The Cretan Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) both was and is a lot of things – novelist, poet, playwright, translator, journalist, activist, politician, Communist (or, as he would’ve liked it, MetaCommunist), husband, son, literary icon, pariah and cultural figurehead, greatly debated both throughout his lifetime and now, in comparative literature departments and Greek studies. Inescapably prolific, his output encompasses a score of texts, ranging from historical fiction (Alexander the Great) to Christian (or, arguably, Christian-sceptic) novels (Christ Recrucified), and even philosophical texts (Symposium) and almost-gothic diary-inspired novels (The Serpent and The Lily). [1] And, while writing these, he found the time to marry (twice), travel for years around Greece and the world, and even be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine separate times – while equally involving himself in the politics of his day. [2] He never stopped – and he merits just as much attention from foreign shores as he receives on the Greek mainland.
Kazantzakis’ political involvement begins early, in 1909, when, at the age of twenty-six, he published a manifesto on linguistic reform, encouraging the abandonment of Katharevousa Modern Greek – a Greek dialect that bridges Ancient and Modern Greek, and which art was traditionally written in – in favour of Demotic Modern Greek, which was more ‘modern’, in the general sense, because it actually sounded like the Greek people spoke in the streets. The next year, he continued in this vein, supporting Ion Dragoumis, a strong proponent of Demotic Greek, in his essay For Our Youth – and his works were all written in Demotic Greek, too, in support of this. [3] Clearly, his politics can be pared down to the very linguistic make-up of his work – as we shall see further.
He then becomes more explicitly political, as it were. In 1919, Prime Minister of Greece, Venizelos, appointed him as the Director General of the Ministry of Welfare, charging him with bringing 150,000 Greeks back to Greece from the Bolsheviks in the Caucasus. He equally played a part in the Versailles negotiations in the same year, and it was during his travels through mainland Europe that he ‘gained’ his ‘communist sympathies’ in Berlin, under the influence of Rahel Lipstein and other radical women in the city. [4] This is when he started learning Russian, intending to move to the USSR with his wife, Galatea Alexiou, whom he wrote to extensively about his feelings surrounding his ‘enlightenment’: [5]
‘The new face of my God, as I have often written to you, is a Worker who is hungry, who works and rises up in revolt. A Worker who smells of tobacco and wine, a dark, strong one full of desires and thirst for revenge. … My God is tough, full of passion and will, uncompromising, unyielding. The Earth is his field, heaven and Earth are one.’
Then, it all ramped up further. Due to his involvement in Communist circles in Iraklion in 1925, he was arrested for twenty-four hours, the experience inspiring his writing of Cantos 1-6 of his Odyssey and his departure for the Soviet Union. [6] He travelled throughout Europe, interviewing various politicians (including Mussolini) and writing articles about the USSR for Elephtheros Logos, and then, in 1927, as a special guest of the Soviet government, he travelled to Russia (as seen by his travel documents) on the tenth anniversary of the Communist Revolution, delivering a speech at a Peace Symposium and meeting Panait Istrati there, with whom he addressed the Alhambra Theatre on 11th January 1928 about the Soviet experiment, leading to a demonstration and threats of legal action.
His love affair with the USSR continued. He wrote films on the Russian Revolution, the life of Lenin, and began lecturing on the USSR in Berlin. Working as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, he then became more actively political in 1945, leading the Socialist Workers’ Movement, and was sworn in as Minister without Portfolio in the Sofoulis government. This was short-lived, however – when the democratic and socialist parties united, Kazantzakis resigned. Such a dangerous figure Kazantzakis had come, it seems, that right-wing extremists threatened to burn the theatre down at the opening of his Capodistria, and he was effectively banned from Greece, forced to stay in France and Britain while unsuccessfully attempting to convince British intellectuals to form an Internationale of the Spirit.
And his difficulties only grew because of his politics. In 1953, the Orthodox Church in Greece tried to prosecute him for ‘sacrilege’ in his novels Kapetan Mihalis and The Last Temptation – even though the latter had not even been published in Greece. [7] His translations were refused publication, and he was ostracised, spending much of his time travelling outside of Greece, which culminated in a trip to China as a guest of the Chinese government, with his wife, Eleni Samiou (as pictured above).
In 1957, on 26th October, at the age of seventy-four, Kazantzakis died after a vaccination in China turned his arm gangrenous and he caught Asiatic flu. The leukaemia that he had earlier been diagnosed with likely also contributed to his death. He was buried in Crete, in the tomb pictured, after great outcry from the public at the Orthodox Church’s refusal of burial, and his epitaph, famous even now, read as follows:
δην ἐλπιζω τιποτα. δην φονυμαι τιποτα. εἰμαι ἐλεφθερος.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
As a modern Greek, Kazantzakis was extensively aware of the ancient Greek tradition behind his culture, and he didn’t shy away from utilising that tradition in his literature – one only has to glimpse at his first novella, The Serpent and The Lily, to see the extensive Classical allusion present there. [8] An interesting sub-section of this, though, is his use of Classical material to display his politics, which is extensive.
