[0:09]I fear nothing. I hope for nothing. I am a free man, free and uncompromising, an unyielding soul of myriad wounds. Made immortal after his death. His name is known to men of learning all over the world. His work has been translated into almost every language. The heroes of his novels have become universal symbols. His writings have become household words, sayings, and monuments of human thought. His ideas have become glorious standards. I said to the almond tree, sister, speak to me of God. And the almond tree blossomed. He was honest, guileless, innocent, very sweet to others. Harsh only to himself. In the 30 years that I lived with him, I don't remember ever being ashamed of any malicious act of his, recalls his wife, Helen. Nikos Kazantzakis's origins go back to the village of Varvari. He was born on 18 February 1883 in Heraklion, Crete, then under Turkish occupation. Crete remained his great love to the end of his life. Wherever he went, he carried with him a clod of Cretan soil, needed with blood, tears and sweat. He would press it in his palm and receive strength from it. His mother, Margi, was a saintly woman, tender and kind. His father, Capitan Michalis, a wild, harsh, unsmiling lion.
[2:00]Both live in their son. Fire and soil brought together. From these opposites his own harmony will be created. He received his primary education in Heraklion. His memories, some teachers and fellow students, became heroes of his novels. But what marked his life most was the struggle between Crete and Turkey, the longing for freedom. Another childhood desire was the thirst for sanctity, which brought heaven and earth together. Yet another hankering was for far off travels and the exploration of foreign lands. Nikos Kazantzakis wrote as if with the wings of an angel. With the blood of Crete running in his veins, a man in every sense of the word, he is never afraid to say no, even to God. He was eight years old at the time of the great massacre at Heraklion. To mega Castro, the great fortress. On the day after, his father took him to the main square, with its lion sculptured fountain and the huge old plane tree. He showed him the three hanged men and told him it was freedom, God bless her, that had killed them. He made the boy to kneel before them. The epic novel, Capitan Michalis is subtitled, Freedom or Death. Kazantzakis was then forced to leave his island and take refuge for a while in Piraeus and on the island of Naxos, where he attended the French commercial school of the Holy Cross. For Nikos Kazantzakis, the passion for liberty was man's eternal struggle. When Crete won national redemption, he returned to his native island, and on 9 December 1898, watched Prince George step onto the island amid a grand celebration of freedom. And even St. Minas, icon as well as captain protector of Megalo Castro, must have shed a tear or two of joy. In 1902, upon completing his secondary education in Heraklion, Kazantzakis travelled to Athens and entered the Law School of the University. He first appeared on the literary scene with his essay, The Sickness of the Age. Shortly after he was awarded a prize for his play, Day is breaking, which was performed the following year. At the same time, he was writing, Serpent and Lily, published in 1906. In 1906, he obtained his law degree with honors. In 1907, he began to contribute newspaper articles under the pen names, Karma Nirvami, Petros Psiloritis, Yeranos, Acritas, and so on.
[4:56]In the same year, he travelled to Paris to complete his law studies. There he became strongly influenced by Bergson's magical teachings and Nietzsche's grand dogmas. His plays, Fasga, and Until when, were written in this period. Followed the next year by Broken souls, and his dissertation, Frederick Nietzsche's Philosophy of Law and the State. At 25, he travelled to Italy for the first time and visited many of its towns and cities. At Assisi, the proximity of St. Francis fills him with happiness as his mind struggles with metaphysical questions. In 1909, he drafts the unfinished novels Life the Empress and Jesus Christ, and writes a one-act tragedy entitled Comedy. And the essay, Has science gone bankrupt? Although a solitary by nature, he befriended Angelos Sikelianos, the poet. In 1914, the two writers travelled to Mount Athos, which seemed to them like an immense church. They stayed on the Mount 40 days and visited all the monasteries. Kazantzakis continued his travels. In Macedonia, he wrote the tragedy, Christ, and then the tragedy, Ulysses. He was to travel all over Greece on many occasions. Its mainland as well as the islands. The paradisiacal charm of the Aegean was especially dear to him. In 1910, Kazantzakis made Athens his home. In the same year, he wrote, The Master Builder. For a livelihood, he translated scientific and philosophical works and some dialogues of Plato. In 1911, he married Galatea Alexiou at Heraklion. Their marriage was to last 15 years.
