Patrick Comerford
While I was in Iraklion last weekend, I climbed the old Venetian walls to see the panoramic view across the city and out to the Mediterranean and to visit the grave of the Greek writer and philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957).
It was a warm sunny day in Iraklion and I had spent part of my time visiting Saint Minas Cathedral and some of the older churches in the city. It was that quiet day between Good Friday and the celebrations on Easter night when little happens anywhere in Greece, when most of the cafés and restaurants are closed, and when tourists are at a loss about what to do.
When a friend I had arranged to meet for lunch found unexpectedly that she had to delay our arrangements for an hour or two, I decided to walk on through the colourful narrow streets of the older parts of Iraklion, and to visit the grave, which is found on the southernmost bastion, built by the Venetians in the 16th century.
I had last visited this grave almost 12 years ago (5 September 2013). It stands alone on top of the great walls and bastions that were part of the Venetian defences of the city they called Candia.
Two of the great city gates have survived to this day: the Pantocrator or Panigra Gate, also known now as the Chania Gate (1570), at the west edge; and the Jesus Gate or Kainouryia Gate (ca 1587), at the south edge. Between them, at the south-west corner of these great walls, is the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis on the Martinengo Bastion.
The grave, with its plain cross of two unadorned wooden beams and a simple, carved epitaph, is a tranquil oasis looking north across the roof tops of the city, pierced by the dome and the baroque towers of Aghios Minas. Beyond, the blue of the Mediterranean stretches out to meet the blue of the sky on the horizon.
To the south is Mount Iouktas: it looks like the head of a man in profile and so is said to have given rise to the Cretan legend that this was the head of the dead and buried god Zeus, a prequel to many thoughts in Crete on the death and resurrection of Christ at Easter.
This simple grave is so beloved of Greeks that it is a work of art in itself, visited by countless people who may never have read any books by Kazantzakis, or perhaps only know of him through films such as Zorba the Greek or The Last Temptation of Christ.
The grave is marked by a simple cross and a pithy epitaph carved in his own handwriting, with his own words:
Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα.
Δε φοβάμαι τίποτα.
Είμαι λέφτερος
(Den elpizo tipota. Den fovamai tipota. Eimai leftheros, ‘I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free’).
Nikos Kazantzakis is a giant of modern Greek literature, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on nine separate occasions. He is best known, probably, for Zorba the Greek (1946, Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά). But his other works include Christ Recrucified (1948, Ο Χριστός Ξανασταυρώνεται); Kapetan Michalis (1950, Καπετάν Μιχάλης), also published in English as Freedom or Death; The Last Temptation of Christ (1951, Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός); and Saint Francis or God’s Pauper: St Francis of Assisi (1956, Ο Φτωχούλης του Θεού). Report to Greco (1961, Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο), is both autobiographical and fictional.
Kazantzakis also published plays, travel books, poetry, memoirs, encyclopaedia entries and philosophical essays such as The Saviours of God: Spiritual Exercises, and translated Dante. His children’s books include Alexander the Great and At the Palaces of Knossos. His epic version of the Odyssey occupied Kazantzakis for his last 10 years.
After spending six months in a monastery, Kazantzakis published his Spiritual Exercises (Ασκητική) in 1927, which was translated into English and published posthumously in 1960 as The Saviours of God.
When The Last Temptation of Christ was published 1951, the Roman Catholic Church placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books. Kazantzakis’ reaction was to send a telegram to the Vatican quoting Tertullian: ‘Ad tuum, Domine, tribunal appello’ (I lodge my appeal at your tribunal, Lord, Στο δικαστήριό σου ασκώ έφεση, ω Kύριε).
When the Church of Greece condemned Kazantzakis in 1955 and anathematised him, his response was prompt and clear: ‘You gave me a curse, Holy fathers, I give you a blessing: may your conscience be as clear as mine and may you be as moral and religious as I.’ (‘Μου δώσατε μια κατάρα, Άγιοι πατέρες, σας δίνω κι εγώ μια ευχή: Σας εύχομαι να ‘ναι η συνείδηση σας τόσο καθαρή, όσο είναι η δική μου και να ‘στε τόσο ηθικοί και θρήσκοι όσο είμαι εγώ.’).
In his later years, Kazantzakis was banned from entering Greece for long periods. By one vote, he lost the Nobel Prize for Literature to Albert Camus a few days before he died in exile in Germany on 26 October 1957. When his body was brought back from Freiburg, the Greek Orthodox Church refused to allow any priests to provide rites or ceremonies in Athens.
Western writers often claim Kazantzakis was denied an Orthodox burial because of his unorthodox views, or because of The Last Temptation. But Aristotle Onassis provided a plane to take his coffin to Iraklion, where Kazantzakis lay in state in the Cathedral of Aghios Minas.
Those who came to pay tribute included the Archbishop of Crete and the resistance leader and future prime minister, George Papandreou. A priest officiated at the burial, giving lie to the popular claim that Kazantzakis had died an excommunicate.
