The CHARIOTEER an Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture
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The CHARIOTEER An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture NUMBERS 22 AND 23 1980 /1981 SPECIAL ISSUE KAZANTZAKIS: LIFE AND WORKS THE CHARACTERS IN FREEDOM OR DEATH ASCENT, THE INTERPRETIVE FIGURE OF BEING from SAVIORS OF GOD REVIEW OF BOOKS Published by Parnauos, Greek Cultural Society of New York $10.00 BYZANTINE AND ~10DERN GREEI( STUDIES Edited by D. M. NICOL VOLUME 6, 1980 CONTENTS Asceticism in Adversity: An Early Byzantine Experience SusAN AsHBROOK The New Constantine and the New Constantinople-1261? RUTH MACRIDES A Reading of The Sacrific-e of Abraham RACHEL HADAS Social Borderers: Themes of Conflict and Ambiguity tn Greek Folk-Song MICHAEL HERZFELD Neither Katharevousa nor Demotic: The Language of Greek Poetry in the Nineteenth Century C. D. GoUNELAs Karyotakis and Katharevousa HERO HoKWERDA Originality and Eroticism: Constantine Cavafy and the Alexandrian Epigram VALERIE A. CAIRES Kazantzakis and the Cinema TIMOTHY W. TAYLOR Turning Points in the Greek Resistance C. M. WooDHousE Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies is produced in co-operation with the Modern Greek Studies Association, 24 Fieldmont Road, Belmont, Massachusetts 02178, USA, and is sent to all members of the Association. The subscription price for Volume 6 to institutions is £14.00 (UK), £17.00 (overseas), $35.00 (USA), $40.50 (Canada), and to individuals £10.00 (UK), £12.25 (overseas), $25.00 (USA), and $29.00 (Canada). Orders to: Journals Department, Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, England. THE CHARIOTEER AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF MODERN GREEK CULTURE Published by Parnassos, Greek Cultural Society of New York NUMBERS 22 AND 23 1980 1 1981 EDITORIAL STAFF Executive Editors Andonis Decavalles Despoina Spanos Ikaris Managing Editor Katherine Hortis Editor in Greece Kimon Friar Book Review Editor George Thaniel Business Manager James W. Manousos THE CHARIOTEER is published by PARNASSOS, GREEK CULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, a non-profit organization under the laws of the State of New York. Editorial and subscription address: Box 2928, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163. Two-number subscription $8; three-number subscription $10. Copyright 1981 by Parnassos. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. by Athens Printing Company, 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, New York 10001.-THE CHARIOTEER solicits essays on and English translations from works of modern Greek writers. Translations should be accompanied by a copy of the original Greek text. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by stamped self-addressed envelopes. No responsibility can be assumed for theft, loss or damage. ISBN 0-933824-18-1 ISSN 0577-5574 THE CHARIOTEER participates in the sorrow for the two substantial losses suffered by modern Greek literature in the re cent deaths of Anghelos Terzakis {1901-1979), the oustanding novelist, playwright, essayist and critic, and of Stratis Tsirkas ( 1911-1979), the poet, short-story writer and novelist. THE CHARIOTEER gratefully acknowledges contributions received in memory of Calliroe Constant, wife of the late George Constant, artist, whose work was presented in THE CHARIOTEER, Number 19. The Staff of THE CHARIOTEER are members of Parnassos who donate their services. Support is earnestly requested from all who are interested in the aims of this publication. Your contribution is tax-deductible. TABLE OF CONTENTS NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS Sketch 5 by TAKIS KALMOUCHOS (1927) (Encre de Chine) EDITORIAL Despoina Spanos Ikaris 6 THREE POETS: Notes in Passing Andonis Decavalles 16 KAZANTZAKIS: LIFE AND WORKS 23 by PANDELIS PREVELAKIS translated by Peter Bien THE CHARACTERS IN FREEDOM OR DEATH: A KAZANTZAKEAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCALE Essay 66 by GEORGE MANOUSAKIS translated by Marias Philippides ASCENT, THE INTERPRETIVE FIGURE OF BEING IN NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS Essay 103 by KosTAS MIHAILIDIS t,ranslated by Edward Phinney from THE SAVIORS OF GOD: SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 116 by NIKOS KAzANTZAKIS translated by Kimon Friar FOLK BALLADS OF CRETE 130 by ELIZABETH (ONSTANTINIDIS ELL! ALEXIOU Interview 141 by DEBORAH TANNEN 11THEY WERE ALL TO BE PITIED" Short Story 147 by ELLI ALEXIOU translated by Deborah Tannen REVIEW OF BOOKS 152 NIKOS KAzANTZAKIS " ... His appearance was like that of a Saracen, and his face also was exotic, something like an African mask. Impulsively, he held out his hand, ornamented with a ring of a broad stone set in gold ...." -Prevelakis EDITORIAL Since the summer of 1960, THE CHARIOTEER has been presenting the arts and letters of Modern Greece to the English speaking world. During the past twenty years, the record in these pages shows that the artists and writers of Greece today speak as they have always spoken, for the civilization of the West. One reason why they do so is that, even though she has long ceased to be