The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

The Selected Letters of

Nikos Kazantzakis

Princeton Modern Greek Studies

This series is sponsored by the Princeton University Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund

Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement by Loring M. Danforth

Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit by Peter Bien

Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece by Jane Cowan

Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, edited and translated by Edmund Keeley

Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, edited by Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis

A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town by Michael Herzfeld

Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture by Charles Stewart

The Enlightenment as Social Criticism: Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century by Paschalis M. Kitromilides

C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard; edited by George Savidis

The Fourth Dimension by Yannis Ritsos; translated by Peter Green and Beverly Bardsley

George Seferis: Collected Poems, Revised Edition, translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine by Jill Dubisch

Cavafy’s Alexandria, Revised Edition, by Edmund Keeley

The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation by Andrew Horton

The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece by K. E. Fleming

Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece by Gonda A. H. Van Steen

A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Molly Greene

After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960, edited by Mark Mazower

Notes from the Margins: Shifting Socialities of Place and People on the Greek-Albanian Border by Sarah F. Green

Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean by Molly Greene

The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis, edited and translated by Peter Bien

The Selected Letters of

Nikos Kazantzakis

Edited and Translated by Peter Bien

princeton university press

princeton and oxford

Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

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All Rights Reserved

First paperback printing, 2020

Paperback ISBN 978-0-691-20317-1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:

Kazantzakis, Nikos, 1883–1957.

The selected letters of Nikos Kazantzakis / edited and translated by Peter Bien.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14702-4 (hardcover : acid-free paper) 1. Kazantzakis, Nikos, 1883–1957—Correspondence. 2. Authors, Greek (Modern)—20th century—Correspondence. I. Bien, Peter. II. Title.

PA5610.K39Z48 2012

8899.83209—dc22

[B] 2011009484

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

His Importance

A Maniacal Epistolographer

Completeness

Annotations

Transliteration

Acknowledgments

Chronology

The Letters

I• At Law School in Athens

1902 Letters

1903 Letters

1904 Letters

1905 Letters

1906 Letters

1907 Letters

II• Pursuing Graduate Studies in Paris

1907 Letters, continued

1908 Letters

III• Politically Active in Greece

1909 Letters

1911 Letters

1912 Letters

1913 Letters

1914 Letters

1915 Letters

1917 Letters

1918 Letters

1919 Letters

1920 Letters

IV• Fleeing Greece; Resident in Austria, Germany, Italy

1922 Letters

1923 Letters

1924 Letters

V• Meets Eleni Samiou; BeginsOdyssey; Divorces Galatea; Travels to Soviet Union

1924 Letters, continued

1925 Letters

1926 Letters

1927 Letters

VI• Resident Almost Eighteen Months in the Soviet Union

1927 Letters, continued

1928 Letters

1929 Letters

VII• Trying to Make a Career Outside of Greece, Especially in Spain

1929 Letters, continued

1930 Letters

1931 Letters

1932 Letters

1933 Letters

VIII• Back in Greece, Having Failed Elsewhere; Traveling in Far East; Odyssey Completed and Published; Visit to England

1933 Letters, continued

1934 Letters

1935 Letters

1936 Letters

1937 Letters

1938 Letters

1939 Letters

1940 Letters

IX• Confined to Aegina During the German Occupation; WritesZorbaand Many Plays; Begins to Translate Homer’sIliad

1941 Letters

1942 Letters

1943 Letters

1944 Letters

X• In Athens During Round Two of the Civil War; Resolves to Help Liberated Greecevia Political Action; Briefly a Cabinet Minister; Marries Eleni Samiou

1944 Letters, continued

1945 Letters

1946 Letters

XI• Final Exile: Resides Briefly in England, Then in France; Writes Final Novels and Plays; Travels to China

