The Cretan Glance: The World and Art of Nikos Kazantzakis Author(s): Morton P.

Levitt Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2, Nikos Kazantzakis Special Number (1971 1972), pp. 163-188 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831088 . Accessed: 16/01/2012 07:12
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MORTON P. LEVITT
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

The The Nikos

Cretan Glance: Art and World Kazantzakis

of

"There is a kind of flame in Crete-let us call it'soul'-something more powerful than either life or death. There is pride, obstinacy, valor, and together with these something else inexpressible and imponderable, something which makes you rejoice that you are a human being, and at the same time tremble." Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco.

far greaterthan the critical. Littlesignificantcriticismof his work has editionsof severalof his novels appearedin English, the paperbound yet and the two films made from them-Dassin's He Who MustDie and musicalversion Cacoyannis'Zorbathe Greek,as well as the Broadway of the latter-have reached increasingly wide audiences.The situation in Greece is still more perverse:the eleven American editionsto date of The Odyssey:A ModernSequel have sold overeightythousandcopies, but in Greece, where the academic communityhas continuallycriticized the popularnatureof Kazantzakis' the originaleditionof three art, it firstappearedin 1938. The ironywould hundreddid not sell out when the have pleased the poet; as KimonFriar, who translated epic, has said of the Odyssey, "The intellectualsof Athenscannot understand this; I it to the boatmenand fishermen,and they have no trouble."' give

INAMERICA,in Greece, the popular reputation of Nikos Kazantzakisis as

1 Citedin an interview with KimonFriar, 18, 1966, in Athens.Whenthe Odysseywas finallypublished, July More recentGreekeditionshave sold well, MacLeod. it was in a privateedition paid for by MissJosephine workshadbeenpublished to however,particularly youngpeople.Atthe timeof his deathin 1957, Kazantzakis' in some thirtylanguages.

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wrote an If the intellectualscomplained, it was because Kazantzakis extremeversionof the folk tongue, the Demotiki,rather thanthe formal if and scholarly Katharevousa; the sailors rejoiced, it was because the in his choice of dialects capturedso well what we call vitalityimplicit the the popularimagination.ForKazantzakis, greatestnovelistof modern Greece and one of the foremostmen of lettersof an admirableEuropean generation,somehow retaineda sense of identitywith the common people of his own land that is translatedin his books into an identification with all men. Inthis he clearlytranscendsThomasMann, with whom he is sometimes compared; he transcendseven James Joyce, creatorof the greatcommon man; he is, in a way, unique.And this uniqueness develops because beneath his Europeanculture, beneatheven his Greeknationality, Kazantzakis thatmosthistorically was individualof beings, a Cretan.In leavinghis homelandin his youthand to returning it only in his fictionand verse, in fusing its culturewith the broaderEuropean civilizationand thus creatinga new and strangeand sometimesterrifyingly beautifulhybrid,Kazantzakis merelyplaying was out the role of the Cretanartist.2Likethe great Renaissancepainters from the island who spread their own version of Byzantineartto the Continentafterthe fall of Constantinople-the name adoptedby one of of them, ElGreco, suggeststhe continuingstrength the Cretaninfluence the self-exile, never escaped the force of his heritage. -Kazantzakis, The Cretan influence-he called it "the Cretanglance"-is apparent his throughout canon, even in those books which seem in no way to be concerned with Crete: not only in Zorba the Greek and Freedomor Death,which are set on the island,or even in TheGreekPassion,which deals with a similar historicalsituation;but also in Saint Francis,set entirely in Italy,the Odyssey, which moves throughoutthe Mediterraneanto centralAfricaand the Antarctic,and The LastTemptation of whose events ostensiblytake place in BiblicalPalestine. Christ, It was The Last Temptationwhich led the Greek Orthodox Archwithin his province. bishop of Athens to refuse burialto Kazantzakis And so the poet returnedto Iraklion,the major city of Crete, the

2 "The theories which Kazantzakis took from Nietzsche, Bergson, William James-heroic pessimism, antirationalism, vitalism-are founded in the works of his leading contemporaries: D'Annunzio, Barres, Claudel and Peguy. But the currents of Western thought encountered in Kazantzakis a being who lived in a different historical time and in a country with a low level of civilization." (Pandelis Prevelakis, Nikos Kazantzakis and his Odyssey, trans. Philip Sherrard(Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 26.)

WORLD AND ART OF KAZANTZAKIS

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of Meghalo Kastro his childhoodand of his fiction,to be given a legendaryfuneral.The storygoes that as the coffinwas being loweredintothe the graveon the Martinengo rampart overlooking city, a hugemancame down fromthe hills,a colossus out of one of Kazantzakis' books,and by the Museumat himself performed task. A photographin the Historical shows the coffinbeing handledby fourmen wearingtraditional Iraklion costumes-strong men, but not colossi, typical Cretanvillagers.The legend persists,however, because it so preciselysums up the spiritof both Kazantzakis his islandhomeland.Thisis the same spiritwhich and informsFreedomor Death, his account of the CretanRevoltof 1886. "The human beings in this book, the episodes, and the speech are all true," he wrote to a Scandinavian friend,"even if they appearincredible to people who were born in the light or half-lightof Western
civilization."3

The historyof Creteis unlikethatof any otherWesternnation,a long and virtuallyunbrokensuccession of foreign dominationand unsuccessful revolts.It is said thatfromthe earlythirteenth century,when the island became partof Venice's commercialempire, to the end of the successorswere finallydrivenout, each nineteenth,when her Turkish of Cretanmen married, raiseda son to continuethe line and generation went off to the mountainsto fightthe invaders.The firstuprisingbroke out in 1212, the year the Venetianscame to power;duringtheiroccupation, which lasted until 1669, the populationof the islanddeclined from 500,000 to 200,000.4 Againstthe Turks, therewere ten rebellions in the periodbetween 1770 and 1897 alone; Westerntravelers Crete to

3 Letterto Borje Knos, Antibes, May 5, 1950. Cited in Helen Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on his Letters,trans. Amy Mims (Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 487. 4 Venetian one of the longest power on Crete was effectively ended with the siege of Candia (Meghalo Kastro), in history, which Byron called "Troy's rival" (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Book IV, Canto 14). Resentment against the Venetians was so strong that, after the Turkish invasion, "The Cretan militia refused to fight, and even the warlike Sphakiotes ... did little beyond cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks, whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island, combined with the unpopularity of Latin rule, frustrated the attempt to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders" (William Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge, 1921), pp. 194-5). Turkish rule, of course, eventually became much less humane, although it always allowed a certain freedom in the interior and, as the Venetians had done, a substantial measure of religious freedom. But the Turks were totally unconcerned with public works and allowed most of the Venetian projects to fall into disrepair. In all their harshness and poor administration, however, they never equalled the cruelty of the Venetians in putting down the rebellion of 1362: "the whole plateau of Lasithi was converted into a desert, the peasants were carried off and their cottages pulled down, and the loss of a foot and the confiscation of his cattle were pronounced to be the penalty of any farmer or herdsman who should dare to sow corn there or to use the spot for pasture. This cruel and ridiculous order was obeyed to the letter; for nearly a century one of the most fertile districts of Crete was allowed to remain in a state of nature" (Miller, p. 185). Yet Venetian colonists were so drawn to the island that they invariably adopted its customs and often its religion; some of the most bloody uprisings against Venice were led by the aristocratic families which had been sent to colonize her wealthiest province. The Turks, on the

