(Greek: 螡委魏慰蟼 螝伪味伪谓蟿味维魏畏蟼) Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer, journalist, politician, poet and philosopher. Widely considered a giant of modern Greek literature, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in nine different years, and remains the most translated Greek author worldwide.
螒谓伪蠁慰蟻维 蟽蟿慰谓 螕魏蟻苇魏慰 = Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis
Report to Greco is a fictionalized account of Greek philosopher and writer Nikos Kazantzakis鈥檚 own life, a sort of intellectual autobiography that leads readers through his wide-ranging observations on everything from the Hegelian dialectic to the nature of human existence, all framed as a report to the Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco.
The assuredness of Kazantzakis鈥檚 prose and the nimbleness of his thinking as he grapples with life鈥檚 essential questions 鈥攚ho are we, and how should we be in the world?鈥� will inspire awe and more than a little reflection from readers seeking to answer these questions for themselves. Originally published: 1961.
What a writer! It is my fault that I discovered him just now, but I will read all of his work. This is not a memoir or auto-biography as such, but something much deeper, much profound and spiritual. At times, the Christian and the spiritual preaching are too much for me, but his prose-poetry style clears it鈥檚 all. And you have to visit Greece at least once to feel what he is talking about! The magic of this country will get you by the throat after you sink deep in his words.
I came across this book years ago in a used book store without any knowledge of what it was. I was blown away. What a remarkable book! It is a 鈥榝ictional autobiography鈥� by a skilled writer with a strong background in philosophy.
It is the story of Kazantzakis鈥� lifelong spiritual, moral, and intellectual journey. He chose Homer, Bergson, Nietzsche, Buddha, Lenin, St. Francis of Assisi, and Zorba as his inspiration.
What did he learn? He denounces the hope that leads many to believe in heaven and the fear of hell that cripples us and leads to a fanaticism that keeps us from fully embracing our lives here. He believes our search for meaning, our personal odyssey, is ennobling in itself. Life is a struggle, often against dark and terrifying forces, and we can find joy by having the courage to take responsibility for our lives.
On his tombstone on Crete, there is no name, no dates, only the words 鈥業 hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.鈥�
You can find in his message the mystical traditions of Gnostics, the Kabbalah, Sufism, and Buddhism as well as in pre-Socratic thinking. I was also reminded of Spinoza pantheism.
But what stood out for me was how he presented his thoughts. He writes with great emotion, exuberant, and at times almost dreamlike, yet it always sounded authentic and sincerely felt. I don鈥檛 know how anyone can read it without being moved. Albert Schweitzer tells us 鈥榥o author has made such a deep impression on me. His work has depth and durable value because he has experienced so much. . . and suffered so much.鈥� A surprising and extraordinary book.
Vienna 1921. Closeted inside an apartment there, my favourite is deeply engrossed in writing a play on "Buddha'. He had been grooming himself into a state of ascetic discipline for some time to write this play. Cut off from the enticing city outside, he listened to the voice of this new master sitting inside him - " Desire is flame, love is flame, virtue, hope ,"I" and "you", heaven and hell are flames. One thing and one thing only is light: - the renouncement of flame". His mind was like a yellow heliotrope and Buddha the sun. Slowly, the writer was getting submerged in Buddha.
When he finished the play, he felt that he had paved a new road to salvation. Now he had no fear as no desire could conquer him. He slowly opened the window of his apartment. Leaning out of the window he looked at the men, women, cars, groceries, fruits and drinks on the street outside. He then went to the street outside to mingle with that wave of crowd and to breathe the city. He walked to the nearby movie theatre to see what was going on there. The movie appeared boring. Next to him sat a girl and he could smell her cinnamon breath. From time to time her knee touched him. He shuddered, but he did not draw away. In that semi darkness, he could see her smiling glance. He got up to leave and she followed him. Strangely, he struck up a conversation with her and soon they were in a park outside. It was summer and the night was sweet as honey. The moon shone above and the song of a nightingale hidden deep in the lilacs could be heard.
"Frieda, Will you spent night with me ". These terrible words escaped from his lips.
