Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis

Charitini Christodoulou

Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis, by Charitini Christodoulou

This book first published 2012

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-4108-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4108-5

To my children, Stelios and Emily and my husband, Yiannos: they are everything I hold sacred in my life Also, to my parents, Michael and Militsa, my core

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... ix

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One...... 11 Reception and Contextualisation of The Last Temptation

Chapter Two...... 43 Kazantzakis, Religion and the Process of Writing the Scriptures in The Last Temptation

Chapter Three...... 65 Characterisation and Dialogism in The Last Temptation

Chapter Four...... 91 Aspects of the Carnivalesque and the Grotesque in The Last Temptation

Chapter Five ...... 113 Semiotic, Symbolic and Melancholia in The Last Temptation

Chapter Six...... 137 Dreams in The Last Temptation: Semiotic Chora, Abjection and Nostalgia

Chapter Seven...... 159 Henri Bergson’s élan vital and Jesus in The Last Temptation

Conclusion...... 181

Bibliography...... 185

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Prof. Dimitris Tziovas, who has been my major source of inspiration. I am forever grateful to him for all his support and for believing in me. Prof. Darren Middleton of Texas Christian University is acknowledged for his valuable feedback and sincere willingness to help whenever I asked him to. Prof. Maria Margaroni of the University of Cyprus is also acknowledged for the fruitful discussions I had with her. After all, my admiration for her as a literary theory teacher was the major reason for my choice of studies. I would also like to thank Prof. Roderick Beaton and Dr. Dimitirs Papanikolaou for their feedback. Many people have contributed in my life, directly or indirectly, helping me to reach this stage. Last but not least, I would like to thank an old but never forgotten friend who was there for me, during the period of writing this book and my friend Ellada Evangelou who pushed me to go after this adventure.

INTRODUCTION

Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation (1955) 1 is undoubtedly a much debated novel whose treatment of the biblical story has been thoroughly discussed. However, a careful consideration of its reception leads to the realisation that it has not been adequately and fairly treated as a literary work. Most academics and literary critics have studied his work in the light of religious writing and studies and when some of them did study the novel as a literary work, almost none managed to escape from a comparison to the Biblical story, trying to find what kind of semantic closure Kazantzakis gave to his personal perception of it, an approach that I find restricting in relation to the dynamic of Kazantzakis narrative. Therefore, in this book I have decided to focus on the narrative and explore the different forms of tension that exist in the novel in the light of some key-concepts of literary and psychoanalytic theory, in order to argue that a certain perception of “openness” that I call dialogic permeates the novel. The term “openness” is usually associated with Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (The Open Work) (1989), originally published in 1962, in which Eco used examples from avant-garde music, literature and painting to theorise the concept of openness. Trying to define openness, Eco addresses the element of multiplicity, plurality, or polysemy in art, as well as the importance of the role of the reader in literary interpretation and response, which he perceives as an interactive process between reader and text. At

1 For the year of first publication of Nikos Kazantzakis’ work I have relied on Peter A. Bien’s Kazantzakis, Politics of the Spirit (1989), where there is a chronological chart with the main works of the author that includes the year the works were written and the year of their first publication. I have also used a list of Kazantzakis’ main works that the director of the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum in Varvari, Crete, kindly sent to me, which has been used in a CD-ROM that the Museum prepared, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the author’s death, entitled “Nikos Kazantzakis: His Life and Work”. The two sources however, do not agree as regards to the year of publication of some of Kazantzakis’ works. As regards The Last Temptation itself, I will be using the English version, published in 1975. As Bien states, in the Greek translation, there have not been any additions or corrections, because the basic information about Kazantzakis provided in the original English publication is still valid. 2 Introduction the end of the chapter entitled “The poetics of the open work” (Eco 1989: 1-23), Eco defines openness as “an open situation, in movement. A work in progress”, which he understands as “the possibility of numerous different personal interventions” (ibid: 19), that are, however, guided by the intentions of the author. The interpreter or the performer participates in completing an unfinished work: “the author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed” (ibid). Eco’s definition of openness could be considered problematic, because he does not clarify whether openness lies in the material form (i.e. structure) of a work or in its semantic content (i.e. the ideas conveyed in it and how these are put forward), even though the openness of a work is mostly presented by him as a field of relations with specific structural limits and formal tendencies. Robey (1989: x) addresses this omission on Eco’s part by arguing that whether it is the material form that is open or the semantic content is of no significance to Eco, since for him the reader is in the same position of moving freely “amid a multiplicity of different interpretations”. At this point I would like to distinguish my perception of openness in relation to Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation from Eco’s definition. Although Eco defines the open work as a work in movement and in progress, his emphasis, to my understanding, is on the addressee’s perception of the work and, in particular, the possibility of choice between different interpretations that the author intentionally inserts in the work. As pointed out by Robey (1989: xii): “the interpretation of the modern open work [according to Eco] is far from entirely free; a formative intention is manifest in every work, and this intention must be a determining factor in the interpretive process. For all its openness, the work nonetheless directs the public’s response”. This, in my view, renders the reader a ‘reader in movement, in progress’ and not the work, because he/she is the one who is caught in between different interpretations that are only seemingly created out of his/her perception of the work, since they are actually guided by the intentions of the author. Thus, I perceive of Eco’s notion of “openness” as unclear and problematic as regards the object and the nature of “openness”, that is, what can be characterised as “open” and in what ways. As far as this particular novel by Kazantzakis is concerned, the reader is not, in my opinion, faced with multiple interpretations of Jesus’ story that are intended by the author. Instead, in Kazantzakis’ novel, the reader is faced with an exploration of the multiple levels of ideas that can be extrapolated by a human portrayal of Jesus’ story, as well as with the various forms of tension that are created during the process of formation of Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis 3 subjectivity and identity, as seen in the narration of Jesus’ effort to acquire an identity. The different aspects of identity formation unfold before the eyes of the reader, who becomes a witness to Jesus’ process of becoming. What is at stake in the novel is not choosing a single interpretation or point of view among others and thus, it is not this which constitutes the openness in the novel. Openness in The Last Temptation is associated with the tensions that are interlinked with the process of identity formation that is in progress within Jesus till the end. To sum up, according to Eco (1989: 60) the possibility of multiple meanings constitutes the essence of the open work and openness is defined as the existence of messages that manifest themselves as sources of possible interpretations. In my study of The Last Temptation I understand openness to operate alongside the emphasis on the process forming identity and meaning, 2 which is revealed through the portrayal of the ongoing tensions that exist in the novel and concern its main characters. While openness for Eco is the choice of an interpretation that, even though it appears to be constructed by the reader, in fact already exists in the text along with other interpretative possibilities that are intended by the author, my perception of openness is related to the emphasis on the process of identity and meaning becoming which runs through the whole novel. Thus, I define openness in terms of the process of becoming and not as the possibility of choosing between different interpretations, that is, in terms of plurality of meaning. Moreover, openness can be found in Kazantzakis’ novel in the way the centripetal and centrifugal forces that are responsible for forming identity exist in an ongoing tension that is never finally resolved. At this point, I will introduce Bakthin’s notion of dialogism, since it constitutes the first half of the concept of “dialogic openness” that I use in the title of the book. “Dialogic” and “dialogism” are usually associated with Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) and his study on Dostoyevsky, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics (1963),3 where he argued that the Russian author inaugurated a new polyphonic type of fiction wherein different discourses express different ideologies which are set in continuous motion, without being situated and judged by a totalising authorial discourse. According to Lodge and Wood (2000: 104), Bakhtin’s perception of language as being essentially “dialogic” has major implications as regards establishing the