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MORTON P. LEVITT

duringthis period reportedfindingvillages whose entireadultpopulation was made up of widows.5 ?nosis finally came to Crete in 1913, seventy-fiveyearsafterthe mainlandof Greece hadachieved independence and fifteen years afterthe Turkshad been driven out-the final fromthe so-calledGreatPowers,who delay was caused by interference could not decide quite what to do with the persistent Cretans. Madame the Frenchprostitute Zorbathe Greek,speaksyearningly of of Hortense, the gloriousdays when she passedfromadmiralto admiralin the great international fleet which occupied the island.Therereallywas a Madame Hortense-Kazantzakisknew of her as Fatme,the old attendant at the Turkish baths in the town of Rethymnon6-justas therewere those other whores, the GreatPowers,whose diplomatssided with the Turks at the conference table and whose fleet fired severaltimes on Cretan warriors. The most recentforeignconquest of Cretetook place in April1941, when the 7th GermanParachute Corpslanded on the island.The elite sufferedfearful losses-their nation's worst in the war to that troops date-many of them to untrainednativesarmedonly with their traditional knives and with ancient guns hallowed in other battles.7 The resistance movement which developed duringthe occupation was perit hapsthe mostwidespreadin Europe; was so effectivethatthe Germans were drivento retaliateby destroying dozens of villages,some of which

other hand, encouraged conversions-more for political and economic than for religious reasons-so that, aside from the Pashas and the army garrison, the entire Moslem population of the island was made up of Cretan converts. "Before the outbreaking of the Greek revolution, Crete was the worst governed province of the Turkish Empire;the local authorities were wholly unable to control the license of the Janissaries, who consisted solely of Cretan Mohammedans . . . the horrors and atrocities which were almost of daily occurrence in Crete, had hardly a single parallel throughout the whole extent of the Ottoman Empire"-Robert Pashley, Travels in Crete (Cambridge, 1837), pp. xxi-xxii. 5 Pashley, volume I, p. 121. In Freedom or Death, an old man passes through such a village and enjoins the survivors, "'Courage you women! Didn't the same thing happen to us in 1866? And yet there were a few little children left, and out of them the whole village was rerrewed. As long as there are still a man and a woman, Crete doesn't die!"' (p. 378). 6 She appears in Prevelakis' Chronique d'une Cite. 7 In one of the rare memoirs by a native member of a World War II resistance movement, George Psihoundakis, from the village of Asi Gonia, speaks of the sanctity of such weapons: although some guns were surrendered to the Germans at the beginning of the occupation, "The good ones were hidden away as carefully as sacred relics-holy things to be used at the right time, when the signal of liberation should be given"-The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation (London, 1955), p. 313. "Ce sont surtout les populations de la Crete qui ont porte le poids de cette ultime bataille. Car tous les Cretois, jeunes et vieux, femmes et enfants, ont entrepris de defendre leur Tie, comme au temps des Romains, des Vdnitiens et des Turcs. Les parachutistes allemands ontete leurs premieres victimes.... On estime que 80% des pertes allemandes parmi les troupes parachutees autour de La Canee sont duesa I'action de la population civile"-Raymond Matton, La Crete au cours des siecles (Athens, 1957), pp. 201-202. Some historians believe that the invasion would have failed if the Fifth Cretan Division had not been stranded on the mainland after the Allied evacuation from Greece.

WORLD AND ARTOF KAZANTZAKIS

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had been burneddown by the Venetiansand Turks well. Today,the as of the King and Queen, ubiquitousthroughoutthe rest of portraits Greece-at least untilthe fall of 1967-are often replaced in Creteby picturesof folk heroes, leaders of revoltsagainstthe Turks.Yet it was only on Crete that the recent militarycoup was resistedwith armed force: it was not for the monarchythatthe islandersfought,butfor the theirentirehistory.The new miliof pririciples freedomwhich underlay tary governmentrespondedby preventingthe planned celebrationof the the tenthanniversary the deathof Nikos Kazantzakis: dictatorship of its enemy even in death. recognized timesas well as our Manyof Greece's most vital men, in Renaissance have been Cretans: statesmenas well as artists: Venizelos,the first own, Presidentof modern Greece, as well as El Greco and Kazantzakis.8 Nearlyall have been exiles, nearlyall nourishedby an ancienttradition of hardshipand persecution,of an unrelentingif unsuccessfulstriving for freedom,a traditionwhich set them apartfromother people and in which they gloried.As Kazantzakis it, "Loveof liberty, refusal the to put stalaccept your soul'senslavement,not even in exchangefor paradise; wart games over and above love and pain, over and above death; smashingeven the most sacrosanctof the old moldswhen they are unable to contain you any longer-these are the three great cries of Crete."9 II. To most Westerners, Crete is the landof Minos,the gloriousancient civilization whose greatness and fall are celebrated in the myths of Daedalusand Theseus.ManyCretans,however, know of Knossosonly as an attraction foreigntourists;ancientCretancivilizationseems to to have had no enduringinfluenceon modernCrete.And yet one is surprised at times to find a huge storage jar in some mountainvillage exactly like a Minoanpithos,or to meet a young Cretangirlwho looks like the daughterof one of the court ladies in SirArthur Evans'restored

8Eleutherios Venizelos,bornin Caneain 1864, effectednotonly the unionof CretewithGreece,butalsothe of was the he establishment Greeceas a modernnation.Whenan attempt madein 1935 to restore monarchy, of beginning, course,on Crete.He died the followingyear,like all good organizeda futileseriesof uprisings, as of attitudes, Cretans,in exile. He had been excommunicated the Archbishop Athensfor his republican by for views. Kazantzakis very nearlyexcommunicated his philosophical was 9 Report Greco,trans.PeterA. Bien(Simonand Schuster, to 1965), pp. 440-1.

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frescoes. To Kazantzakis,there was a special glory in the ancient Minoans, a glory differentfrom and perhapsgreaterthan that of their mainlandcousins, the Mycenaeansand theirsuccessors."Creteserved as the firstbridgebetween Europe, Asia, and Africa,"he wrote. "Crete was the firstplace in a then totallydarkEurope become enlightened. to And it was here too thatthe Greeksoul accomplishedits destinedmission: it reduced God to the scale of man. Here in Cretethe monstrous immovablestatuesof Egyptor Assyriabecame small and graceful,with bodies that moved, mouthsthatsmiled;the featuresand statureof God took on the featuresand stature man.A new, originalhumanity of of full and orientalluxurylived and playedon the Cretan soil, a agility,grace, which differedfromthe subsequent This Greeks."10 difference humanity was somehow symbolized in the distinctionsbetween Knossosand the palaces on the mainland:in Knossos,"one does not see the balanced of geometricarchitecture Greece. Reigninghereare imagination, grace, and the free play of man's creative power. This palace grew and proliferatedin the course of time, slowly, like a living organism,a tree. It was not builtonce and forall with a fixed, premeditated plan;it grew by with the ever-renewednecessities additions, playingand harmonizing of the times.... The intellect was useful, but as a servant,not a master."11 The masterherewas God, the spirit,the flame;this,too, is partof the Cretanglance. At the beginningof the Second WorldWar, Kazantzakis returned for a while to Crete, viewed the flying fish on the restoredfresco in the at the who queen's apartment Knossosandthoughtof Christ, ICHTHYS, the same goal: "to transcend man's destiny and unite with sought
God ... with absolute freedom.... What good fortune, I reflected, that

Creteshould have been perhapsthe firstplace on earthto see the birth of this symbol of the soul fightingand dyingforfreedom!Theflyingfish
-behold the soul of struggling, indomitable man! ... Shaken and dis-

turbed,I reflectedthat it is here in this terriblemomentof confrontation between the Cretanand the abyssthatCrete'ssecret lies concealed."12 life It was this secret that Kazantzakis' and work were dedicated to the answeras well as otherformsof the question, uncovering;he found

0 Greco, p. 151. n Greco, p. 149.

12

Greco, pp. 454-5.

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not only in union with the Minoansor with the great,anonymousrebels of his father'sgeneration;he found it also in the artistsof the Cretan Renaissanceof the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies:it is no accident that his spiritualautobiographyis a Reportto Greco, to the man he the called "grandfather," greatestof his precursors.13 III. After the fall of Constantinoplein 1453, the center of Byzantine cultureshiftedto Crete,one of the few Westernoutposts remainingin the Levant.Forthe nexttwo centuries,untilthe Turkish conquest,it was to throughCretethatthis culturewas transmitted Italyand the West. "In the revival of classical scholarshipin the West," writes one scholar, "Cretanmen of lettersoccupy a noteworthyposition. Beginningin the large numberof Cretanintelearly fifteenthcentury... a surprisingly to lectualsspreadover the Mediterranean area,fromSyriain the East as far as Spain in the West. As emigresto WesternEurope,Cretansfilled teaching positions in leading universities, copied manuscriptsfor patronsof virtuallyevery Latincountry, and were closely associated with the early development of the Greek press in Venice and elseof where."14But it was not only as transmitter an inheritedculturethat Creteflourished;by the time Byzantineculturehad passedthroughthe into patternsuniquely Cretan.This is island, it had been transformed in Cretanreligiousart, which incorporates into immediatelyapparent the stylized Byzantine tradition certain naturalisticinnovations of

