Nikos Kazantzakis
Childhood and Adolescence (1883-1902)
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Megalo Kastro (Heraklion), the capital of Ottoman-occupied Crete, on 18th February 1883. At the age of six he was forced live the life of a refugee on account of the 1889 rebellion, when his family sheltered in Piraeus for six months.
On returning to Heraklion Nikos attended primary school, but the regularities of his childhood were once again interrupted in 1987. On the outbreak of the final Cretan rebellion, the Kazantzakis family settled on Naxos, where they remained for approximately two years. Nikos began his secondary education at the French Mercantile School of the Holy Cross, which was run by Franciscan friars.
There he learnt French and Italian and began to acquaint himself with European literature, and above all came into contact with Western culture. Following the restoration of peace in 1899 the family returned permanently to Heraklion, where Nikos completed secondary school in 1902.
Studies, first travels and the great teachers (1902-1909)
In the autumn of 1902 Kazantzakis went to Athens to attend Law School. In December 1905 he graduated as a Doctor of Laws with First Class Honours. In the same year he made his literary debut with the novel Serpent and Lily, and then settled in Athens for a while, working as a columnist for the Acropolis newspaper.
In October 1907 he left for Paris, where he continued legal studies in the School of Laws at the Sorbonne, but also attended lectures by the philosopher Henri Bergson at the Collège de France. It was in this period that he became acquainted with Nietzschean philosophy, writing a dissertation entitled Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Law and the State, which he completed in 1909. At the same time he devoted time to writing literature.
On completing his studies he went on a one-month tour of Florence and Rome and then stayed briefly in Heraklion, but was not long in deciding to settle permanently in Athens.
In Greece at the Time of Great Idea (1909-1920)
While Greece was undergoing a powerful revival of irredentist visions, Kazantzakis attempted to arrange his life along normal lines. In April 1910 he settled in Athens, and shortly afterwards began living with Galatea, who he married eighteen months later.
The problems of how he was to earn a living remained acute. Kazantzakis turned down an appointment as Secretary in the Ministry of Education, trying instead to make an income as a translator or through involvement in various business ventures. During the Balkan Wars he enlisted as a volunteer and served in the private office of the then Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos.
A new round of spiritual enquiry began when he first met Sikelianos in 1914. The two friends studied and toured Greece together. From the autumn of 1917 up until January 1919, Kazantzakis lived and travelled in Switzerland . Shortly after his return to Greece, he was appointed Director General in the Ministry of Welfare, working to repatriate the Greeks of the Caucasus.
Europe in the Interwar Years: Political Maturity and the Conception of Salvatores Dei (1920-1924)
The defeat suffered by the Venizelos government in the 1920 elections brought an end Kazantzakis’ term in the Ministry of Welfare. Disillusioned by political developments and by the assassination of his friend Ion Dragoumis, he went to Germany for a month (in January 1921).
On his return he isolated himself in Kifissia with his friend K. Sfakianakis and worked on a tragedy entitled Christ. Thereafter he travelled through Crete and the Peloponnese and, having secured a commission from the publisher D. Dimitrakos he left for Vienna. Kazantzakis spent the summer there, dedicating his time to writing. The curious skin complaint which appeared on his face, and which Dr. Stekel termed a “mask of sexuality”, led to him studying Freudian theory.
In autumn 1921 he settled in Berlin. There he worked on Salvatores Dei, attended the Congress of Educational Reformers, met Rahel Lipstein’s “fiery circle” and fell under the spell of Lenin. In the summer of 1923 he travelled around Germany, visiting Nietzsche’s birthplace. In early 1924 he travelled to Italy, where he stayed in Assisi until April.
The Return and the Odyssey (1924-1925)
Shortly after returning to Greece, Kazantzakis met Eleni Samiou, the woman who was to accompany him for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he did not stay long in Athens. In July 1924 he went to Crete, and spent August at the remote beach of Lendas together with Eleni, studying Homer, Goethe and Aeschylus.
He spent a whole year in Heraklion, during which he began the ambitious composition of the Odyssey and probably also write Symposium. In addition, he planned an unsuccessful attempt at illegal political activity, prompting the authorities to arrest him and keep him in custody for twenty-four hours in Heraklion police station.
In July 1925 he returned to Athens for a while, but was not long in leaving on a trip to the Aegean islands. It was on this trip that he discovered Aegina, the place where he was later to settle.