2 I put meaning along with identity, in the light of Kristeva’s theory on the symbolic. As we shall see in Chapter Five, meaning in language goes hand in hand with the subject’s entrance into the symbolic order and the acquisition of the symbolic identity. 3 I will use the 1984 publication. 4 Introduction novel at the centre instead of at the margins of poetics, while it offers an appealing theoretical alternative to traditional humanist, orthodox Marxist, and deconstructionist approaches. Moreover, as pointed out by Dimitris Tziovas (2000: 477), Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue implies that the subject is structured via a polyphony and hierarchy of languages and is constituted not only by the self but also through the other. Tziovas also emphasises that dialogism is not to be identified with the mere existence of dialogue in a text, because it is rather a procedure found in novelistic discourse, a type of dynamic energy that orchestrates and hybridises the diversity of discourses in a text; in effect, dialogism is not a feature given to a text or morphologically attached to it in advance (ibid: 480). “Novel” is the name Bakhtin gives “to whatever force is at work within a given literary system to reveal the limits, the artificial constraints of that system. Literary systems are comprised of canons, and ‘novelisation’ is fundamentally anticanonical. It will not permit generic monologue” (Holquist 1981: xxxi). Based on Bakhtin’s perception of the novel, it could be argued that the difficulty in categorising The Last Temptation in a specific movement or genre is due to the dialogic elements that exist in tension in the narrative and which can only be brought forth not as a synthesis, such as the stylistics of a genre implies, but as openness perceived as a process of becoming as regards identity formation, based on the idea that dialogism in a novel reveals the tensions which underlie the process of subjectivity formation, as well as on the level of how meaning is constructed. In turn, through the term dialogic openness I refer to the idea of antithetical forces clashing and thus revealing different forms of ongoing tension that are not resolved at the end of the novel and through which it is shown that subjectivity and meaning is always in the process of becoming.

***

As will be shown in Chapter One, The Last Temptation has been received primarily with a religious bias and seen in theological terms, though it has also been considered a political novel.4 Among the theories in the light of which the novel has been studied is process theology (Middleton 2000), based on the fact that Kazantzakis was influenced by Henri Bergson’s theory of life’s evolution (1907)5 in forming his idea of God as spirit. This draws on the process thought of Alfred North

4 See Bien (2007: 442-52). 5 The year of publication of the edition I use is 1983. Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis 5