13 Kazantzakis wrote to Borje Knos from Lugano on July 10, 1955: "Here I'm thinking of beginning the new work, Lettersto Greco. A kind of autobiography- I shall make a confession to my grandfather, El Greco. Yesterday a wise friend came to see me, von der Steinen, and he told me that Petrarchhad written Lettersto Cicero, whom he loved very much. I was pleased. So my idea is not a personal one, but an ancient need of the creator to converse with a beloved dead person in whom he has confidence and to whom he can tell his grief" (Cited in Helen Kazantzakis, p. 534). Of the published work, Prevelakis-Kazantzakis' fellow Cretan and literary executor-has written, "Kazantzakis has here made a myth of his life.... He has confused the dates, put ideal order into his struggles, given harmony to his life. Imagination has given him whatever life denied him. The Report is not an autobiography: it is the chronicle of the fight with the daemon, the mythical preparationfor the Odyssey. It is an ascent affording a magnificent view, the total conception of the world" (p. 167). 14 Deno John Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learningfrom Byzantium to Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 41. Cf. Alexandre Embiricos, La Renaissance Cretois (Paris, 1960, p. 9): "Seule la Crete, colonie v6nitienne, vivant sous une domination civilisee, respire encore avec quelque liberte. Malgr6 bien de la misere et de I'oppression, on peut toujours y cultiver les arts et les lettres. C'est donc de cette seule Tle que I'hellenisme a la possibilit6 de faire encore entendre sa voix." Also Kenneth M. Setton, "The Byzantine Background to the Italian Renaissance," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, c (1956): "... Cretan scholars deserve much credit in the general history of Greek humanism in Italy.... The island of Crete occupies an almost unique position in the history of Italian classical scholarship" (pp. 58-59).

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new Therewere in Westernartand thuscreatessome strikingly forms.15 the sixteenthcentury more than eight hundredfrescoed churchesand the monasterieson the island, and Cretanpaintersworkedthroughout mainland-on MountAthos and the Meteoraas well as in other major the of centers. Little theirworkhas survived: harshness Cretanlife has of always been conducive to the creationof art,but neverto its preservation. Perhapsthis is one reasonthat so many Cretanartistshave gone into exile. El Greco, the greatestof them, is said to have studiedunder Michael Damaskinos,the master of the Cretanschool, and there is some evidence thathe did not leave forVenice untilhe had mastered its we can find in even his maturework this same technique. Certainly and of strangecombinationof naturalism stylization, traditional patterns inspiredby the insightof the creator.16 In literature,too, the most outstandingCretan works representa fusion of the two traditions,Greekand Italian.The masterpieceof the CretanRenaissance,the Erot6kritos Vincenzo Kornaro, of takes a sterit eotypic Italianromanceandtransforms intoa workof bothcharmand The action of the epic is set in Athens, but the Cretannaoriginality. tionalism of the poet is apparentthroughout,and his language is the wonderfullyinventive and easily recognizable Cretandialect, which "deviatesfromAthenianGreekaboutas much as the speech of County The was Galway fromthe B.B.C."17 Erot6kritos the most popularwork of Greek literature into moderntimes; there are still Cretanshepherds

15 "Maisces ont et a peintres gardeleurpersonnalite ils I'ontimprimee leursoeuvresen Creteils ont ajuste cet artnouveaua la tradition "Carles meilleures cretoisesne denotentpas une imitation byzantine." fresques serviledes mod6les,mais, au contraire, peintres,dans I'ex6cution leursoeuvres,font souventpreuve les de d'unegrandeoriginalite d'ungrandespritcreateur"- K.D. Kalokyris, Peinture et "La Murale de Byzantine I'lle de Crete,"Kritika viii Hronika, (1954), pp. 396 and 390. 16 "Danssa vie, dansson nom,dansles livres, danssa technique, dansses oeuvres,on trouveune permanence sublimeou un souvenir stableet actifdu mondehell6nique, sa patrie, sa culture de son esprit. dirait de de et On de telle cetted'Ulysseerrant celle des grecsde la diaspore ou qu'ils'agitde la nostalgiepersistante la patrie, qui viventa I'etranger....Avec une noble fiert6et une admiration la patriehell6niqueil soulignecontinuellede mentqu'il est un Cretois Candie"(Sebastien de de Cirac,"L'Hellenisme Dominique Theotokopoulos-Cr6tois ou Grec," Kritika of Hronika, xv-xvi (1961-2), PartII, pp. 215-6). Seeing an El Greco portrait a saintin the NationalGalleryin London, was convinced"thatthe modelfor this picturemusthave been a GeorgeSeferis Cretan boatman." Andtwo brushstrokes the shoulder, companion on his added,are "likeCretan fifteen-syllable lines."-Seferis, On the GreekStyle:SelectedEssays Poetryand Hellenism in (Boston,1966),pp. 95, 166. 17 Patrick introduction TheCretan to travelers Cretealso commented to Runner, 22. Earlier LeighFermor, p. on the uniqueness the Cretan of dialect. In 1837, the Englishman Robert "AlPashleyobservedwith surprise, withmodernGreekwhen I landedin Crete, Idiscovered, the thoughI thoughtmyselfsufficiently acquainted yet that froma knowledge his language; of veryfirsttime I spokewitha Cretan peasant, I was stillat a greatdistance

and so numerous are its peculiarities that, for some weeks, I had to spend much of my time in endeavouring to render myself familiar with them" -Travels in Crete, p. 11.

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who can recite from memory its more than ten thousandverses.18Its dialect might well have become the national languageof Greece if it had not been for the Turkishconquest-much to the displeasure,no who have for yearsscorned it for its historians, doubt, of Greek literary popularidiom and appeal. The sophisticatedfreedomof Kazantzakis' languageclearly derives from the inventivenessof the Cretandialect: his scholarlydetractors claim that he inventednew wordsand new patthe ternsat will-that he wrote in the maliarf, mostextremeformof the reason-but he seems for its own sake and not for any literary demotic, nato have done no more than follow his native tradition.Kornaro's tionalepic has had a profound effectalso on the local folk idiom,forthe vast and ever-growing directlyto it body of Cretanfolksong often refers or uses it as a model. The subject matterof most of these songs, however, comes not fromthe Italianromancetraditionbut fromrebellions firstagainstthe Venetiansand later againstthe Turks;there is even a substantial body of songswhich grewout of the WorldWarIIresistance, and one suspects that an anti-junta group is even now being formed.19 This same indigenouscombinationof Westernformsand ideas with the nationalisticspiritof Crete,of modernviews of the natureof man

18 The Erot6kritos of the "hasremained favourite years.... Itis only peoplefortwo hundred reading the Greek of and of since the [First World]Warwith the multiplication newspapers the massedentertainments industrial insultedby the hishas life that its popularity begunto wane.... And all the time it has been monotonously have [i.e., Demotic]language, toriansof Greekliterature who, quiteapartfromthe questionof its uncongenial for reserves the bestseller"-JohnMavrogorof felt for it something the jealouscontemptwhich the highbrow see fromWestern literatures, 1929), pp. 1-2. Fora discussionof its borrowings (London, dato, TheErotbkritos vii and Elements the Erot6kritos," "French Italian Kritika in Hronika, (1953),pp. 201-228. Also Gareth Morgan, A des la Embiricos 132): "C'estprecisement comparaison textes,qui nousa faitcomprendre quel pointI'art (p. combienils s'entendaient modifier, ameliorer, a a cretoisdu xviiesi6cle etaitconscientet reflechi; des ecrivains nouveauxa une intrigue des a a perfectionner d'emprunt; I'ouvrage les avait inspires; insuffler sentiments qui en au a adapter genie de la languegrecquedes beautesqu'ilspuisaient ailleurs;a transformer valeurs propreconcue pardes et d'unelitterature mentcretoises,populaires-et souvent'actuelles'-les inventions trouvailles addsthatthe epic, the et auteursferusd'antiquit6 d'humanisme...." Prevelakis, foremost artist, livingCretan is climateand as a poeticform,is stillalive in Crete.TheErot6kritos... stillknownby heart "bothas a spiritual of console themselvesin their solitude by recitinghundreds its on on the island. Shepherds the mountains little of verses.The same is trueof lesser-known Daskaloyiannis' epic andthe poemslikethe Rimada Sachlikis, his who recounted own exploits warrior the Girl the Yannaris, former songof Alidakis, Cretan of Hadjimichales who used to gatherhis fellow called Klados, a in song. I myselfremember coffeehousekeeperin Rethymnon, disaster" after each eveningand relatein endlesscoupletstheircommonsufferings the Smyrna soldiers together

(Kazantzakis and his Odyssey, pp. 52-3).

