Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) : Writer

Nikos Kazantzakis didn't influence my first novels, my discovery of him came later. It is an amazing thing in itself that there is always so much existing brilliance to discover.

The 'The Last Temptation of Christ' was a Kazantzakis novel, I saw the film without knowing; it was on a whim that I purchased 'Zorba The Greek' (ISBN: 0684825546 ) in 2002, and months later before I picked it up to read. after a few chapters I found myself caught by the easy intelligence and clarity of the writing. It drew me inside the story.

The book is remarkable because it works on many levels: It is set on the island of Crete, where a prudish Englishman sets up a mining venture while trying to resolve his intellectual struggle with life. Chance partners him with his antithesis - a bold, earthy realist, Zorba. Zorba runs the mine, lives lives in the moment and ebbs with the flow of sun and tide. Around these two the story lays bare the life of the area they have inserted themselves into, exposing, for instance, the fear and ignorance of the villagers, the desperation of single women in the society, and the sly hypocrisy of the pious monks that own the hillsides. All these sub-plots are fascinating in themselves, but mostly they serve to highlight the incredible debate that develops between the two main characters. To tragedy and triumph, romance and ruin they respond sometimes as owner-employee, sometimes as friends, but always as opposites - but opposites moving towards a common understanding, or with the same desire to know meaning.

The writing itself is masterful. I have transcribed two excerpts below; the first is a Zorba treatise on women. The second a description of his 'boss' walking up into the mountains on a very hot day. There also some isolated quotes I found but these lack the context of writing's timing, place, and intended impact.

Note 1: Since reading the book I have watched the 1960s film of Zorba starring Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Papas, many of the descriptive moments don't transfer to the screen, and much of the violent reality and religious criticism is played down; but nevertheless this is an excellent film: Review

Note 2: The English translation by Carl Wildman is marvelous (and what a name!), I wish I could read Greek so as to compare the precise selection of words and the meter of the writing. I suspect that Wildman deserves substantial credit for the English version's power. All I have managed to find out about Wildman is that he also translated Jean Cocteau. Anyone know more?: let me know here 

Close of Ch 7 (Zorba speaking):

'Why? You can't say what you like, woman is something different, boss . . . something different. She's not human! Why bear her any grudge? Woman's something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong. They shouldn't act like that towards a woman. They're too harsh, boss, too unjust. If I ever had to make laws, I shouldn't make the same laws for men and for women. Ten, a hundred, a thousand commandments for man. Man is man, after all; he can stand up to it. But not a single law for woman. Because--how many times do I have to tell you this, boss?--woman is a creature with no strength. Let's drink to Noussa, boss! And to woman! . . . And may God give us men more sense!
   He drank, raised his arm and brought it down with force, as if he were using an axe.
   'He must either give us men more sense,' he said, 'or else perform an operation on us. Otherwise, believe me, we're finished.'

Ch 18 (Boss is the narrator):

I took the pebbly mountain track, I had a sudden impulse to visit the small Minoan city which had risen from the ground after three or four thousand years and was warming itself once more under its beloved Cretan sun. I thought that perhaps after three of four hours' walk fatigue would calm the unrest that spring had brought.
   Bare grey stones, a luminous nakedness, the harsh and deserted mountain that I love. an owl, its round yellow eyes staring, blinded by the bright light, had perched on a stone. It was grave, full of mystery. I was walking lightly, but its hearing was keen; it took fright, flew up silently among the stones and disappeared. There was a scent of thyme in the air. The first tender flowers of the yellow gorse were already showing amongst its thorns.
   When I came in sight of a small ruined city I stood spellbound. It must have been about noon, the sun's rays were falling perpendicularly and drenching the stones with light. In old runied cities this is a dengerous time of day, for the air is filled with cries and the noise of spirits. If a branch cracks, if a lizard darts, if a cloud throws a shadow as it passes overhead, panic seizes you. Every inch of ground you tread is a grave, and you hear the dead groaning.


Further quotes from Zorba (selected by other readers):

"Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, into God."

[...] I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

To enter that gate and bolt it, to run after her, take her by the waist and, without a word, drag her to her large widow's bed, that was what you would call being a man! That was what my grandfather would have done, and what I hope my grandson will do! But I stood there like a post, weighing things up and reflecting ...

"Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly at all, in my view, is not to have one."

The great ascetic collects his students round him and says: "Woe to him who has not within himself the source of happiness!", "Woe to him who wants to please others!"

"You want to build a monastery. That's it! Instead of monks you'd stick a few quill drivers like your honored self inside and they'd pass the time scribbing day and night. [...] Well, I'm going to ask you a favor, holy abbot: I want you to appoint me doorkeeper to your monastery so that I can do some smuggling and, now and then, let some very strange things through into the holy precincts: women, mandolins, demijohns of raki, roast sucking pigs ... All so that you don't fritter away your life with a lot of nonsense!"

"It's all because of doing things by halves," he would often say to me, and "saying things by halves, that the world is in the mess is in today. Do things properly by God! One good knock for each nail and you'll win through! God hates a halfdevil ten times more than an archdevil!"

"What a strange machine man is!" he said, with astonishment. "You fill him with bread, wine, fish, radishes, and out of him come sighs, laughter and dreams. Like a factory. I'm sure there's a sort of talking-film cinema in our heads."

I stopped, ashamed. That is what a real man is like [...] A man with warm blood and solid bones, who lets real tears run down his cheeks when he is suffering; and when he is happy he does not spoil the freshness of his joy by running it through the fine sieve of metaphysics.