Whitehead (1861-1947) and suggests that Kazantzakis’ idea of religion was to devise a kind of novel theology suggesting that God is constructed out of a constant process of transubstantiation of matter into spirit and, in turn, the spirit’s engagement with matter and so on and so forth. Kazantzakis and Whitehead both adopt a concept of a “process God” who requires the world’s assistance to advance; thus, God and the world are inextricably linked in so far as human action has a direct influence on the divine. Middleton shows “how both writers [Kazantzakis in Askitiki and Whitehead in Process and Reality] believe that God is an integral part of the world’s formation and novelty, actively engrossed in life and affected by events in it, sometimes to the point of needing our help to advance the evolutionary process” (Middleton 2000: xiv). According to Middleton, Whitehead and Kazantzakis provide a perception of God that is commensurate with an evolutionary view of the world and they want to show the way in which the individual is related to the whole evolving system of nature. The above approach to Kazantzakis points to a novel perception of divinity in the making, which reveals a synthesis of God that results from the union of matter and spirit. Although my approach to The Last Temptation also points at a process focusing on the human effort to acquire subjectivity while trying to establish a relationship with the divine, it can be differentiated from the above mentioned approach on two levels. Firstly, my discussion of the novel does not revolve around theology but is instead focused on the narrative. Secondly, it does not indicate a synthesis of opposing forces but it proposes extracting the many forms of dialogic tension from the novel that make up the narrative, the dynamic of which, as I will argue in each chapter, concentrates on the subject and its condition of becoming. In my opinion, what is at stake in the novel is not a synthesis of the human subject and the divine, but a decentralisation that is revealed through the human subject’s effort to become through its relationship with the divine as well as through the tensions that arise. Each chapter is an attempt to reveal the tensions in Kazantzakis’ novel, upon which the struggle of Kazantzakis’ main characters to become is based. The first chapter serves as a general frame-chapter for the novel, contextualising The Last Temptation in relation to other literary works that were based on the Passion story, such as Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (1991)6 which was an acknowledged source for Kazantzakis (Bien 2005: 3), Theodore Ziolkowski’s Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (1972), José Saramago’s The Gospel according to Jesus Christ (1993) and Jim

6 The French original is Vie de Jésus published in 1863. 6 Introduction

Crace’s Quarantine (1997), as well as providing information about the controversy and the reception the novel has attracted. The purpose of contextualising the novel in relation to other literary works that have as their main theme the story of Jesus is to enable us to place Kazantzakis’ novel in the line of the historical quest for Jesus. The presentation of the controversy and the reception of the novel aims at revealing that the most important approaches to the novel have mainly focused on its theological aspects and serves my purpose which is to remove the focus of attention from the theology of the novel and onto the value of its narrative and the possibilities that arise out of such an approach. In Chapter Two I will discuss the much debated issue of Kazantzakis’ use of a religious story in writing The Last Temptation and will try to show that the intersection of religious discourse in the novel creates a dialogic tension that points up the limitations of the biblical account of Jesus’ story, and the ideological openness of Jesus’ story, if removed from the framework of religious discourse. First, I will present Kazantzakis’ perception of religion and God and then his thoughts on literature and its function. This will lead us to a discussion of how Kazantzakis integrated the story of Jesus into his novel, with an emphasis on the process of writing the Scriptures in the novel, in order to argue that this is another manifestation of tension that indicates an openness created out of it. In Chapter Three I will focus on the four characters in the novel that I consider to be most important, namely Jesus, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene and Judas. I intend to show how these characters differ from their representation in the biblical narrative with the aim of arguing that this meant deliberately taking these figures away from the untouchable place they hold in the Bible, so that they may be rendered by Kazantzakis as human subjects like any others who struggle to understand God’s will and acquire an identity. It is through the process of ‘humanising’ these four biblical figures, that the various forms of tensions that define their effort to become in the order of the Father are revealed. In Chapter Four, I will introduce Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque in light of its subversive potential and will argue that The Last Temptation includes elements of carnivalesque discourse. These elements which mainly refer to the notion of the grotesque body I consider to be disruptive forces in the novel, by comparison with authoritarian religious discourse. Most importantly, I consider the emphasis in the novel on the elements of the grotesque body to be revealing of the tensions in the narrative, mainly as regards the most important characters, through which their struggle to become is revealed and shaped. Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis 7

In Chapter Five I will draw on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic as well as her perception of melancholia in order to argue that in The Last Temptation there can be found a dialogic tension between the semiotic and the symbolic, rendering Jesus a melancholic subject caught between the semiotic - represented by his mother and Mary Magdalene - and the symbolic associated with his divine aspect. In Chapter Six I will focus on the inclusion of dreams in the novel. First, I will discuss the importance of dreams in Kazantzakis’ life and writings. I will suggest that dreams in The Last Temptation are a marginal space where otherness (i.e. the unconscious referring to the self’s suppressed desires, thoughts and fears) is expressed. Then, I will draw a parallel between the dreams in the novel and the semiotic chora, as defined and understood by Julia Kristeva, in order to argue that within the world of dreams, perceived as a semiotic chora, Kazantzakis’ Jesus is faced with Kristeva’s “abject”, meaning that which is other and alien to the conscious self, and thus he has to confront the otherness inhabiting him and, in the end, accept it. Finally, I will focus on the final dream which, apart from leading to the climactic point in the narrative, functions as a text within a text that creates by definition an inter-textual dialogue, thus revealing another form of tension between the main narrative and that of dreams, which, in turn, represents the struggle that takes place within Jesus just before the end. Moreover, I perceive the final dream as a force that defies the closure of the text. Finally, in Chapter Seven I will discuss the influence on Kazantzakis of Henri Bergson’s notion of élan vital and how this is manifested in The Last Temptation in order to argue that the presence of this vital force in the novel is the ultimate form of openness, for it draws our attention to the process of becoming a subject and the son of God, rather than the finalisation of this process. Although Bergson is chronologically the earliest of the theoreticians discussed in relation to Kazantzakis’ work, and the only one to have directly influeced Kazantzakis himself, I chose the last chapter for the section on élan vital. This was done on purpose, precisely because the concept of élan vital is the most fiercely debated theory when it comes to Kazantzakis. I intended each of the chapters in this book to function as separate arguments for a general reconsideration of this Bergsonian concept in relation to Kazantzakis’ novel, as I consider élan vital to be the ultimate form of openness – in the way I mentioned previously that I perceive of the term openness. Its manifestation in the novel is instrumental in highlighting the struggle that takes place within Jesus between his corporeality and spirituality and his effort to become 8 Introduction