"Not tonight. I will come Tomorrow", the girl replied
He came back to his apartment. Something terrible suddenly happened to him. His face started swelling and he heard the blood rushing to his head. His soul had become enraged. Little by little, his lips, cheeks and forehead bloated into a big mass. Stumbling along the room, he went to look at the mirror and he was aghast with his horribly disfigured face. His eyes were like two barely visible slits.
The next day he remembered his promise to the girl Frieda. He called the chambermaid and gave her a telegram to be sent to Frieda- "Don't come today, Come tomorrow". A day went by, two, three and a week had passed with no improvement in his illness. Afraid that the girl might come, he kept on sending her the telegram- "Don't come today, come tomorrow". Finally he could not stand it any longer and fixed an appointment with Dr. William Stekel, the renowned professor of psychology and disciple of Sigmund Freud.
The professor began to hear his confession. He related his life history, the events in Vienna, his search for salvation in Buddha. At the end, the professor burst into a shrill, hysterical laughter and said -"Enough, Enough!, the professor laughed a bit sarcastically and continued, 鈥淭his disease you are suffering is called "Ascetics' disease" and it is extremely rare in our times, because what body, today, obeys the soul?. In ancient times, the saints who stayed in Theban deserts used to run to the nearest city when they felt compelled to sleep with a woman. Just as they reached the city, their face used to turn as revolting just as yours. With such a face they could not face any woman. So they ran back to their hermitage in desert thanking God for delivering them from sin. You have the same situation. You will be rid of the mask glued to your face only if you leave this city".
My writer returned home. He did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, he said to himself. He waited another two weeks. The disease showed no sign of parting. Finally, one morning he packed his suitcase and headed to the railway station to leave Vienna. The city was awakening. The sun had come down to the streets. He was in a fine mood and he felt weightless as he walked. He could move his eyes now. A cool breeze caressed his face like a compassionate hand. He could feel the swelling subsiding. When he reached the station, he took out his hand mirror and uttered a cry of joy. He had regained his normal face. The disease was gone.
In a country like India, where spiritual experience is full of sham shading, this experience of a spiritual adventurist is profound and authentic. The man who underwent this spiritual adventure was the literary giant of Modern Greece and one of the greatest novelists of the last century- Nikos Kazantzakis. This is not only the opinion of a humble admirer like me but also of great men like Albert Schweitzer, Jawaharlal Nehru and great writers like Thomas Mann and Albert Camus. (In 1957 when Camus received Noble prize, Kazantzakis was slated to win. The Academy thought he fostered communist ideologies and so he lost the prize by one vote. A month later Camus wrote a graceful letter stating that Kazantzakis had deserved the Nobel 'a hundred times more' than himself .)
There are certain writers who affect the very marrow of our being from the first reading itself. Like good wine, years have only matured my profound appreciation of this writer. No writer of the last century has experienced the interminable struggle between the flesh and the spirit as Kazantzakis. As a result, every molecule of his writing carries the dye of his flesh and blood.
Kazantzakis was born in Crete, an island that is now part of Greece but was once a Turkish colony. During the Cretan revolt of 1897, his family moved to Greece. He studied law in Athens and in 1907 he went to study under the great philosopher Henri Bergson, who influenced his writing considerably. Bergson's 'Elan vital'-the life force that can conquer matter became his motif in many of his astonishingly beautiful Novels like- Zorba the Greek, Greek Passion (I personally rank it as one the ten greatest novels of Twentieth century) , Freedom or Death, Last temptation of Christ and his famous autobiography "Report to Greco", from which I have summarized the above incident. In 1945, he married his lifetime companion and Greek intellectual, Helen Kazantzakis. Helen has incidentally written a famous biography about Mahatma Gandhi.
Kazantzakis was a highly religious man but he did not belong to any religion. He imbibed many ideologies like socialism and communism but never lifted any flag. The Greek Orthodox Church excommunicated him as he sought his own Christ in his famous Novel "Last Temptation'. When he died on October, 1957 due to an Asian Flue he contracted in a clinic in Germany, his body was not allowed a burial in Greek soil. He came to sleep beside his Grandfather in his birthplace Herakleion in Crete. His epitaph is a summation of his ideals- "I hope for Nothing, I fear nothing, I am free".