His widow Eleni later lived in Geneva, and from 1967 until 1974 she was unable to travel to Greece until the fall of the colonels’ junta. She died on 18 February 2004 in the Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens, holding the hand of her adopted son, Patroclos Stavrou. I was visiting Athens at the time, and had arranged to meet her, only to find she died on the night I arrived and the day before we were due to meet. She was buried with her husband on the walls looking across Aghios Minas and the city.
My friend Manolis Chrysakis, the proprietor of Mika Villas in Piskopiano, and his family in Iraklion and Piskopiano are proud of their kinship with Nikos Kazantzakis: they are descended from the sister-in-law of ‘Kapetan Mihailis’, the eponymous hero of the Kazantzakis novel based on his father’s adventures published in English as Freedom and Death.
One balmy summer’s evening with the Chrysakis family in Piskopiano almost 30 years ago, Manolis’ uncle, the late Kostas Chrysakis, pored over old family photographs, postcards and letters, sharing childhood memories of his famous ‘Uncle Nikos.’
Kostas Chrysakis shared his family’s treasured photographs of his uncle’s funeral. They show men in traditional island costumes, like Dirk Bogarde in Ill Met by Moonlight, in a procession led by robed Orthodox priests through the narrow thronged streets up to the city walls.
Kostas claimed that when the Vatican and the Archbishop of Athens demanded the excommunication of Kazantzakis following the publication of The Last Temptation of Christ, the Patriarch of Constantinople insisted that the Church of Crete was independent from the Church of Greece and under his direct oversight. A year later, a priest led the traditional family prayers at the graveside.
To mark the 60th anniversary of his death, the Greek Ministry of Culture declared 2017 as the ‘Year of Nikos Kazantzakis,’ with cultural events in Crete, throughout Greece and across the world.
In Ireland, the events included a public lecture by his adopted granddaughter, Dr Niki Stavrou, in University College Dublin. Niki Stavrou is the publisher of Kazantzakis’s works and the Director of Kazantzakis Publications since May 2014. Her godmother, Eleni Kazantzakis, gave her the name Niki to honour and commemorate her late husband, Nikos Kazantzakis.
In her research on the life of Nikos Kazantzakis and the real people behind the characters of Report to Greco, Niki Stavrou identified the first love of Nikos Kazantzakis as Kathleen Forde from Ireland.
Peter Bien of Dartmouth, who translated many of his novels, once wondered whether Kazantzakis would be read 50 years after his death. But after his death, his fame spread in the English-speaking world because of the film adaptations of Zorba the Greek (1964) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
For many people in Crete, his outstanding works remain his semi-autobiographical but posthumous Report to Greco (1960) and his Freedom and Death (1946), set in Iraklion during the struggle against Ottoman oppression.
Freedom and Death first appeared in Greek as Kapetan Michailis, and the eponymous hero is the author’s own father. The characters are the people of 19th century Iraklion, the settings are its streets, churches, harbour, fountains, mosques, and houses, which I had strolled through in the sunshine last weekend.
The simplicity of the cross on his grave reminds me of the simplicity of the Cross of Nails in Coventry Cathedral. The simplicity and the quiet spirituality expressed in the setting and the epitaph on the grave reflect his personality and style and his life and work.
Throughout his writings, he wrestles with his ideas about God and Humanity, and at different times he spent months in monasteries on Mount Athos and on Mount Sinai in prayer and contemplation.
At his grave, I recalled how he prefaced Report to Greco with a prayer:
Three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers: 1, I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me lest I rot. 2, Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3, Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!’
The figure of Christ is ever-present in his thoughts, from his youth to his final days. In his introduction to Report to Greco, Kazantzakis says ‘My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.’ In The Fratricides (1964), I came across this beautiful line: ‘I said to the almond tree: ‘Speak to me of God.’ and the almond tree blossomed.’
In The Last Temptation of Christ, he presents a tragic Christ wrestling all his life with the conflicting claims of his divine mission and duty and his human desire to live a normal life, to love and be loved, and to have a family. In this book, Christ summarises his purpose and mission: ‘I said only one word, brought only one message: ‘Love. Love – nothing else’.’
Writing about this book, Kazantzakis said: ‘I am certain that every free man who reads this book, so filled as it is with love, will more than ever before, love Christ.’
Some years ago, I wrote about Kazantzakis and his brief love affair with Kathleen Ford, the daughter of an Irish rector, which he recalls in his semi-autobiographical Report to Greco. He prefaces that book with a prayer: ‘Three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers: 1, I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me lest I rot. 2, Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3, Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!’
During my climb to his grave last weekend, in the space between Good Friday and Easter on my climb up the walls of Iraklion, I was reminded that Kazantzakis says in Report to Greco: ‘Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save their souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.’
Later in the book, he writes: ‘Whoever climbed the Lord’s mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.’
And he advises: ‘Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be. This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.’