God, a struggle that, I would like to suggest, we can never be sure has been realised. At the end of the novel, we understand that Jesus has managed to fulfil his duty, which was to be sacrificed as His Father had demanded of him. However, it is not made clear whether at the end of the novel Jesus manages to unify his corporeality and his spirituality. Let us not forget that just before the end of the novel, we are presented with Jesus’ final dream which strongly emphasises his humanity which, it seems, is very intensely present in Jesus’ subconscious. In addition, we should keep in mind that at the end of the novel, Jesus proclaims that he has managed to fulfil his “duty”, which in practice entails his crucifixion; but what about, metaphorically? Whether his crucifixion at the end of the novel signals the actualisation of his divine aspect, and the defeat of his human aspect, we are not certain. Rather, we get the strong impression that he manages to do his duty only because he succeeds in suppressing his humanity, which was not really achieved through an act of will.7 The portrayal of Jesus’ duty at the end of the novel is quite different from the idea of a synthesis of the opposing powers that clashed within his psyche and eventually form Jesus’ divine identity, his oneness. On the contrary, we are given an image of a struggling Jesus in whom God is initially hiding and then reveals himself, enabling Jesus to initiate and keep alive the endless process of transforming matter into spirit:

Every living creature is a workshop, wherein God is hiding and works to transubstantiate mud […] man managed to enter God’s workshop and work with Him. All the more flesh he transubstantiates into love, bravery and freedom, the more he becomes the Son of God (Kazantzakis 2001b: 25)8.

Therefore, as opposed to Middleton’s suggestion (2000: 87) that Kazantzakis’ Jesus exemplifies the cyclical process of dematerialisation that élan vital proposes and that, at the end of the novel, “Jesus becomes Christ through a constitution of God’s agency and his own heroic struggle”, I adopt another position and argue that at the end of the novel we do not witness the transformation of the ontological existence of Jesus, for it is left quite ambiguous whether, even for a split second, the

7 As Beaton points out (2005: 90), “It is by no discernible act of will that Jesus returns to his destiny on the cross. In experiencing joy and triumph at finding himself there, he exercises no choice. The miracle has been accomplished – but how?”. 8 As I haven’t managed to have access to the English translation of Askitiki, I provide the translation. Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis 9 corporeality of Jesus, or his humanity in other words, is finally transformed into spirituality. So, I would like to argue that the presence of élan vital in this novel does not in the end signal a unification of opposites and thus a synthesis of God which can be seen as a form of closure, but it draws our attention once again to the process of Jesus’s effort in trying to become God and create spirit out of the flesh.

CHAPTER ONE

RECEPTION AND CONTEXTUALISATION OF THE LAST TEMPTATION

The Last Temptation has been approached in theological, philosophical, political, literary and cinematic terms and has aroused much controversy. However, as we shall see, up to now approaches to the novel have focused mainly on the theological aspect, though some have also paid attention to the political elements in Kazantzakis’ writing, thus ignoring the actual narrative in terms of technique, skills, and the ideas conveyed in it. These then are the aspects of Kazantzakis’ novel that have not been adequately explored. Therefore, this section, in concluding that analysis of this novel has ignored its narrative value, aims to reveal the contribution of this book to previous approaches to the novel. In the second section of this chapter I will try to place The Last Temptation in the context of other treatments of the Gospel story, such as Renan’s The Life of Jesus, which is a work that has been directly related to Kazantzakis’ novel as we shall see below. I will also consider a couple of secondary studies of fictional treatments of the story of Jesus such as Dillistone’s The Novelist and the Passion Story (1960) and Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (1972)1 by Theodore Ziolkowski, as well as a sampling of more recent treatments in world literature such as Jim Crace’s Quarantine (1997) and José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991). 2 As we shall see, Nikos Kazantzakis seems to have borrowed some elements from Renan’s work and rejected others, while this particular novel by Kazantzakis has acquired a place in the fictional treatment of Jesus’ story in world literature. Moreover, one could argue that by writing The Last Temptation Kazantzakis seems to be ahead of his time as compared to the two more recent treatments of the story of Jesus mentioned above. Certain elements found in his novel - such as pointing

1 This is the date of the initial publication. I use the 2002 edition. 2 This is the date of the Portugese original’s publication. I use the English translation published in 1993. 12 Chapter One out gaps existing in the story of Jesus and examination of aspects that are repressed (see Chapter Five for a psychoanalytic approach to the characters of Jesus’ mother and Jesus), as well as discussing the process of how the Gospel story was created (see Chapter Two) which draws our attention not to the finished Word of God that was recorded in the Bible but to the process of writing it and its performance by people - can be viewed as postmodern in the sense of a deconstructionist approach. This approach presents us with what the human recording of the Word of God “cannot describe, what its history has excluded in order to constitute it as what it is” (Macey 2000: 87).3 Moreover, as Bishop argues (1996: 993), while the reader is exposed to the above elements, at the same time he or she is invited to be suspicious of authoritative definitions and singular or grand narratives,4 a situation which he considers postmodern.