As forthe Erot6kritos profonde, temoignant itself,"C'estune oeuvreremarquable I'analyse psychologique par d'une grandeexperiencede la vie, parla beautedes imageset des comparaisons poetiqueset parle soufflede maissavamment Sa d'unbouta I'autre. langue,tresprochedu parler elaboree, populaire, lyrisme le parcourt qui et a dont et est pleine d'harmonie d'une richesseextraordinaire. Kornaros, I'ouvrage connu une diffusion une le sans egale chez le peuplegrec, est certainement plus grandpo6tede la Grecemodernejusqu'A reputation includethe playsErophile, Denys Solomos"-Matton,p. 167. Othermajorworksof the CretanRenaissance and TheSacrifice Abraham Gyparis. of 19 "Cretan in The for material Homer. persistence Creteof the heroicage oral poetry... is rich in illustrative of of the of intothe present, geographic the isolation villagesin the mountains Sphakia, recitation old poems...

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and the universewith the Cretandialectand with local legend,arisesin the fiction and verse of the noblestof modernCretanmasters.One can find echoes of the Erot6kritos Kazantzakis' in Odyssey,and the famous folk piece "The Song of Dhaskaloyannis," which celebratesan eightrebellionagainstthe Turks,providescharacterand incieenth-century dent for his Freedomor Death. The mythopoeicqualityof Cretanfolk art resoundsthroughoutKazantzakis' his view of man is at once art: naturalistic and heroic: his heroes are many-faceted,capable of great cruelty and injusticeas well as greatflights of spirit;but there are no relativesand neighborsto betraythem, no blood feuds or jealousiesto divide their followers, no Cretan converts to Islam to outdo their Turkish of a oppressors.Inthe mythmaking Kazantzakis, processwhich almost totally ignores the baser aspects of his country'shistory,only noble pallikariaare called "captain"-there are no pretenders the to island's most honoredtitle; old sea captains,piratesmost of them but patriotsas well, abound in his books-although the last Cretanpirates died out with the startof Turkish rule;andthe mostnoble acts of Cretan somehow accrue to his heroes-it is the brotherof Captain history Mihalisin Freedomor Deathwho blows up the monastery Arkadi of to save it fromthe Turksand not, as legend has it, the abbot.And yet, in the strangeland that is Crete,a landas close to Asiaand Africaas it is to at that Europe,these are not distortions all, but amplifications perfectly reflectthe spiritof the people. And it is this spiritwhich distinguishes the artof Kazantzakis fromthatof all his contemporaries. Evenhis most derivativework,the philosophicalessay which he called Spiritual Exeris somehow transformed this spirit into a unique and chalcises, by lengingstatementof faith. In it can be foundthe majorthemesand symbols of Kazantzakis' and art. life IV. The alternatetitle of this work,SalvatoresDies-translated by Kimon

and the creationof new ones ... at socialand religious festivals..., the absencein theirheroicpoemsof supernatural shamanistic or elementsand the presencein them of a humanistic all epic mentality, makethe Cretan poems an interesting A. HeroicPoetry: Studyin ComA laboratory"-James Notopoulos,"Homerand Cretan of parativeOral Poetry,"American Journal Philogy,Ixxiii(1952), pp. 228-229. The scholarlycollectingof Cretan songsgoes backat leastto Pashley has becomean activeoccupationin modern folk and times.Seee.g., of J. H. Freese,A ShortPopular 1913) and MichaelLlewellyn History Crete(London, Smith,TheGreatIsland (London, 1965).

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Friar the Saviorsof God-suggests its metaphysicalemphasis;20 as but verse Odyssey, agreed to Friar,who so ably translatedKazantzakis' work on this text only because he felt that it was also great poetry. Its confession; poetry is apparentin its languageof personaland spiritual in the vivid dream imagerywhich permeatesthe work; above all, in the author'sstrikingly between originalconception of the relationship man and God, a conception which recalls the man-size deities of Minoanart. The form and function of the SpiritualExercisesare the same: the ascent to God and beyond.Justas the readermoves througha series of The steps-The Preparation, March,The Vision and The Action-up to the peak of The Silence, so the soul of man must climb to perilous truths: God heights,mustlean out over the Abyssand confrontterrifying is as dependent upon man as man is upon Him; to save himself, man neither mustfirstsave God; the fightis unequal,the resultspredestined: man nor God northe two fightingtogethercan save themselves.Knowing this but continuingto struggle,man discovershis dignity,becomes himselfa kind of God. In the firststep, The Preparation, therearethreeduties:to see boundto reject boundaries,to become free of hope as well as of fear; aries, only thus can man ready himself for the march up to God. On The March itself, he moves from the ego, to the race, to all mankindand finallyto the earth:from an awarenessof self to a recognitionthatthe individualis also one of a raceof men, with ancestorsand descendants; from a furtheracknowledgmentthat both he and his race are but parts of a greaterhumanityto a final discoverythat mankind,too, is united with all the other creaturesof the earth in a single entity. This is no properpantheisticinsight,buta "dreadvision"(p. 88).21 Theearthis no nourishingmother, but a "beast that eats, begets, moves, remembers. She hungers,she devoursher children-plants, animals,men, thoughts -she grindsthem in her darkjaws, passesthemthroughherbodyonce more, then casts them again into the soil" (p. 82). It is at this pointthatthe physicalascent begins, as the visionaryperceives Job-like, Christ-likeman becoming God, panting, struggling,

20 The title of the original edition, in 1927, was Salvatores Dei and the subtitle Askit(ki, or "Asceticism." The order of titles was reversed in the revised edition of 1945, and then again-by Friar,but with the author's approval-for the first American edition. 21 All page references are to The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises (Simon and Schuster, 1960).

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clawing his way up the mountainto the peak: "Difficult,dreadful,unending ascension!" (p. 93). Risingin a kindof Darwinianprocessfrom the plants to the animalsto man and beyond, God creates not Adam, God but Himself.Thenthis stubborn,beast-like,blood-splattered abandons the plants, "encamp[s] in [the] loins" of the animalsand finally to "struggle[s] escape beyond us [too], to cast us off with plantsand aniand to leap farther. . . ," to reach,in short,the Abyss(pp.89-90). mals, devises a vision of God different Livingin a new age, Kazantzakis fromthose of earlierages, for they have now lost all meaningand relevance. Mantoday servesGod by goingto His aid in His unendingstruggle for survival.IfGod falls, manfallswith Him;if He is victorious,man is saved. ButthisOld Testament deitycan be defeated.Andso men must band together out of mutual love and responsibilityand sacrifice in the orderto fightGod's fight,in orderto destroyand purify old worldby fire and to establishthe new world which may risefrom its ashes. "Set fire! This is our great duty today amid such immoraland hopeless chaos.... Sow fire to purifythe earth!Leta more dreadfulabyss open descend to up between good and evil, let injusticeincrease,let Hunger threshour bowels, for we may not otherwisebe saved.... Forit is only One who strugglesat the farend of earthand sky.Andif He goes lost, it is we who mustbearthe responsibility. He goes lost,then we go lost" If (pp. 113, 115). This hereticalvision perceivesa divinitywith dramaticpossibilities: it is as if Milton's Satan really could defeat his eternal adversary.The vision is the resultof Kazantzakis' life-longeffortto reconcile the universalsof Christianity with the ideals and rhetoricof Marxism, comto bine the clear, unassumingsimplicityof Buddhawith the Nietzschean views of the ubermenschand the death of God with the elan vital of Bergson;and its imagesarethose of all of his works:the clawingascent, the fire of the humansoul, the abysswhich it confrontsand flies over as a bird."Thesoul of man is a flame," he writes,"a birdof firethatleaps fromboughto bough, fromhead to head, andthatshouts,... Wheredo we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of this life?... And a fire within me leaps up to answer:'Firewill surelycome one day to purifythe earth. Firewill surelycome one day to obliterate the earth.This is the Second Coming.... Fireis the firstand final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres.'... This ultimatestage of our spiritualexercise is called Silence." Leaning out over the Abyss,the manwho has reachedthe peakof Silence singsa

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"profoundand magical incantation"of belief in God in all His historical guises, of belief in the man who has climbed to His rescue, of belief in the ultimateunrealityof the existence of both man and God: AND RUSHTO FREE BLESSED ALLTHOSEWHO HEAR BE YOU, AND WHO SAY:"ONLYYOU AND I EXIST." LORD, UNITED BE YOU AND BECOME BLESSED ALL THOSE WHO FREE WITHYOU, LORD,AND WHO SAY:"YOUAND I AREONE." AND THRICE BE BLESSED THOSE WHO BEAR THEIR ON SHOULAND DO NOT BUCKLE DERS UNDERTHISGREAT, AND SUBLIME,
TERRIFYING SECRET:THAT EVEN THIS ONE DOES NOT EXIST!