There is another fascinating incident that Kazantzakis mentions at the beginning of his autobiographical novel 'Report to Greco'. It is about his imaginary encounter with another great Cretan El Greco, the famous painter. He imagines himself being led up to the summit of 'God-trodden Sinai'. Suddenly he senses that the God with whom he has wrestled all his life is about to appear for a final reckoning. He turns, 'with a shudder'. But-
"It was not Jehovah, it was you, grandfather, from the beloved soil of Crete. You stood there before me, a stern nobleman, with your small snow-white goatee, dry compressed lips, your ecstatic glance so filled with flames and wings. And roots of thyme were tangled in your hair. You looked at me, and as you looked at me I felt that this world was a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wind, man's soul a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wings, that God puffs above them, and that salvation does not exist."
Yet Greco's message is not that 'salvation does not exist'. When Kazantzakis beseeches him for a command, Greco answers- "Reach what you can, child." But this does not satisfy him. He asks again. '"Grandfather give me a more difficult, more Cretan command." ' Now Greco vanishes, but 'a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled: "Reach what you cannot!"
'Reach what you cannot' can be a fine motto for every one of us. Unfortunately, we fail to transcend and realize our full potential in our daily drudgery for survival. We become slaves to the taverns of hope and cellars of fear in the path of our life. We have to smash boundaries, deny whatever our daily eyes see, rivet our eyes on our mission, ascend without descend and die every moment to give birth to the impossible. That alone gives a human meaning to our superhuman struggle.
May you have the courage to liberate yourself from the manacles of fear and forge ahead with full steam to "Reach what you cannot".
Ovo nije autobiografija. "Moj li膷ni 啪ivot ima neku vrednost, koja je potpuno relativna, samo za mene i za nikog drugog," ka啪e Kazancakis u predgovoru. Da, Izve拧taj Greku pri膷a o odrastanju najve膰eg (?) gr膷kog knji啪evnika 20. veka, o njegovim putovanjima, u膷estvovanju u borbi za slobodu, ali vi拧e od toga o tra啪enju sebe i o njegovom pogledu na svet. Nakon 拧to u uvodu ka啪e da su Hrist, Buda, Lenjin, Odisej klju膷ni stepenici u njegovom usponu, podi啪e o膷ekivanja. Ovo mora da bude velika avantura.
Ispostavi se da to i jeste, od prve re膷enice autobiografskog romana: "I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect." Poglavlje o odrastanju sadr啪i najbolje re膷enice koje sam pro膷itao o tome kako dete vidi svet i kako ga stvara iz haosa, kako svi izgubimo taj talenat i kako on iz dana u dan poku拧ava da ga vrati ("I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes."). Oslobodila膷ki pokret protiv Osmanlija na Kritu u vreme kad je ostatak Gr膷ke ve膰 slobodan, oma啪 sovjetskoj Rusiji i Ni膷eu, brojna putovanja (nije ga dr啪alo mesto, 拧to bi rekao jedan drugi pesnik) ali pre svega je ovo skup autorovih filozofija - koje se smenjuju, pa ponovo vra膰aju, 膷esto do ekstrema. Da - Hrist, Buda, Lenjin i Odisej. Izgubljen i smeten? Mo啪da, ali kad pomisli拧 na stvari kojima si bio sklon u svom 啪ivotu, shvata拧 da to i nije toliko neobi膷no - pogotovo za nekog ko 啪eli da "u 啪ivotu otvori sva vrata".