1. The critical reception of Kazantzakis’ work and The Last Temptation

Kazantzakis has attracted various conflicting reactions, mainly due to his religious and political beliefs and the way these were communicated in his work. As pointed out by Middleton (2002: 300), until his death in 1957 Kazantzakis seemed to occupy the position of an outsider in Greek society, because his thoughts did not fall into the accepted categories of theology or literature. As regards Kazantzakis’ religiosity, the debate about it began in 1930 when, soon after the publication of his Salvatores Dei. Αskitiki (1927) 5 some of his contemporaries accused him of atheism and, as Michael Antonakes reports in “Christ, Kazantzakis, and Controversy in Greece” (1990: 25), 6 a trial date was set. Even though he was never summoned to court, a build-up of the opposition to Kazantzakis’ ideas and work was reported, as in 1953 many religious leaders censored the author for offending against the teachings of both the Orthodox and the Catholic Church.7 Kazantzakis’ religious beliefs are still considered to be a burning issue in Greece, as is shown by the article “Comparisons: Kazantzakis and

3 An extensive discussion of this issue will be provided in Chapter Two. 4 See Lyotard (1984). 5 I will use the 2001 publication, 15th edition. 6 Antonakes first published this article in Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, University of Minnesota (1990: 331-43). The same article was published again, as a chapter in God’s Struggler (1996b: 23-36). The source I use is the 1990 article, even though the chapter and the article are the same. 7 See Eleni Kazantzaki (1977: 542-43, 613-14), Antonakes (1990: 331-43), Panagiotakis (2001: 274-81). Reception and Contextualisation of The Last Temptation 13

Theology” in the newspaper To Vima by Ch. D. Gounelas, and the article “Dramatised ducumentaries on his life and battle with God, Kazantzakis’ Passions on screen”, dated October 10, 1997, in the Greek newspaper Ta Nea, where Pavlos Ayiannides states that: “It seems that Nikos Kazantzakis’ relationship with religion, his passion to question, to prove and find out what Faith and God mean, are still burning issues. Recently, an inspector-theologian had requested through a circular that Kazantzakis’ work should not be taught in schools, on the grounds that he was an atheist. Thus, he brought back the issue of his excommunication from the official Church that had risen a few years before the great Cretan writer’s death”. Moreover, while Kazantzakis was still alive, there was much talk about what the Cretan author refers to in the following passage as “the Kazantzakis’ problem”, to which his response was one of confusion and bewilderment, as he could not understand why those who criticised his work wished him to limit his art to certain areas and ignore others. As Kazantzakis confesses, he wanted to “cry out” what was inside him and would not allow his work to be circumscribed by convention so that it would become more attractive to those who were unable to understand his ‘cry’:

I’ve never managed to understand why there is a Kazantzakis’ Problem and it seems to me an absolute misconception that my goal and intention of achievement are to amaze. Neither in my life, nor in my art have I ever set such a goal. I am the simplest man, but when I feel within me a ‘Cry” I would not allow it to turn into a ‘little voice”, for the sake of pleasing the deaf and the people who lisp. For, I do not wish for anyone to like me, nor to have followers, or be one myself. I came into this world for a few seconds and my aspiration is to make my voice heard, and then leave. Nothing but that (in Demakis 1975: 21-22).

It is clear that Kazantzakis became a target for contempt and censorship, as the negative view on the Cretan author’s work by George Theotokas (1905-1966) in an entry in his diary shows:

His theatrical plays are not plays, his poetry is not poetry, his philosophy is not philosophy, his novels depict no novelistic discourse and only his Travels are true evidence of good journalism. So, a good journalist; is that all he is? (1987: 573-74).

14 Chapter One

Another example of negative criticism comes from Yiannis Kordatos (1891-1961) 8 who claimed that Kazantzakis, from his early youth onwards, wished to present himself as a pioneer of thought, even though he never actually was one, and that among the shortcomings of his work was his attempt to integrate his ideological (i.e. political, philosophical, religious) creed in it:

In order to place emphasis on his writings, Kazantzakis many times invokes great names: ‘Christ, Buddhas, Lenin – he wrote – are the prominent corsairs of my life’ (Report to Greco). However, he was not honest in saying this. There were no similarities between the three above mentioned corsairs of his life. Even if we do accept that he borrowed ideas from all three of them, we are still obliged to stress his dishonesty, for his ideological beliefs could not be founded on Christian, Buddhist and Leninist world views. There is a theoretical abyss among the three of them. […] Consequently, everything he says, hide his effort to present his ‘new’ philosophical dogma as the crystallization of the study of important world philosophers (Kordatos 1962: 642).