(pp. 127-9). Knowingthat they cannot win, but still struggling-strugglingbecause confrontthemselvesat the they cannot win-the heroes of Kazantzakis abyss and affirmthe divinityof man and the painfulbeautyof life. The SpiritualExercisesdemonstratedramaticallythe blending of Westernand Cretansources which characterizesKazantzakis' fiction. The imageof the ascent, forexample,has rootsin the Naturalistic novel and in the Marxist theme of the inevitablerevolution,as well as in the Cretanstrugglefor freedom-and even perhapsin the often perpetual inaccessiblemountainswhich cover so much of the island.Thesuggestion of inevitablefailurederivessimilarlyfromthe philosophicaldeterminismof the late nineteenthcenturyand fromthe history Crete.But of the continuation of the struggle, the confrontationat the abyss, is the uniquely Kazantzakian, productof his own experience and of the of his homeland. A student of Bergson who discovered experience Nietzsche with a shock of recognition,a frustrated who adreformer the new Russianregime but tried to live himself accordingto mired Buddhistideals, an unpretentious man who admiredthe masterful figin uresof history,Kazantzakis his own life and workdisplayedthe same dualitieswhich characterize fictionalheroes.Atone point,underthe his influenceof Nietzsche and Bergson,he composed a seriesof terzarima cantos on the greatmen whom he called the Companionsof the Odyssey-among them Moses, Christ,Don Quixote, Dante and Lenin.Ifhe admiredthese figures,it was not simplyfor theirphilosophicalimplicafromhimself- he knewwithout tions, or because they were so different affectationthe heroismof his own literary career-or even becausethey recalledthe imageof his father,the originalCaptainMihalis.LikeOdysseus, like ElGreco, each of them embodied what he called the Cretan

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Glance, that attitudeof braverywith which man alone faces the abyss and preparesto play with life as the Cretanboys and girlsonce played with the bulls of Minos. heroes are all Whatevertheir ostensible nationalities,Kazantzakis' and theiradversaries-whetherthey are called Turks, Pharior Cretans, sees, or Dominicans-represent the forces that have opposed Crete throughoutits history,the same forces that eternallyconfrontedGod and man at the abyss. Torn between intellect and spirit, like Boss in Zorbathe Greek;between the demandsof patriotism those of the and flesh, like CaptainMihalis in Freedomor Death; between theirdesire for a normal life and their compulsion to martyrdom, St. Francis, like hero strives Jesusand Manolios in The GreekPassion,the Kazantzakis for unity and self-knowledgeand rarelysucceeds. His metaphysical conflict is playedout in all the fiction againsta backdrop is at once that naturalisticand symbolic, demonstrating both the sources of Kazantzakis'artand its uniqueness.It is in Freedomor Death,with itsechoes of the Cretanpastand of Kazantzakis' own childhood,thatthis conflict is most forcefullydramatized. V. In 1889, when Nikos Kazantzakis not yet seven, the Christians was in a village near Meghalo Kastrokilled an important aga: the signal for another massacre. Barricadedin their home, surroundedby hostile neighborsand the local garrison,with the four gates to the walled city closed and guarded,he and his familywatched throughthe night."My withinour mother,my sister,and I sat glued to one another,barricaded house. We heardthe frenziedTurks the streetoutside,cursing,threatin ening, breakingdown doors, and slaughteringChristians.We heard the dogs barking, cries and death ralesof the wounded,and a droningin the air as though an earthquakewere in progress.My fatherstood in wait behind the door, his musketloaded. In his hand, I remember,he held an oblong stone which he called a whetstone. He was sharpening a long black-handledknifeon it. We waited. 'Ifthe Turksbreakdown the door and enter,' he had told us, 'I plan to slaughter you myselfbefore you fall into their hands.' My mother,sister,and I had all agreed. Now we were waiting."22 the morning,beforeother Christians In had

22

Report to Greco, p. 87.

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dared leave their homes, his fathertook him to pay obeisance to the bodies of the men hanged fromthe plane tree on the edge of the town square.In Freedomor Death, it is CaptainMihalisand his son Thrasaki who await the marauding Turks,and the liftingof the siege is a sign for them not of the eternalmartyrdom Crete,butof the necessityto rebel of anew. And so they go to war in the mountains, where, monthslaterand now fighting almost alone, Mihalis dies the futile heroic death that Kazantzakis' fathermay always have desired for himself.23 And Thrawill certainlybecome, perhapsunwittingly, pallikarlike his father a saki and not, like Kazantzakis, detested scribbler.So much did the writer a of change history,and yet manyof the episodes and characters Freedom or Death are unmistakably drawnfrom his own life. of for The character Kosmas, example-the Europeanized nephew of a man of lettersand a socialist, who returns his homeland to Mihalis, with a Russian-Jewish himself. bride-is based loosely on Kazantzakis When Kosmasis confrontedby an imageof his dead fatherdemanding that he fulfill his heritageand fight for Crete'sfreedom, he is merely own father.This grandparduplicatingthe experience of Kazantzakis' ent, who dwarfedhis titan-likeson, is also recalled in the novel by the fatherof CaptainMihalis,a patriarchal figurewho leaps unaidedonto his horseeven afterhis hundredth And Tityros, ineffectual the birthday. schoolmaster,youngest brotherof Mihalis,is drawnfromthe author's firstteacher,also namedTityros-"what cheese?"24 When Kosmas and his schoolmasteruncle shed theirveneersof educationand cultureand become pallikaria,they seem to represent some sortof wish fulfillment for Kazantzakis, who felt as inferiorto his fatheras the older man had felt to his.

23 "The last days of Kapetan Michales [in 1932] were not at all like the last days of the hero in Freedom or Death. The actual Kapetan Michales died in his own bed, in a state of euphoria familiar to doctors"-Helen Kazantzakis, p. 262. "The man-beast whom Kazantzakishad feared all his life and had regarded as deathless had collapsed. He had symbolized, while he lived, the roots, the original beast: the mud of which the son was destined to make spirit"- Prevelakis, p. 150. As the son himself wrote of his father, "The new novel on Crete will soon be ready. I am trying my utmost to resurrect my father. To pay back my debt in this way: by giving birthto him who gave me birth"- Letterto Borje Knos, Antibes, December 12, 1949; cited in Helen Kazantzakis,p. 485. 24The name is a sign of his pretentiousness, derived from his use of the Kathar6vousa-tyr6s-instead of the Demotik(-tyr'. His real name was Papadakis. Other characters from Kazantzakis' childhood who appear in Freedom or Death include his Turkish playmate Emin6; Mr. Dimitr6s, who periodically wandered off into the mountains with only his umbrella for protection; the affected, French-trainedDr. Pericles; and the jealous wife of his uncle Nikolaki, whose personality merges with that of Tityros in the novel. Numerous incidents from this time are also reflected in the fiction: the Turks'vision of St. Minas on horseback during a massacre of Christians; the unknowing guest who is welcomed in a house of mourning; the dying grandfatherwho still enjoys the sensuous pleasures of life; and-from a later time-the meeting of the Cretan intellectual with the Jewish girl in the European city.