A first example would be his The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1958), which forfeits the final book of Homer’s Odyssey and replaces it with a class revolution against Odysseus, the tyrannical king who has just murdered 108 suitors brutally, along with the maids. Indeed, the text continues to show Stalin as a revolutionary in Egypt, and combines modern Communist politics with ancient worlds and characters, and his words are so rousing as to strike a chord even now, as seen here:
The crowd shuddered, tossed between two scorching fires;
from ancient times their backs had bent to the cruel yoke –
much bitter gall, dark horrors, hands made stiff and tough
at their lord’s rowbench sometimes, then at the hard plow –
how might the enslaved soul ever raise its head in pride?
But now among downtrodden hearts a cry burst out
as frightened freedom opened her still tender mouth
because an armless man dared speak, because the first
bold voice was heard opposing the soul-grabbing king:
‘No! We shall not bow down! Our turn has come, man-slayer!’ [9]
Another text to consider would be his At The Palaces of Knossos (1988), which digests the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for a young audience (this was intended for publication in a youth magazine) as steeped in revolutionary ideas – Theseus the Communist saviour, arriving to free Knossos from the tyranny of Minos. [10] This is graded up to an older audience in his Kouros (1969), which equally takes the same myth and makes the political undertones all the more remarkable. [11]
All of this is perhaps understandable, for an author who proclaimed his mission of enlightenment, of education, of political activism in his written word. And it only seems fitting to end this profile with the words he said to Pierre Sipriot on Paris Radio on 6th May 1955, when asked about the author’s mission:
‘A true novelist cannot but live the reality of his own times, and in doing so become aware of his responsibilities. He thus attempts to help his fellow men to face up to and solve the pressing problems of the day to the greatest possible extent. In as far as a contemporary work of literature reflects the times in which we live, it is necessarily one of the most subtle and effective forms of action. Or rather it itself can become the seed of action. Provided that a novelist is aware of his mission, he tries to push reality to adopt the form he judges to be the most fitting for man. In other more balanced, self-confident times, beauty could suffice to fulfil the author’s ideal. The writer of today, if he is truly alive, is someone who suffers and worries at the sight of reality. He is led to co-operate with all the still-surviving powers of light to advance man’s burdensome destiny a little. The modern writer, if he is true to his mission, is a fighter.’ [12]
This profile was written by Anna Coopey
References
[1] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Theodora Vasils) (1982): Alexander the Great: A Novel (Ohio University Press); Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Bruno Cassirer) (1954): Christ Recrucified (Faber & Faber)l Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Theodora & Themi Vasils) (1974): Symposium (Thomas Y Crowell & Co); Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Theodora Vasils) (1992): The Serpent and The Lily (University of California Press).
[2] For an extensive online archive of information about Nikos’ life, see Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive
[3] For more on Demotic and Katharevousa Greek, and Ion Dragoumis, great proponent of the former, see The Hellenic Communication Service LLC website page on ‘Ion Dragoumis, The Misguided Patriot’
[4] For more information on Rahel Lipstein, cf. Weil, Renate (1988): Burned, Banned, Forgotten: Small Encyclopaedia of German-Speaking Women Writers, 1933 to 1945, Second Edition (Pahl-Rugenstein) pp. 134-135; For Lipstein and Kazantzakis’ correspondence, see Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive.
[5] Nikos’ letters can be found in full in Eleni Kazantzakis’ (Samiou) biography of him, see Kazantzakis, Eleni (trans. Amy Mims) (1968): Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on his Letters (Simon & Schuster).
[6] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Kimon Friar) (1958): The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (Simon & Schuster)
[7] cf. Estia (22-01-1954): Books Reviles Crete and Religion, accessed through Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive – in the next year, the Pope placed the novel on the Roman Catholic Index of Forbidden Books, to which Kazantzakis telegraphed ‘ad tuum, Domine, tribunal appello’, a quote from Tertullian.
[8] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Theodora Vasils) (1992): The Serpent and The Lily (University of California Press).
[9] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Kimon Friar) (1958): The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (Simon & Schuster) – 1.332-341.
[10] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Theodora & Themi Vasils) (1988): At The Palaces of Knossos (Ohio University Press).
[11] Kazantzakis, Nikos (trans. Athena Gianakas Dallas) (1969): Three Plays: Christopher Columbus, Melissa, Kouros (Simon & Schuster).
[12] Access audio file here through the Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive — Translation taken from the Archive.