The argument that Kazantzakis’ writing contains political overtones seems also to be supported by Christos Evangeliou who suggests that Kazantzakis is a powerful writer, whose political concerns and ideas can be of great interest to a political theorist (1985: 230). As regards the accusations of atheism directed at the Cretan author, Karalis in “Leo Tolstoy and Nikos Kazantzakis: Evangelists of a Terrified God” (2000- 2001: 177-96) states that the idea for this article emerged back in 1979 when, from the pulpit of the Cathedral of Athens, he had heard the Archbishop of Greece proscribing Tolstoy and Kazantzakis as atheists and placing their religions in the abyss of excommunicated heretics. Ever since, their names had become inextricably linked in Karalis’ mind, mainly as atheists with their own religion (ibid: 177). Furthermore, Antonakes (1990: 331-43), commenting on the negative criticism the Greek press would heap on Kazantzakis in his lifetime, claimed that most of it could not be taken seriously because it was not supported by passages from the corresponding novels or plays, which suggested that those who had condemned the author for his work were not familiar with it: “When Εleftheria, in its defense of Kazantzakis, stated that it had actually studied his works it revealed that it was one of the few involved in the debate that had done so” (ibid: 337). In addition, as regards how the Greek press handled the news of Kazantzakis’ death, Nikiforos

8 A historian, politician and sociologist, Kordatos was a prolific writer, as well as a prominent researcher in Greek history, from antiquity to modern times. Reception and Contextualisation of The Last Temptation 15

Vrettakos reports that, “with the exception of some relevant articles, most of them were cordial, yet indifferent” (1960: 12) and he wonders if this was due to lack of sympathy for the author or because the Greeks were not yet ready to deal with his voluminous work. Moreover, Vrettakos argues that Kazantzakis’ work had not been studied in depth, apart from Pantelis Prevelakis’ attempt which he judged inadequate:

When he died, I was under the impression that his researchers would reveal significant information about him and his work, but this was not the case. The only exceptions were Pantelis Prevelakis’ book [The Poet and the Odyssey Poem 1958] and a study carried out by a Greek-american called Kim Friar [Nikos Kazantzakis’ ‘Odyssey’]. Prevelakis’ book is a noteworthy synopsis of a spiritual portrait, depicted with truthfulness and warmth. It seems that Prevelakis was the person closest to him, after his second wife, Eleni Samiou, because spiritually he was mature enough to grasp Kazantzakis’ deeper response. This might also be the reason why Prevelakis limited himself to a general review, avoiding a more general introspection of his work, unless this is currently being done, or has been done and has not yet been brought to light?” (Vrettakos ibid)

Nevertheless, even though Vrettakos points out that Kazantzakis’ work had not been studied adequately, he does not provide any explanation as to why this was the case. However, from Antonakes’ evaluation in the article referred to above, there seem to emerge specific factors that caused the negative reception the author has attracted. Initially, Antonakes refers to the Greek writer and icon painter Fotis Kontoglou’s opinion on Kazantzakis, who stated that the author’s irreligion and blasphemies distressed him very much (1978: 21)9 and claimed that Kontoglou’s arguments are in line with a tradition of harsh Greek criticism of Kazantzakis, whenever the author attempted to take Christ out of Christian dogma and recreate the myth of Christ. Antonakes points out that Kazantzakis’ early attempts became the object of Greek contempt, while the works of his maturity divided Greece into two hostile camps.10 According to Antonakes (1990: 331), the main reason for this hostility and controversy was the political climate in Greece after the civil war (1944-49), and can be related to a long-standing tradition in

9 Kontoglou, in an article published a year later in the Boston newspaper Hellenic Chronicle, argued that to Greeks, the Orthodox Christian Faith and Greece are fused into one entity and whoever fights one of these is fighting against the other as well. 10 The fact that Kazantzakis’ work divided the Greeks is also reported by Panagiotakis (2001: 274). 16 Chapter One

Greece of equating national identity with language and religion, which rendered most Greeks incapable of distinguishing between nationalism, religion and artistic creation. In particular, he explains that one must keep in mind that for many Greeks, nationalism and religion are one. As Antonakes explains (1990: ibid), the cross in the Greek flag represents a nation that achieved its independence from Turkish rule partly through the martyrdom of priests. Therefore, Kazantzakis’ liberties with the Gospels and his suggestion of Jesus’ re-crucifixion, as someone who battled sexual desires as well as the temptation of being an ordinary man, were understandably perceived as threats to the Greeks’ faith, which was perhaps their only permanent and inviolate source of support throughout Greek history (ibid: 335). Kazantzakis, in a letter to Prevelakis, dated December 18, 1952, reports bitterly on the series of attacks he suffered from his fellow countrymen, while at the same time he points out the contrast with his work’s reception abroad:

