire, and his family fled for a short time to the Greek island of Náxos. He studied law at the University of Athens and philosophy under Henri Bergson in Paris. He then travelled widely in Spain, England, Russia,Egypt, Palestine, and Japan, settling before World War II on the island of Aegina. He served as a minister in the Greek government and worked for Unesco. He then moved to France.

Kazantzákis’ works cover a vast range, including philosophic essays, travel books, tragedies, and translations into modern Greek of such classics as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Goethe’s Faust.He produced lyric poetry and the epic Odyssey, a sequel to the epic of Homer--- that expresses the full range of Kazantzákis philosophy.He became famous, however, during the last years of his life, when he turn to prose. He is best known for his widely translated novels. They include Zorba the Greek, a portrayal of a passionate lover of life and poor-man’s philosopher;Freedom or Death, a depiction of Cretan Greeks’ struggle against their Ottoman overlords in the 19th century;The Greek Passion; andThe Last Temptation of Christ, a revisionist psychological study of Jesus.

Kazantzakis, much more of a philosopher than a writer, was deeply influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Bergson, and the philosophies of Christianity, Marxism and Buddhism.

His book, The Last Temptation of Christ, was considered quite controversial when first published in 1955, and prompted angry reactions from both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.

In 1956, in Vienna, he was awarded the International Peace Award.

He died in 1957 in Germany and is buried on one of the bastions of the Venetian fort surrounding Iraklion.

The 50th anniversary of the death of Nikos Kazantzakis was selected as main motif for a high value Euro collectors' coins; the €10 Greek Nikos Kazantzakis commemorative coin, minted in 2007.

He published his first work, the romantic novella Serpent and Lily (1906), shortly after receiving his law degree. Kazantzakis began to concentrate his energies on the completion of his most ambitious work, the massive verse epic The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Having created the first version of the poem between 1924 and 1927, he completely rewrote it four times in the next eleven years, altering the content to reflect his own disillusionment with political solutions as well as his increasing concern for the spiritual well-being of modern humanity.

Already well known as a political activist, cultural ambassador, and translator, Kazantzakis gained popular success as a novelist with the publication of Zorba the Greek in 1946. The author, professed a deep admiration for Zorba, whom he felt “possessed ‘the broadest soul, the soundest body, and the freest cry I have known in my life.” The novel's narrator is accepted by critics as Kazantzakis's self-portrait as an artist and philosopher.

The controversy regarding Kazantzakis's heterodox Christianity began with the publication of his next novel,The Greek Passion, in which the modern Christian church is depicted as an ossified institution that has ceased to embody the teachings of Christ. Kazantzakis further developed this theme with The Last Temptation of Christ , a psychological study of Jesus. A surrealistic fictional biography of Christ, whom Kazantzakis considered to be the supreme embodiment of man's battle to overcome his sensual desires in pursuit of a spiritual existence, the novel focuses on what Kazantzakis imagines as the psychological aspects of Jesus's character and how Christ overcomes his human limitations to unite with God.

Despite harsh criticism of his theological viewpoint, Kazantzakis enjoyed popular and critical acclaim throughout this latter portion of his career, and in 1957, the year of his death from complications of lymphoma, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Kazantzakis's writing is often appraised as a single body that reveals the author's philosophical and spiritual values. Most critics agree that his writings are at least partially autobiographical. But although Kazantzakis's works seek to reconcile the dualities of human nature—mind and body, affirmation and despair, even life and death—some critics have suggested that the author's ultimate concern lies more in striving to overcome inherent human conflicts than in resolving them.

Critics suggest that philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson strongly influenced Kazantzakis's thought. Both Serpent and Lily, which focused on a young man's struggle to balance the physical and spiritual elements of his love for a woman, and The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, an essay in which the author explains his early philosophical concerns, display these influences.

Late in his career, Kazantzakis explored the spiritual plight of mankind. This concern is most explicitly manifested in Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. In the former, Kazantzakis presented two characters who exemplify the poles of the conflict, Zorba representing a sensual figure, while the man known as “the boss” embodies more high-minded traits. In The Last Temptation of Christ, the conflict is portrayed as the essential dilemma of Christ, who is torn between his wish to serve God and his physical appetites. Characteristically, Kazantzakis does not attempt to present a resolution to the sensual-spiritual conflict in these novels. Zorba and his boss learn from their exchange of ideas but part essentially unchanged, while Christ, even as he is sacrificing himself on the cross, dreams of leading the sensually satisfying life of an ordinary man.

Kazantzakis is an outstanding thinker and a great thinker who fought for what he believed in.

P.P.Ramachandran

24/05/2020.