Izve拧taj Greku je Kazancakis napisao u godinama pred smrt, a iako opisuje svoje spiritualno tra啪enje kroz ceo 啪ivot, deluje da se nije potpuno na拧ao. 艩to se religije ti膷e, ima tu ube膽enja koja su suprotna tradicionalnoj pravoslavnoj doktrini, a ovakve 啪estoke kritike sve拧tenstva pokazuju za拧to je malo nedostajalo da ga gr膷ka crkva ekskomunicira: "The Church of Christ in the state to which the clergy had brought it suddenly seemed to me an enclosure where thousands of panic-stricken sheep bleat away night and day, leaning one against the other and stretching out their necks to lick the hand and knife that are slaughtering them. Some tremble from fear they will be skewered for all eternity in raging flames, while others cannot wait to be slaughtered so that they may graze everlastingly in immortal springtime grass."
Ovaj Grk se ceo 啪ivot bori sa hri拧膰aninom u sebi. Vidi stvari druga膷ije, ali se vra膰a Hristu, vra膰a se Stvaraocu, verovatno na druga膷iji na膷in nego 拧to to vidi dana拧nja crkva, ali naklonjenost hri拧膰anstvu ne gubi 膷ak ni u godinama svoje oma膽ijanosti sovjetskom revolucijom i na膷inom kako je Rusija menjala svet 1920-ih ili u delu o slavljenju Ni膷ea ("Triput ura za Ni膷ea, ubicu Boga!") Kasnije su o njemu rekli da je bio me膽u prvima koji je izrazio sumnje modernog hri拧膰anina, 膷oveka koji 啪eli da veruje, ali mu je jasno da ne mo啪e to da 膷ini na na膷in na koji su ljudi verovali prethodnih dve hiljade godina.
Kad 膷ita拧 ne拧to ovako mo膰no na nekom drugom mestu, uspomena na tu lokaciju zauvek ti ostane povezana sa knjigom koju si tamo 膷itao. I obrnuto. Kikladsko ostrvo je verovatno drugo najbolje mesto na kom se ovo mo啪e 膷itati (prvo bi, naravno, bio Iraklion), a 膷itaju膰i Greka na Parosu, ponesen atmosferom i plavetnilom Egeja, malo mi je nedostajalo da konobarima u tavernama krenem da citiram autora: "One of the greatest pleasures man is capable of being granted in this world is to sail the Aegean in springtime when a gentle breeze is blowing. Close your eyes at the terrible hour of death, and if you see Santorini, Naxos, Paros, and Mykonos, you shall enter heaven directly, without the soil's intervention."
Pomogao mi je da bolje razumem Grke i da shvatim da, na stranu isprazne fraze 'na拧a pravoslavna bra膰a', njihov mentalitet jeste blizak na拧em. Autor Zorbe dao je glas obi膷nom gr膷kom seljaku, radniku i 'hajduku', poput Dantea je kao prvi veliki autor pisao na obi膷nom demotskom gr膷kom, ali je zapisao i ovaj simpati膷an komentar o njihovom odnosu prema svojoj velikoj istoriji, nakon 膷ega 膰u svakog Grka gledati druga膷ijim o膷ima: "When a Greek travels through Greece, his journey becomes converted in this fatal way into a laborious search to find his duty. How is he to become worthy of our ancestors? How can he continue his national tradition without disgracing it? A severe, unsilencable responsibility weighs heavily on his shoulders, on the shoulders of every living Greek. The name itself possesses an invincible, magical force. Every person born in Greece has the duty to continue the eternal Greek legend."
Tokom 膷itanja, nervirao me svojom preteranom spiritualno拧膰u. Ali gledaju膰i unazad, onih stotinjak strana mu膷nog prepri膷avanja putovanja na Svetu goru, u Jerusalim i na Sinaj, izbledela su naspram veli膷ine svega ostalog. Kazancakis je bio deset puta nominovan za Nobelovu nagradu, ali je nije dobio. 1946. je dobio umesto njega, a taj drugi velikan je kasnije rekao: "Kazancakis je sto puta vi拧e zaslu啪io nagradu od mene."
A stunning autoiography of the Greek hero. In the best tradition of autobiography, about a journey shorn of irrelevant personal history. A breathtaking trip through his spiritual odyssey from Christianity, through Nietzche, Buddhism, Communism and more back to the point where old he has thickened into youth. Entelechy.