You should also not forget all the bitterness I have suffered from the Greek people: I gave lectures on the unique value of Sikelianos’ poetry at London’s B.B.C., while everyone, for five years now, it’s my guess, were sure that Sikelianos would be awarded the Nobel Prize. At the same time, a stick and a French child molester would visit the local Press Houses and go all over Athens, accusing me of being a … fraud! Whenever the Academy of Athens is about to vote for a new member and the candidates are Papachristodoulou, Ouranis and God knows how many other buffoons, no one even dares to pronounce my name. […] And yet, right now, all the newspapers and magazines in Europe are spreading the news about “the greatest contemporary writer”, using adjectives I feel ashamed of mentioning. However, none of my “friends” dared to report it. […] I’ve been here for a month now and there are interviews, photos and reviews all over the newspapers. But who dares to report this back in Greece? Am I not the eamobulgaros and traitor they all say I am? […] When “the eldest of Modern Greece” (that’s how he was characterised by an honest Hellenist) left and went to the Academy of Sweeden, as a supposed official representative of the Academy of Greece, did any academic protest? And back then, reputable Maridakis was the President. What he said against me to the Sweedish academics and the King of Sweden, I know from the original source: I am a communist, I corrupt Greek youth and Greece would be humiliated if I was to be awarded a Prize. Every year, tonnes of letters are sent to the Academy of Sweden accusing me (I have copies), and none of my Greek friends bothered to send a letter stating that I am an honourable person and my work cannot be compared to any other (in Prevelakis 1984: 648-49). Reception and Contextualisation of The Last Temptation 17

As regards The Last Temptation Kazantzakis reports in the same letter that it had caused a storm, as German Catholics did not want the novel to be published in their country, while in Norway a month after the first edition of the novel, a second edition followed and the Archbishop along with the pastors praised it from the pulpit. Kazantzakis also mentions that in Holland 25,000 copies of the novel were sold. The above information shows that there were also warm supporters of Kazantzakis. First of all, his birthplace, Crete, was a constant supporter. Crete was most loyal in its defence of the author whenever its native son was attacked by the Greek government and Church officials (Antonakes 1990: 332). Another example is a reviewer in the periodical Nea Estia who, despite some hesitation regarding the manner in which Kazantzakis presented Christian themes in his novels, expressed the opinion that the author had the intellectual and spiritual power to approach the myth of Christ with the freedom that was justifiably granted to him as an author and an artist (Paraschos 1928: 523-24). George Panagiotakis, in Nikos Kazantzakis: His Figure and Work (2001), in a chapter entitled “The Church’s response to the spirit and work of Nikos Kazantzakis”, presents the opinion of two prominent Greek intellectuals on the author. Constantinos Tsatsos (1899-1987) argues that, Among the contemporary Greek scholars and poets, Kazantzakis is the most religious one. Without being what we call a worshipper, he is the only one who is anxious to find God, endlessly struggling with the religious problem”, while Petros Haris (1902-1999) claims that he knows of no other Greek novelist who has given such a great place to God, Christ and the powers of heaven in his work; “Not even god-fearing Papadiamantis is so often, so close to God” (in Panagiotakis” 2001: 274). However, the warmest appreciation and support for the Cretan writer’s work came mainly from abroad, as the case of Roger Green shows, who, speaking on behalf of all foreign readers of Kazantzakis, expressed his gratitude to the author for his language, passion and understanding of words, his struggle with different philosophies, and his perception of life and teachings as to how people can enable the divine spirit to ascend. Green also thanks the author for his faith in the human spirit, as well as “Crete, Greece, […] the wilderness, travel, dreams, the nothing, the abyss - and especially today what he called ‘the hidden homeland, the New Crete’”; finally, Green expresses his warm appreciation to Kazantzakis for the lesson on human freedom that he gives to other people (1983: 39). According to Peter Bien (1989), The Last Temptation and Zorba the Greek are probably Kazantzakis’ most popular novels. The reception of the former can be divided into two camps: the novel has been both 18 Chapter One condemned and praised, based on religious prejudice. The condemnation originated in the Greek Orthodox hierarchy in Athens that wanted to prosecute the author for blasphemy. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church placed the novel on the Index of Forbidden Books, while Protestant fundamentalists in the United States campaigned for the novel to be withdrawn from the public libraries.11 In addition, Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film adaptation of Kazantzakis’ novel raised the same furore as the novel had done (Bien 1989: 66). Moreover, according to Panagiotakis (2001: 193), even though The Last Temptation is the greatest of Kazantzakis’ novels, it did not escape criticism and opposition, as it was considered to be heretical and blasphemous. In his book Kazantzakis in the light of dialectic,12 Michalis Stafylas includes a letter from Iakovos, Metropolitan of Derkon, to Andreas Galanakis that was published in Ethnikos Kirix, the local newspaper of Patras, in which the Metropolitan states that Nikos Kazantzakis is an intellectual with morality and religious radiance who, however, had committed religious suicide in writing novels such as The Last Temptation (ibid: 82). Stafylas also refers to the suggestion of Spiridon, Metropolitan of Athens, and the Holy Synod’s decision to issue a threatening encyclical, as soon as the novels Captain Michalis (1953) and The Last Temptation were published. The encyclical announced that the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church had taken the necessary measures to protect the Orthodox Christian congregation from Kazantzakis’ writings, while the Holy Synod had also taken the responsibility of making the author apologise for the content of his novels (ibid: 83). Stafylas invokes an article dated June 3, 1954, in Zoi, an ecclesiastical newspaper, that was popular at that time, where the Holy Synod’s attack on the two novels is supported, by pointing to Kazantzakis’ political affiliation with Communism and arguing that, given the tradition of Communist propaganda against Christianity, it was only to be expected that he should attack the Christian Orthodox faith. As Stafylas reports, there was a well-orchestrated, slanderous campaign against Kazantzakis, and the Holy Synod would have gone along with his excommunication from the Orthodox Church, if Irineos, Metropolitan of Cassandrias, had not reacted strongly. According to Stafylas (ibid: 84), Irineos challenged the Metropolitans who had asked for Kazantzakis’ excommunication to tell him if they had actually read the novels in question, only to find that they had not. In addition, Mihail, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of the United States of America, had