[6:49]In 1912, he volunteered for military service in the Balkan Wars. In 1917, he met that wonderful man Zorba, who was to have such a great influence on him, for he taught him to love life and not to fear death. He and Zorba embarked on a lignite mining project at Preveza in Southern Peloponnese, a project that ended in failure. In 1919, Eleftherios Venizelos appointed Kazantzakis, Director General of the Ministry of Social Welfare. Kazantzakis left for the Caucasus to try and rescue the Greeks, numbering about 150,000, who were being decimated there. He achieved their safe passage to Greece and arranged for their resettlement. The job was, in his own words, horrible, feverish. In 1921 and 1922, he visited Austria and Germany. In Vienna, he caught a strange skin disease, the ascetics' disease, from which his character, Manolios, in the novel Christ Recrucified, was to suffer later. Also, in the early 20s, Buddha dominated his mind, with the message that all is flame, and that light is the renouncement of flame. He began writing Buddha, which he was not to complete till much later. In Berlin, he became acquainted with the Faare circle of women, such as Itka, Dina, Lia, Rosa, Rachel, all of whom exerted a tremendous political influence on him. A witness to the horrors and ordeals suffered by Berliners in the aftermath of World War I, he discovered that he should seek self-enlargement. Buddhist in action was replaced by revolutionary action. It was now that he wrote, Spiritual Exercises, and Symposium. After further touring in Europe, he returned to Greece. In 1924, he met Helen Saamiou, who remained his faithful companion to the end. He returned to Crete, his native land, to find new strength. There he began his long epic, The Odyssey. In the peace of his family home, he shaped his ideas for the tragedies. Julian the Apostate, Nikiforos Fokas, Constantine Paleologos, Prometheus. In 1925, he visited the Soviet Union on a journalistic assignment, and again two years later, as an official guest of the Soviet government, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. There he met the Romanian writer, Panaitis Traita, and together they travelled the immense country. In 1928, he revisited Russia with Helen. On their way back to Greece, they stopped at Berlin.
[9:37]In 1926, Bible in hand, he travelled to Palestine to worship the gentle face of Christ, filled with visions of life everlasting. He visited also Cyprus and Egypt and climbed Mount Sinai, to express the reconciliation of body and soul and their transformation into struggle and light. He went to Spain. Out of this journey and his other travels, he wrote his five books of travel, as well as a history of Russian literature. More journeys abroad followed. And then for a while, he repaired to the peace and quiet of Aegina. Continued his writing of the Odyssey, and always an indefatigable researcher, contributed to the greatest of modern Greek encyclopedia. An attempt to become involved in political action in Greece caused him many problems, but travel abroad once again proved a productive way out. In 1929, at Gottsgab in Czechoslovakia, he reached the apex of happiness with Helen at his side. He wrote Todaraba and continued work on his Odyssey. He wrote also a number of scenarios and Cantos, which were later incorporated in Terzinas. He translated Dante's Divine Comedy, a book he always carried with him. The death of his mother in 1932, and especially that of his father, which followed soon after, threw him into a state of deep shock. He resumed his wanderings. In 1935, he travelled to the Far East, Japan and China, and subsequently wrote the book, Japan, China. His travel books give lifelike impressions of the country's concerned and their peoples. For a livelihood, he once again had to resort to writing textbooks. He translated Goethe's Faust and Shakespeare's Othello, and wrote, among other works, Othello Returns, a drama. And then Melissa, a tragedy.
[11:51]At this point, his works began to be known worldwide and were translated into several languages. In 1938, his famous Odyssey was published in a folio volume. This magnum opus in 33,333 lines, is a reflection of his own spiritual Odyssey. In 1939, he travelled to England and later published England, a book of memoirs. It was there that he completed his tragedy, Julian the Apostate.