Travelling the world (1925-1933)
October 1925 marked the beginning of a lengthy period in which Kazantzakis travelled the globe. On every journey he gathered images, ideas and experiences which he incorporated into the subsequent reworking of the Odyssey.
By 1933 he had visited the Soviet Union and Spain three times. He also travelled to Italy, Cyprus, Palestine, Egypt and the Sinai Desert, and stayed for extended periods at Gottesgab in Czechoslovakia.
His travels and intensive work helped him to endure the death of his parents in 1932. He worked at a feverish pace, writing film scripts and poetry, composing plays and drawing up novels in French, compiling encyclopaedias, dictionaries and schoolbooks, contributing to Greek and Russian newspapers and translating major works of literature as well as children’s books.
Kazantzakis planned political and literary activism with the Greek-Romanian author Panait Istrati, in whom he believed he had found yet another spiritual companion. Lastly, his meeting with Prevelakis was to grant him a faithful friend and dedicated disciple.
In solitude on Aegina (1933-1939)
On returning from Western Europe in April 1933, Kazantzakis went to Aegina, the place where he had already chosen to settle permanently. He continued to work on the Odyssey, while also composing the cantos for his Tertsines, translating Dante, Cocteau, Hauptmann, Shakespeare, Pirandello and Goethe, and writing travels books, plays and novels in French.
In 1936 he began building his own house on the island; he moved in with Eleni a year later, before building work was complete. Kazantzakis only rarely left Aegina, on some occasions to travel (to Japan and China, Spain and England) and in 1938 to supervise publication of the Odyssey.
World War II and Experiences in Post-War Greece (1939-1946)
Kazantzakis spent most of the Occupation secluded on Aegina. It was at this time that he turned to novel writing. In 1942 he went to Athens, where he met Sikelianos for the first time in twenty years, and asked the Homeric scholar I. T. Kakridis for bibliographic assistance in translating the Iliad.
After the Germans withdrew he returned to the capital, which was in the grip of civil conflict, and became involved in politics. He applied for election to the Academy of Athens, but lost by two votes; at the same time he was elected President of the Greek Writer’s Association.
In the summer of 1945 he toured Crete as member of the Government Committee for the Verification of German Atrocities. In November 1945 he married Eleni Samiou and was appointed Minister Without Portfolio in the Sofoulis government, but resigned three months later.
In early 1946 he attended the performance of his play Kapodistrias at the Royal Theatre, and in May of the same year was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, together with Angelos Sikelianos.
Emigration and Recognition (1946-1957)
In the summer of 1946, Kazantzakis set out on what later turned out to be his final journey to Europe. After staying in England for a while, as a guest of the British Council, he moved to Paris, where he was appointed as a literary advisor to UNESCO.
In March 1948 he resigned to settle permanently in Antibes on the French Côte d’Azur. The closing decade of his life was equally intense and creative; having gained international recognition, he wrote novels and plays, translated books and went on travels.
From 1951 onwards his health went into steady decline. He lost his right eye, and on several occasions was admitted to the University of Freiburg Clinic to undergo treatment for the benign lymphatic leukaemia that plagued him.
Nevertheless, he began working with Kimon Friar on the English translation of the Odyssey, a work which provoked intense reaction among clerical circles and led to demands that he be prosecuted.
The end
In June 1957 Kazantzakis left Antibes and set off with Eleni and the Evelpidis couple for China as a guest of the Chinese Government. Having toured the country for about a month, they flew to Canton and made preparations for the return journey via Japan.
Kazantzakis caught an infection following an inoculation against smallpox and cholera, and was admitted to the Danish National Hospital in Copenhagen. As his condition worsened he was transferred to Freiburg University Clinic. Though he recovered from the infection, he caught Asian influenza and died in Freiburg on 26th October 1957.
Kazantzakis’ mortal remains were transported by road from Freiburg to Athens and then by air to Heraklion, where they lay in state in the Cathedral of Saint Minas. Crowds thronged Heraklion for his funeral service and interment on the Martinengo Bastion on 5th November.
A large wooden cross of unhewn logs towered over his grave, above the epitaph “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free”.
List of works
- Alexander the Great
- A portrait from Life the Empress
- At the Palaces of Knossos
- Christ Recrucified
- Freedom or Death
- Gods pauper: St Francis of Assisi
- Pinakothiki and Panathenia
- Report to Greco
- Serpent and Lily
- Simposion
- The Fratricides
- The Last Temptation of Christ
- The Rock Garden
- Toda-Raba
- Zorba the Greek