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its Freedom Deathdemonstrates Cretanrootsin otherways as well, or for its centralplot appearsto be derivedfromthe mostfamousof Cretan folk songs, the eighteenth-century "Song of Dhaskaloyannis."Dhaskaloyannis-literally "Johnthe Teacher,"a title of respectand not of his vocation-was the foremostcitizen in the warlikeand independent province of Sphakia,a descendant of the famed Kallerghis family of Venetiantimes. Lured a promiseof Russian aid-Catherine the Great by had just declared war against Turkeyand professedto be anxious to open a new front-he led his entireprovinceinto rebellion.Thiswas in 1770, and the revolt failed when the promisedRussianfleet failed to appear-although the eight hundred Sphakiansheld off twenty-five thousand Turkishregularsfor several weeks; in Freedomor Death, Russianassistance is again promisedand again disappoints.25 Dhaskaloyanniscontinues to resist in the mountainsdespite demandsfrom the Pashathat he surrender a letterfromhis own brother and seemingly endorsingthe peace terms;Mihalis,too, fightson despite requestsfrom Turksand Cretansalike-in the novel, the Cretanresignationis again which is carriedto expressedin a letter,thistime fromthe Metropolitan, Mihalisby Kosmas,the son of his eldest brother.It is at this pointthat Dhaskaloyannis suddenlywalks into the Turkish camp and surrenders, still refusingto sign a truce and stoically accepting his tortureand death; Mihalis, however, does not surrender-although,like his predecessor, he refusesto escape-and insteaddies chargingthe enemy. In the poem, a priestwho originally submits opposedthe revoltvoluntarily with the rebel leader; in the novel, Kosmas,convinced of the need for capitulationuntilsome more propitious time, neverthelessdies fighting alongside his uncle. "'Don't flinch, nephew,' said CaptainMihalisto Kosmas.'There'sno hope. Longlive Crete.''You'reright,'"answered the younger man. "'There'sno hope. Longlive Crete!"'(p. 432).26

25

firstencouraged Cretans orderto embarrass the in theirTurkish but adversaries, laterusedtheirinfluencewith the Greekgovernment betraythe Cretans-The Cretan to Insurrection 1866-7-8 (NewYork,1874),pp. 99, of 144-145, 151-153.
26 All

William J. Stillmann, the American consul in Crete during the revolt of 1866-8, claimed that the Russians

On the advice of Kimon I to Friar, have attempted resolvesome of the difficulties Americans that have in proto nouncingGreekwordsby addingaccent marks them and spellingthem phonetically. Thus,Michalesand Mavrudes PeterBien'stranslation in here become Mihalisand Mavroudhis dh representing vocalizedth (the a sound).However,I have left untouchedsuch Italianate names as VincenzoKornaro such familiar and Greek ones as Eleutherios Venizelosand DomenicosTheotocopulous. am also indebtedhere to the assistanceof I Eleanora Marovitz KentStateUniversity Kostas of and of Myrsiades WestChesterStateCollege.

page references are to the Simon and Schuster edition (New York, 1955), translated by JonathanGriffin.

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The events in both folk song and novel are epic, growingout of history and somehow surpassingit. Just as the song-the creation of a rimad6ros named Barba-Pantzelio-was an elaboration of several earlierversionsof the same tale,27so Kazantzakis' renditionintensifies the epic possibilities.Dhaskaloyannis defeatedonly when one of the is a secret mountainpass to the Turks;28 Kosmasis but Sphakiansbetrays able safelyto follow the hidden passageto Mihalis'strongholdminutes before the final battle.And Dhaskaloyannis somethingof a prideful is fool as well as a brave warrior-he surrenders order to get better in refusesto bargain;but Mihalisknows peace termsand then stubbornly that his continued resistancebelies the Turkish claim to the world that the Cretanshave willingly stopped fighting.At the end, "A wild light haloed his face, which was filled with an inhumanjoy. Was it pride, godlike defiance, or contempt of death?Or limitless love for Crete?" (p. 433). The makingof myths, it is clear, did not die out in the eighteenth century. The mythosof Freedomor Death providesa sense of historicalcontinuity, a pictureof Cretanlife and customs that is meaningfulto this day and a view of the relationshipamong man, God and naturethat has a primitiveforce and immediacy.The framework the novel is of naturalistic: animal imagery is applied to all the characters, entirely and especially to Mihalis,the protagonist, who is describedvariously as a wild boar, a dragon,a lion, a bull and a minotaur, descendant the of "hairyancestorsout of the caves of Psiloritis" 94). Variouswomen (p. emit a scent like animals in heat, and the men react to it as stallions surroundinga mare-the CircassianEmine moved half-nakedto her window "and ardently stretched herarmstowardthe Greekquarter. out

27 In Kritika dedicated Cretan to affairs fromMinoan timesto the present, Hronika, a multi-lingual journal Cyril of after Mangotracesthe development the Dhaskaloyannis legendfromoralversions composedimmediately the revolt-in which he is seen moreas a businessman frustrated Turkish traderegulations as a patriot-to than by to the song written of down in 1786 by Anaghn6stis Skordhilis, the dictation the cheeseSephis,son of the priest makerBarbaPantzelio("Quelques sur viii Remarques LaChansonde Daskaloyiannis," (1954), pp. 44-54). 28 Betrayal seems to have been an elementcommonto nearlyall the Cretaninsurrections. 1866, forexIn who were fighting "notforpolitical themselvesattacked otherCretans the ample,the Sphakians against Turks, revolureasons,norfor material gain, but simplyout of spite,out of resentment againstanyoneelse assuming a whichthe Sphakians theirown. Itseems incredible chose to considerexclusively tionaryleadership, privilege now that such pettiness could ever have existed,yet in the history Creteit crops up time and again"-Xan of

Fielding, The Stronghold: An Account of the Four Seasons in the White Mountains of Crete (London, 1953),

to such occurred recently the WorldWarIIresistance, as as p. 164. According GeorgePsihoundhakis, incidents of the when a special unit of Cretans set up by Schubert, Gestapo"Butcher Crete"-The Cretan was Runner, p. 173.

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She saw in the darkthe eyebrows, beardand stronghands of Captain Mihalis,and whinnied like a mare"(p. 44). It is Nuri Bey's mare, coquettingwith CaptainMihalis in a kind of love play, which luresthe Greek hero to the home of his Turkishcounterpart,where he first sees the woman (p. 10). When Nuri dies, emasculated by the knife of Mihalis'brotherManusakas-Eminenow calls hima mule (p. 204)he asks only that the mare be killed over his grave, but the surviving Turksare unable to slaughterthe beautifulanimal. Later,Mihalis,distractedfrom his duty to Crete by an ever-present vision of the Circassian woman, cuts her throat while she sleeps, thus fulfillingsymbolfinal wish. As an old Turkish landlordadvises ically his blood brother's the Pasha, "'This Crete is a greatsavage beast. Let'snot wake it upit devours men!"' (p. 142). All of nature, in fact, is anthropomorphic: firstspringair came the to Crete in the night, "leaped over the fortresswalls and, throughthe chinks of doors and windows, fell upon the women like a man and upon the men like a woman, allowing them no sleep. Malignant April came to Crete like a thief in the night"(p. 40). Man, too, is a force of nature-Mihalis, "like an earthquake" 114), a "hard,knottybough (p. on the tree" (p. 421); old Sffakas,his father, "like a great oak tree" which has "breathedstorms, suffered,triumphed,struggled,labored for a hundredyears" and is still thirsty(p. 323); and Kosmas,in the rain, "like a rock, a Cretanrock.To the marrowof his spine he felt the joy of the rocksand the earthas they dranktheirfill" (p. 404). Andthe island itself seems to Mihalisto be "a living, warm creaturewith a speakingmouth and weeping eyes; a Cretethat consisted not of rocks and clods and roots, but of thousandsof forefathers who never died and who gathered,every Sunday,in the churches,"bearingthe banner on which "the undying Mother,bowed over it for years, had embroidered with theirblackand grayand snow-whitehairthe three undying words: FREEDOM DEATH" 224). OR (p. The relationshipamong Crete, man and God-a God of nature-is similarlyanthropomorphic, suggestingthe dealings between the Children of Israeland the God of the Torah.The natureand animalimages are thus more than mere naturalistic description,more than a means of characterizing harshnessof Cretanlife, more even than a kind the of Homeric simile;29they become a part of the religioussymbolism
29 Like Homer, Kazantzakis uses familiar materials for the purpose of literarycomparison; attimes, his similes strongly suggest those of Homer, e.g., "Throughthe open door into the house Captain Polyxfghis saw the loomthat docile domestic creature with feet, legs, pedals, metal feathers, tongues and combs. Its delicate rigging of warp and woof was like that of a frigate under full sail" (p. 127).