[12:25]World War II had already started when the stunning news of Zorba's death reached him at his home in Aegina. Deeply shaken by the event, he brought his friend back to life in his novel, Zorba the Greek, and made him a universal symbol of joy and gallantry. In those critical times, Kazantzakis returned to the sources and roots of Hellenism and tried to inspire endurance, perseverance, and hope. During the German occupation of Greece, he wrote the children's books, Alexander the Great, and At the Palace of Knossos. The tragedies, Prometheus, Theodysus, Constantine Paleologos, and with Yoannis Kakridis, translated Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. In 1945, he went to Crete to serve on a government appointed three-member committee, investigating the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis on the island. In November 1945, he married Helen Samou. Soon after, he was sworn in as Minister without Portfolio in the Sofulis government, but resigned within less than two months. The following year, he visited England and France and tried to rally support from the intellectuals of the world for the safeguarding of cultural values and the preservation of peace. Ten years later in Vienna, he was to receive the World Peace Prize. In 1946, his play Capodistrius was performed at the National Theatre in Athens. In 1947, Kazantzakis began an 11-month engagement with UNESCO, after which he devoted himself entirely to writing. He had now become a permanent Greek expatriot. Memories and experiences, the great landmarks of his intellectual journey. Homer, Dante, Buddha, Christ, Lenin, Odysseus, crystallized into those ideas which he expressed in the phrase, the great cry, the symbol of his struggle and his agony. He turned matter into spirit, vileness into virtue. Man's worth lies not in victory, but in the struggle for victory. His journey is an ascent, and God is an ascent. The bullfights painted on the walls of Knossos supplied him with the liberating message of the Cretan glance. To stare at fear fearlessly, to deliver himself even from deliverance, to work like a mortal and to feel like an immortal. From 1948 onwards, he made his home at Antibes in the South of France. Its similarity to Crete gave him courage and consolation. In the next three years, he wrote the plays, Sodom and Gomorrah, Kouros, and Christopher Columbus. Completed his translation of Jorgensen's St. Francis and wrote the novel Christ Recrucified. My own lips would swell as I wrote of the swollen lips of the man who was about to impersonate Christ in my novel, wrote Kazantzakis. Far from being a mere hack, he suffered along with his heroes. His fingers, so to speak, were not so much ink-stained as bleeding. He next wrote, The Fratricides, which he subtitled, He wants to be free. He says, kill him. Plunging into his childhood memories, he tried to resurrect the epic of Crete and the individuality of his father in Capitan Michalis. Freedom or death, a novel begun in 1949 and published in 1953. In 1951, Kazantzakis wrote, The Last Temptation of Christ, the story of Christ's battle to overcome his human nature and to devote himself entirely to his divine mission. From 1952, the universal appeal of Nikos Kazantzakis becomes firmly established. His translated works are read by people in all continents. His fertile spirit and his great heart were a gift to humanity. But his ascetic body began to fail under the burden of the uphill journey he had set himself. Yet his heart still was beating in a world of inspiration and ideas. For all his bodily ills, Kazantzakis's mind remained fertile and active, atoning through spiritual transformation, expiating through hard work and conflict. He remained the personification of kindness, a true prince of the spirit. He gave us in 1953 his St. Francis, a work of extreme humility and divine ecstasy. He dedicated it to his friend Albert Schweitzer, the St. Francis of our times. Kazantzakis flourished in old age and produced incessantly, giving the world the rich fruit of his inspiration. But he sensed that the sun was about to set, the shadows grew longer and the mountains were dim.
[17:36]Travelling again, as a kind of farewell to this world, he collected his tools, felt it would not belong before he was to return to the ground. He began to write the account of his life, his report to Greco, his last book. He made his report standing, soldier-like, before the general, Domenico Theotokopoulos, the great painter El Greco, his compatriot. He told him all about his arduous, tortured ascent, his joys and sorrows, the mystic yearnings of his youth, the savage pride of old age. He was born a son of Crete and became a man of struggle. He clambered up the pathways to God in his attempt to reach the summit of understanding. On 26 October 1957, Nikos Kazantzakis died. In the 74 years of his life, he gathered the experiences of centuries, and he will remain immortal. Dead, he returned to the land of his fathers.
[18:41]He returned to his beloved Crete. Now he rests in eternal sleep on the rampart of Martino in Heraklion. Facing Mount Yukta, the ancient God turned to stone. His tomb has become a place of universal pilgrimage. And his name, Nikos Kazantzakis, is like a warm breath, invigorating the spirit of the world.