11 The campaign, however, resulted in making the book a best-seller, as Bien reports. 12 The book does not include the year of its publication. Reception and Contextualisation of The Last Temptation 19 convinced the Synod to send the case for Kazantzakis’ excommunication to the Patriarchate for ratification. Thanks to the influence of intellectuals and representatives of the Cretan people, the Patriarchate did not go through with the ratification and thus Kazantzakis was never excommunicated from the Church of Greece (ibid).13 As regards the Vatican’s condemnation of The Last Temptation, Antonakes reports that although the book was condemned, the Vatican did not provide an explanation (1990: 331-43). As Antonakes states (1990: 337), despite the constant attacks on Kazantzakis and his novels by the newspaper Estia,14 the newspaper Ta Nea reported on January 4, 1956, that Kazantzakis had had his greatest success in years and that The Last Temptation had surpassed every previous record at the Greek bookstores. Meanwhile, on December 22, 1955, the newspaper To Ethnos claimed that the sales success of The Last Temptation may have contributed to events in Constantinople where the novel was banned, due to accusations of it being communist propaganda (Antonakes 1990: 7). According to Antonakes (ibid: 338), the few existing contemporary reviews of The Last Temptation suggest that Kazantzakis’ artistic efforts were deeply spiritual and religious, while his political aspirations were the author’s business and no one else’s. In relation to this, Karavias, the reviewer of the newspaper Eleftheria, wrote on January 29, 1956, that the importance of The Last Temptation lay in Jesus’ statement that the kingdom of heaven can be found within man. Karavias further argued that the novel was Kazantzakis’

13 As regards the issue of Kazantzakis’ excommunication from the Greek Orthodox Church, Patroclos Stavrou, in the article dated April 29, 2000, in the Greek newspaper To Vima, wrote: “[The Greek Church] started censuring and preparing Kazantzakis’ excommunication, a satanic, deceitful text and whatever else may one call it. Kazantzakis sent also to them a telegram that he is making an appeal to the Court of God and added: ‘You placed a curse on me, Holy Fathers, and I give you my blessing: may your conscience be as clear as mine and be as moral and devout as I am’. In the end, the Church of Greece did not dare to go ahead with Nikos Kazantzakis’ excommunication. The general perception that Kazantzakis was excommunicated is false”. 14 According to George Emm. Stephanakis (1997), “Estia is going to publish a main article asking the Cretan’s persecution. The article is a libel and is written as a response to the feuilleton of the critic Emilios Chourmouzios in Kathimerini, on the 12th of November, 1953” (230). As Stephanakis claims, Chourmouzios praises Kazantzakis. Also, his Report on Kazantzakis includes a whole section entitled Nikos Kazantzakis’ persecution (1997: 229-62), on the issue of the reactions that Kazantzakis’ work caused, with specific reference to The Last Temptation. In this section he includes several passages from various Greek newspapers of the time on the controversy that broke out around Kazantzakis’ novels. 20 Chapter One own story of his mystical union with God, and that it was not the author’s desire to give an objective story of Jesus, as he was not concerned with dogmatic issues but with the struggles of man to attain divinity. Nikiforos Vrettakos also addressed the issue of the reception of The Last Temptation, arguing that it had not been properly understood; that is, as the expression of Kazantzakis’ personal drama in trying to understand life and God, as a result of being born into and having lived in an age of great changes (1960: 691). According to Vrettakos (ibid), Kazantzakis’ critics only saw an attempt by the author to transform the Christian myth into a novel, in order to channel his ideology and opinions and not his emotions:

As far as I know, people in Europe have justified their hesitations based on the violations of the Christian myth, something that made Pope himself inscribe the novel on the Index of Forbidden Books. This is also a proof of the fact that in The Last Temptation I saw nothing but the writer’s intention to turn the Christian myth into a novel, giving his personal version, projecting his personal opinions and not his mental state – his peculiar drama which, if seen from a distance and is not connected to his time, it is difficult for someone to understand that this is the deeper meaning of his work.

Moreover, in an interview published in the journal Serraika Grammata in 1956, entitled “Meeting with Nikos Kazantzakis”, M. Yialourakis asked the author to share his thoughts on the action the Holy Synod had taken against his works. Kazantzakis expressed sorrow over the Church and its representatives’ actions which, in his opinion, exceeded their authority (ibid: 162). Based on what we have seen so far of the reception of Kazantzakis’ work in general and The Last Temptation in particular, we can conclude that the debate about Kazantzakis has revolved mainly around the author’s religious and political beliefs. Even though there have been some attempts to address the author’s artistic skills, they have been very limited, and overshadowed by references to how he supposedly conveyed in his novels his religious and political ideologies. However, we need to pay special attention to the most important scholarly readings of The Last Temptation, which I will present below in chronological order, starting from the 1980s to the year 2005. As we shall see, these are mostly limited to a theological approach, apart from a few attempts to study the literary aspects of Kazantzakis’ novel (for example Bien 1989, Beaton 1997). In The Politics of Salvation (1979), James F. Lea makes it his main concern to give a general explication of Kazantzakis’ political thought, to