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of the novel, offeringa view not of man degraded by his naturalistic surroundings,but of man rising above them, ascending perhaps because of them, becausethereis no hope in the natural scheme of things. Like the representativenaturalistichero, CaptainMihalis ends up not only dead, but dead in the gutter-shot throughthe mouth and head, his brains splatteringthe stones-and his fate seems as preordained as that of Hurstwoodor McTeague. "'Don't you know,"' says the Pasha, "'that a true Mussulmanis never disturbed?For he knows that everythingthat happens in the world has already been written,and no one can strike it out"' (p. 156). He adds, responding to a choice offered him by the Metropolitan, "'No, not as I will, but as it is writtenby God!"' (p. 157). ButKosmasrejectsthisTurkish view: "'There's no such thing as fate,"' he cries. It was he who "'grasped [his wife] by the hand that evening, nobody else'" (p. 358). His uncle seems to agree, for he fightson in the mountainsso thatthe oppressor cannot claim that Crete had "gone back under the yoke of her own free will" (p. 425). In the conflict between Turkish fatalismand Cretan free will, between a naturalisticand a heroic view of man, it is the latterwhich somehow wins out, so that man is ennobled by his apvictory, built on natparentdefeat and not degraded.This surprising uralisticfoundations,arises out of the union withinthe narrative the of all-pervasivereligious metaphorwith the Marxistview of the nature of of man, the Freudianinterpretation dreams and the Jungiancollective unconscious: a modern, highly personal, Cretan form of a primitiveChristianity. "Thereare peoples and individualswho call to God with prayers and tears or a disciplined,reasonableself-control-or even curse Him. The Cretanscalled to Him with guns. They stood before God's door and fired rifle shots to make Him hear" (pp. 58-9). The Metropolitan believes that he has failed in his religiousduties because he has not been a good patriot:how many of his predecessors,he asks, "'will take their place before the Incorruptible Judge,bearingin their hands the gear of martyrdom-knives, axes, whips and stakes. And I shall stand there with empty hands. O God, grantme to die for Thy honor and for the honor of Thy poor daughter,[Crete]"' (p. 147). Mihalis calls out to God in anger over the state of his people (p. 134); old Sifakas complains to God about the mortalityof great heroes who should have been made immortal(pp. 325-6); Bertodhuilos, guitar the teacher from the mainland,speaks of "'the great Maestro,whom the

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unmusicalcall God"' (p. 119); and Efendina, saintlyTurkish the madcarries about in his brain the flames of God, "with their heat, man, who saves his thirst,dirtand God-filleddelirium"(p. 89). It is Efendina Greek neighborsduringthe massacreby evoking a vision of St. Minas on horseback,the patronsaint and protectorof the city ridingout to save his children(pp.261-2). God is no distantabstraction the people to of Crete; He is immediate,a force to be encountered in each man's the to daily life. He speaksthrough voice of the Prophet Efendina 93) (p. and throughdreamsto his neighbors;He appearsto them as the Old Testamentdeity appearedto Moses and to Abraham,both concretely and as a symbol.And He is joined by His New Testament counterpart, for Christ,crucified and yet to be resurrected,is the perfect symbol of martyred Crete. At the Mass honoring St. Menas, the Metropolitan preachesof the Easter season: "'My children,'the old mansaid, 'now comes oncoming a great time of fasting, the sufferingsof Christare approaching;fear must dominate'Man, and he ought to direct his thoughtsonly to the blood which was shed upon the Cross.Andyet, God forgiveme! Ispeak of the sufferingsof Christ,and I am thinkingof Crete"' (p. 97). In his drawer,wrappedin white linen,the priestkeepsa paintingof the Crucifixion which he shows to a visitor."'But,'said old Mavroudhfs, 'that's not Christon the cross. I am a sinner, my God, it's a woman, wearing cartridgesand silver pistols.' 'It is Crete, it is Crete,'said the Metropolitan in a voice stifled by emotion. '. . . Crete is nailed to the cross

in the form of a torturedmotherin black, whose blood runsdown on the remainsof her children'" (p. 150). Martyred Christ,some day like to be resurrected Him,30Crete lives throughthe years in a kindof like PassionWeek: "In the whole of Christendom there was no perpetual people that shared so deeply, so bloodily, in so special a way, in the of sufferings Christas the Cretansduringthese decades. Intheirhearts

30 Mr. Idomeneas, who spends much of his time writinglettersto European aid monarchs imploring for his fallen nation,envisionsthe arrival a saviorin a Cretefreeof Turks: of bellswill SaintMenas'Easter "'Suddenly startringing will with myrtle laurel.Menand and loudly,and the Christians runmadlyintothe streetsstrewed

women will stream to the harbor, to greet the Greek king's son. As he steps from the ship, they will kiss one another and shout: "Crete is risen! Really risen again!"'" (p. 211). When Prince George of Greece arrived on Crete in 1898 to become High Commissioner, he received such a welcome. Eightyears later, when it seemed that he was delaying enosis for his own personal gain, the Prince was driven out by Venizelos, a new savior. For a very different view of this incident, see Prince George's memoirs, in A. A. Pallis, ed., The Cretan Drama (New York, 1959).

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Christand Crete were mingled, the sufferingsof both were the same: the JewscrucifiedChristand the Turks Crete.... TheJews[of Meghalo always boltedthemselvesin earlyduringthe sacredand dangerKastro] ous time of Passion Week" (p. 162). The central events of Freedom or Death take place in springtime,before Lentor at Easter. There is even a sense in which Crete need not wait for freedom in order to be reborn,in which she is resurrected anew with each new at the grandsonsgatheredaroundhim, old Sffakas, generation.Looking in a patriarchout of the Old Testament,smiles. "Everything's order, he thought, I have confidence. The old go underthe earthand come again out of the earth. Made new. Crete is immortal" 278). Later, (p. just before his own death, he sends an order to the pregnantwife of his eldest grandson, "'Call him Sifakas,d'you hear?That's how the dead rise again!"' (p. 387). But there will be no easy rebirth him, for for Noemi miscarries-struck in the stomach by the specter of her husband'sdead father(p. 420)-at almostthe same instant that Kosmas himself is killed, his severed head thrownat the face of Mihalis,who raises it like a bannerand rushesto his own death (p. 433). The symbolic union that might have come aboutthroughtheirson-the grandchild of a Russianrabbiand of the hero of Arkadi-is aborted;in this as fertility cycle, death is as omnipresent life.Andso the bodyof Sffakas is carried round the village, and at each crossroads"the girls threw basil and marjoram onto the corpse, as if it were a pictureof the Crucified One" (p. 401). And Mihaliscalls out to his remaining men before the final Turkish attack,"'We who are dying are doing betterthanthey who will live. ForCretedoesn't need householders, needs madmen she like us. Such madmen make Crete immortal"'(p. 428). Most mad of all is Kosmas,whose death accomplishesno practicalend but whose continued life would have served Noemi, his wife, his unbornson and Crete, his homeland. But he is much morethan a WesternizedCretan: his coming after so many years has been an "annunciation"of his death (p. 364); he is a Christfigurewho mustdie in the grandfather's autumnso that Cretecan be rebornin the spring.31 This rebirth, course, will be political,and it will presumably of reflect

31 The novel this a and "Hewon'tcome (he understood) Mihalis openswithCaptain reading letter concluding, is Easter either.. ." (p. 3). We soon recognizethatthe letteris fromKosmas, the momentary but ambiguity the firstconnectionbetweenhim and Christ, imageof Cretan the freedom.

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of view of the regeneration manthroughrevoin some way the Marxist lution. For Kosmas, like Kazantzakis,is a follower of Bergson and who has been educated in Germany Nietzsche, a Marxistsympathizer Russia.The Metropolitanhas faith in the conand traveled through tinued Orthodoxy of the Russian Church and its people; Kosmas, however, believes in "a new godhead, a cruel, great-powerone," that is, in science and the revolutionof the masses (p. 357). But the Cretanrevolutionhas few social or economic roots, or even-except in the broadestsense of the word-political ones. Itsconcept of freedom is in no way theoretical,but a vital force to be experiencedsensuously, one of the essential forces of life. And so, when Kosmasdies alongside his uncle, it is not because of any dialecticalbelief;his death is an inevitable and necessaryact of his life. Marxismfor him is not of a cause of Cretanrevolution,but a manifestation it; he has found in this seemingly alien theology not a cause for dreamingof freedom, but an intellectualized,Westernversionof this ancientCretandream.32 All the residents of Meghalo Kastrodream, and their dreams are realistic ratherthan symbolic, deriving from the specific nature of their individuallives: the tavernkeeperVendusosdreamsof the Virgin as a wine goddess (p. 84); Efendina,sanctified by his pilgrimageto Mecca, dreams of sinning on pork and wine (p. 44); young Thrasaki, son of the fiercest hero on the island, dreamsof violence (p. 35); the Pasha,frustrated Mihalis'fearlessness,dreamsof combat between by him and Suleimanthe Arab,the Turkish champion(p. 113); and Mihalis dreams of Crete's freedom and of Emine (p. 83). When the Pasha awakes from a nightmare an olive tree bearing"gunsand cartridges of and daggersand black headbands"insteadof fruit(p. 154), the Metropolitan - like Joseph before Pharoah-i nterpretspolitically: "'The olive

tree hung with weapons that you saw is Crete. You stood underthe tree, and your face darkened. Here your destiny lightning-scorched to be troubled.... Itis in your power to bringlove to the island. begins God sent you the dream at the rightmoment!"'(pp. 156-7).