the center of the West, Greece continues to be the arena, often blood-soaked, of struggles which are crucial to the survival of the West. Since her phoenix-like awakening from four hundred years of Turkish rule, Greece has survived not only the internal upheavals which beset most new-born na tions, but also the cataclysms of two World Wars. She fought in both of these, as she has always fought, for Western de mocracy. While she was trying to recover from Nazi occupation, a civil war inflicted a blood-letting more dreadful than any she had previously suffered-again, for the sake of Western de mocracy. These and other fateful particulars of Greek experience, past and present, have in varying degrees determined the character of the works presented in THE CHARIOTEER. Yet, each work is also borne along by the Aegean consciousness which has been informing Western culture in a continuous, unbroken stream for more than twenty centuries. Indeed, according to Professor Julian Jaynes of Princeton University, what we call consciousness first came into being in the mind of the Homeric Greeks. In his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1976), Jaynes asserts that the critical development of the human mind from archaic or bicameral to modern or subjective is first discernible in the Iliad. "Since we know that Greek culture very quickly became a literature of con sciousness, we may regard the Iliad [sic] as standing at the great turning of the times, and a window back into those unsubjective times when every kingdom was in essence a theocracy and every man the slave of voices heard whenever novel situations oc curred" [pp. 82-83]. 6 Despoina Spanos Ikaris: Editorial 7 Consciousness was, according to Jaynes, a lesson taught by centuries of catastrophic experiences and was first lea-rned by the Greeks 3,000 years ago. Before the Greeks, human nature was divided between "an executive [bicameral] part called a god, and a follower part called a man" [p. 84). The individual was a bicameral automaton who was commanded by auditory hal lucinations. These "voices" from the god part of his brain con stituted his volition in any "novel situation." The mind of Homeric man is the first evidence of consciousness as we might generally say: as the conduct of a nature that is simultaneously involved in "interacting reciprocity of stimulation" (p. 85) among experiences, not necessarily related, inside and outside the individual, according to idiosyncracy, capacity, and spon taneously willful, personal inclination. Thus, among the Greeks, humankind first began to study phenomena and formulated the first law of human nature-Know thyself. Poetry was the primal source of consciousness; "The Greek subjective conscious mind . has been born out of song and poetry. From here it moves out into its own history, into the narratizing introspections of a Socrates and the spatialized clas sifications and analyses of an Aristotle, and from there into Hebrew, Alexandrian, and Roman thought. And then into the history of a world which, because of (the Greek subjective con scious mind) will never be the same again" [p. 292). The his tory of Greek literature-indeed, of the Greek people-bears out the truth of Professor Jaynes' words. Greece, free or enslaved, has been addressing the world since the days of Homer, through her poets. So, today, the attention of the world is drawn to that small nation by the central voice of her poets. During the past sixteen years, though many crises have threatened, her poets have twice been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: in 1963, George Seferis, and in 1979, Odysseus Elytis. Their poetry demonstrates the central steadfastness of the Greek subjective conscious mind as a shield and sword against chaos. In each instance, the Swedish Academy noted that the work of the poet further enhances the ideals of humanity which were first conceived in the Greek mind and which have never ceased to inspire. While each poet has, of course, drawn from a personal and collective past, their works 8 THE CHARIOTEER show two contrasting sides of Greek consciousness. In the poetry of Seferis, prevails a delicate, elegiac irony flowing from a tragic perception of unattainable ideals. The work of Elytis reminds us that the human spirit can transcend suffering and reconcile warring factions of reason and emotion, fact and fantasy, duty and desire into a joyous celebration of life. THE CHARIOTEER devoted Numbers 6 and 9 to the work of George Seferis. We are honored to announce herewith that the forthcoming issue, Num ber 24, will be dedicated to the work of Odysseus Elytis. This double issue, Numbers 22 and 23, is also dedicated to a Greek poet-Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957), who, in the opinion of many critics, should have received the Nobel Prize. The paradox that he did not, underlines the truth that to an achievement as monumental as that of Kazantzakis, a prize of any magnitude is superfluous. A further paradox is that while Kazantzakis was, in many ways, an archetypal Greek, he de veloped, as man and artist, by struggling to discard his Greek identity and even, at times, his Greek subjective conscious mind.