32 "1 am not a Marxist," Kazantzakis wrote Victor Serge, "first of all because the metaphysical sense is not sufficiently to the fore in me; I cannot content myself with hypersimplified affirmations and negations. Next, because I am not a man of action. If I were a man of action, Marxism would be very suitable for me and for our own time, a most rigorous and seminal rule of action. The only one."-Gottesgab, August 10, 1929; cited in Helen Kazantzakis, pp. 222-223. In his acceptance speech for the International Peace Prize in 1956, he declared, "During the first moments I hesitated, and it was finally only in the name of Crete, the island of my birth, that I allowed myself to accept this honor. She alone... having won peace so dearly, deserves a reward like this"-Helen Kazantzakis, p. 544.

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But not all dreams are such welcome visitors.To Mihalis,sleep is "a Turkish creature,a mad one" (p. 41), and dreama "demon"(p. 120) intent on "dishonoring"him (p. 159). He fights againstthe demonic intruder warnshis brother and Manusakas, recentlykilled by Nuri Bey, not to bedevil him: "'Don'tcome into my sleep to accuse me and make me wild. I know my duty. Have no anxiety"' (p. 196). But the dead man's image does appearat nightto his son Thodores,to reproachthe youth for not seeking vengeance (pp. 213-4). Itwas a similarreproach from his dead fatherthat had led Nuri to lie in wait for Manusakas: "His father now visited him in his sleep regularly.He did not speak and no longer even remainedstandingover him. He did not turnto look at him, but went past him with barefeet and long, draggingsteps, in his rags. He went and yet was never out of sight; all night he was there with averted face, inexorably present" (p. 175). On the night after Nuri has decided on his revenge, "he fell into sweet, unbroken sleep. Thatnight his fatherdid not visit him" (p. 176). But it is Kosmas,absent from his homelandfor so many years, who is most haunted by the image of his long-dead father. As his ship reaches the harborof Meghalo Kastro,he feels "that his father had struckroots within him that would not be destroyed.Abroad,he had often thoughtof him, and a tremblingwould come over him at these times. But never had he felt the dead man so nearas at this momentor so menacing" (p. 352). He walks throughthe narrowstreetsto his home "as in a dream"(p. 352), and that night,the firstin many years in his parentalhome, he comes downstairsto sit in his father'splace: "He wanted to challenge the dead man, to drive him from the house and courtyardto which he clung, and to bolt the door behind him so that he might never come back and harmhis wife. Ancientdreadshad awakened in him. It was in vain that in the land of the Franks had he tried to free his mind from them. His heartwas still a darkcave full of specters"(p. 362). He hearsthe treadof the dead man climbingthe stairsand stoppingbefore Noemi's door at the same momentthat she wakes from a nightmare(p. 363). For it is she who will have to live alone in this strangeroom, who will hesitateto shut her eyes for fear that she mightdream, but who will nonethelessbe found lying on the floor in a pool of blood, her child stillborn."Did sleep overcome her?" Did she dream?"She did not know" (p. 420). There is a dreamlikequality to much of this harshlyrealisticlandscape, and there is a sensitive core within each Cretanthat responds

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profoundlyto each dream. It may not be the footsteps of his dead fatherthat Kosmashears,or his blow thatNoemi suffers,butsome force within each of them makesthe dead man seem very much alive. Itmay be an Oedipal impulse that is reawakenedin Kosmasby his return to his father'shome, or a memoryof the pogromin which herfatherdied that recursto Noemi; but this is irrelevant. it is of Cretethat men For dream ultimately,and not of themselves, and this dream is reallythe same for all of them, the source of the dreamimageryof Spritual Exerthe or cises, the dreamof all Cretans through centuries:Freedom Death. The persistenceof theirancientcustoms into moderntimes, the long historyof their sufferingland that is partof every Cretan,the sameness of their dreams-all these suggest a continuityof Cretanexperience that is suggestive of Jung'sconcept of the collective unconscious. It is not only that this experience has become archetypal;the same ancient specters that fill "the dark cave" of Kosmas'heartare active within his uncle: "These demons were savage voices; most of them were not humanvoices, but bestialones, bellowing inside him as soon as the portcullisesbelow opened, lettingancient images springforth: a tiger, a wolf, a wild boar, and afterthem the hairyancestorsout of the caves of Psiloritis" 94). Mihalis-"Captain Wildboar"to those (p. who fear him-a figureout of the pre-humanpast of his people, is a creation of both his fatherand his father'sfather-Mad-Mihalis,who continuallywatched the coast for the Muscovitefleet and who carried on his shoulderthe bow and arrowsof his grandfather 5). Kosmas, (p. too, despite his Europeanculture and sophistication,is the creature of his father,of the pallikarwho blew up the monasteryof Arkadito save it and its defendersfrom the besieging Turks.33 has gone to He Mihalis'camp to convince his uncle to withdraw,"ButKosmas not did rise. Smeared with powder and blood, he was listening now to his heart,which had gone wild. In his breasthis father,the terribleleader in battle, had awakened, and his grandfather, Crete.Thiswas not and his first battle:for a thousandyears he had been fighting,a thousand times he had been killed and had risen again" (p. 430). If all of this seems to suggesta lack of free will, if the continuityof Cretanhistoryinto the presentseems to deprivethe livingof the power

33 At one time the most beautiful of Cretan monasteries, the "rent Arkadion" celebrated by Swinburne was actually blown up by the Abbot in 1866. As recently as 1941, the monks were involved in fighting against German paratroopers. See the notes by Fielding and Fermor to The Cretan Runner, p. 209n.

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not to rebel-if the memory of Dhaskaloyannisand Arkadi,of the is revoltsof 1821 and 1866, of generationsof martyrs, as ever-present as the plane tree on the square and the Kule prison-the suggestion is misleading. For Mihalis and Kosmasdo choose their fates. Justas old Sifakaslearnsthe alphabetso that he can write before he diesand virtuallyto die as he writes-the ages-old motto of Crete, so his son and grandson write their own slogans. "'Freedom or death,' [Mihalis] muttered, shaking his head fiercely. 'Freedom or death! O poor Cretans!"Freedomand death"-that's what I should have writtenon my banner.That'sthe true bannerof every fighter:Freedom and death! Freedomand death!"' (p. 426). So he and Kosmas die, not as Nuri does or the Pashawill, because of externalforces which control their fates, but as free men, the wielders of their own destinies. In the end, it is this insight which most distinguishesKazantzakis' life and art: in an age whose fictionalcharactersbecome heroes only in spite of their insignificance-as Joyce's Leopold Bloom does-or because they acknowledgetheir insignificancein an insaneworld-as Mann's Hans Castorpdoes-his charactersare heroic because they refuse to accept the fact of their insignificance:the Westernsources are finallyoverwhelmedby the Cretan.All of this mayseem hyperbolic to a Westerner-Kazantzakishimself"hadjudged his own artseverely and had mistrustedhis liking for color and ornamentation"34-butit the does conformto the realitiesof Cretanlife. Perhaps historyof their nation should have taughtthem otherwise, but Kazantzakis' martyred Cretansattest to the ultimatenobility of the man who will not be defeated by his surroundings, who will not be ruled by historyor fate or even by God. Their lesson, the artisttells us, is universal.Captain an Katsirmas, ancient pirate, has come at his friend'scall to be at the deathbed of Sffakas,who asks what he has learned in his long life. "'I've made voyages,"' he responds. "'I've seen the whole world. I've slept with women of all kinds, I've pushed far down into Africa, where the bread is toasted by the sun. I've been in great harborsand little ones, I've seen millions of black men, millionsof yellow menmy eyes have brimmedover with them! At firstI thoughtthey all stank. I said: "Only Cretanssmell good; and of the Cretansonly the Christians." Butslowly, slowly, I got used to theirstink.Ifound- Ifoundthat

34 Prevelakis, p. 123.

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we all smell good and stink in the same way. Curseus all!'" (p. 395). The Cretanexperience is unique, and yet it is the experience of all is men; it is precisely because he is so unique that Kazantzakis so representative:he speaks not just for Crete, but for mankind. Like the "grandfather," ancestor and townsman, to whom Reportto his Greco is addressed,Kazantzakis "inscribed[his] name wide and broad on [his] paintings, and below it, with magisterial pride, the title CRETAN."

Honorguardat Kazantzakis' burialspot at Iraklion, Crete, on the day of his funeral,November5, 1957.