1946 Letters, continued

1947 Letters

1948 Letters

1949 Letters

1950 Letters

1951 Letters

1952 Letters

1953 Letters

1954 Letters

1955 Letters

1956 Letters

1957 Letters

References Cited

Index

Introduction

His Importance

two remarkable literary renaissances occurred roughly in the first half of the twentieth century at the two edges of Europe: Ireland and Greece. Ireland, with a population then of fewer than four million, produced Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, and Shaw; Greece, with a population then of fewer than eleven million (compare Ohio, with just over eleven million), produced Cavafy, Palamas, Seferis, Elytis, Kazantzakis, and Ritsos, plus a dozen other remarkable writers of both poetry and prose. Our focus in this volume is on Kazantzakis; yet it is important to remember that he was part of a generalized literary revival and also of a culture in which just about everybody, it seems, writes a slender book of poetry that is privately published and distributed to friends. Kazantzakis’s one indisputable uniqueness is his success in becoming known outside of Greece via translation, not to mention having three interesting movies (Celui qui doit mourir, Zorba the Greek, and The Last Temptation of Christ) made from his work. Of course, Cavafy is widely appreciated and perhaps a dozen others have been translated, but no other Greek author has attained Kazantzakis’s worldwide range. In addition, Kazantzakis was more peripatetic than the others, who stayed mostly in Greece (or in Alexandria in Cavafy’s case), whereas Kazantzakis lived in France during his final decade, attempted previously to establish a career in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Spain, traveled repeatedly to Asia and the Near East, resided for extended periods in Czechoslovakia and Italy, vacationed in Switzerland, and corresponded not only in Greek but also in French, Spanish, German, Italian, and even a little in English.

Also quite remarkable was the range of his political experiences and involvements. As a child he was exposed to a Cretan insurrection against the Ottoman Empire; during the Balkan Wars he was briefly in uniform in Macedonia; he was in charge of repatriating Greeks from the Caucasus when they were being persecuted by the Russians; he lived in Vienna and then Berlin during periods of extraordinary inflation and unrest following the First World War; he was the only Greek invited to Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution; he served as foreign correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War; he resided in Greece during the Axis occupation in the Second World War, then in Athens while the Greek Civil War was being fought there. All this, and more, is recorded in more detail in the chronology below.

What, then, is his importance? I do not believe that it is as a supreme artist. As a poet, he is surely not a Goethe or a Milton; as a novelist, he is not a Dostoevsky; as a dramatist, he is far from an Ibsen or Strindberg. I believe that his importance lies in fortitude. His life was extremely discouraging—a very bad first marriage (all too evident in the letters below); estrangement from his father; inability to make a living during most of his career; early death of his best friend, Stavridakis; prolonged estrangement from his other friend, Sikelianos; being persecuted for his communistic enthusiasms long after he had abandoned them; his epic Odyssey ridiculed; his Askitiki misunderstood; being able to publish in Europe but not in Greece; a publishing house reneging after he had completed half of a French-Greek dictionary; single copies of manuscripts lost in the mail; and so on and so forth. But throughout all of this he successfully fought depression, never stopped working, and never lost his belief in eventual salvation for himself, his nation, his broader civilization. This fortitude—and resilience—is well worth our admiring notice.

A Maniacal Epistolographer

There are many collections of extraordinary letters. My favorites are those of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. In each case these letters are not only essential resources for scholars but also useful for anyone interested in human behavior because they enable us to know what an exceptional individual was thinking, doing, hoping, fearing, even eating almost every day of his or her adult life. The same is true for the extraordinary letters of Nikos Kazantzakis. We know quite a lot about Kazantzakis’s life but nothing compared to what is revealed in these selected letters, even though they are only about one-tenth of the total. I chose them because of their intrinsic interest but also because I wanted to include every person to whom he wrote. Above all, the letters show his genius. Look for example at those written in the very first years of his student days at Athens University, when he was nineteen and twenty years old. His powers of expression are remarkable, as are his rich vocabulary, his tireless urge to observe everything and everyone around him, his erudition even then (when he had just finished high school). All these virtues continue for the next fifty-plus years. What we also see is his intense need to write letters and to receive them. He did not use a telephone for decades, although he occasionally sent or received telegrams; he certainly never owned a computer; nor did he type (his wife Eleni did that). His connection with others was through the written word inscribed via pen and ink at lightning speed. Did he write with the expectation that his letters would be retained by their recipients and be published? Perhaps, but no evidence for this exists. I think he wrote owing to fear that, without letters, his connection with humanity would be severed. He kept pleading with recipients to answer him quickly, extensively, and complained bitterly if they did not. When his wife Galatea did answer, he protested: I always write you immense missives. You, two words. Beyond that, you use such big letters! Three of your pages fit into one of mine. Yes, he sometimes seemed in his letters to be trying out passages that would eventually be included in a published work; yet I believe that his primary purpose for writing was to connect with someone who would be interested and would respond with comments. I call him a maniacal epistolographer because letter writing for him was truly a mania: a zealous necessity.

Ompleteness

My aim has been to print complete letters only. For published letters available in incomplete form, fortunately in many cases I have found corresponding manuscripts enabling me to translate these texts in their complete form. On the other hand, many manuscripts are missing, especially those of letters to Eleni Kazantzaki. To be consistent with my general aim to print complete letters only, I omit incomplete letters to her and others unless they are extraordinarily interesting. Happily, the incomplete letters to Eleni Kazantzaki that I would have liked to include here are readily available in printed form not only in Greek but also in English and French translation.

Annotations

Anyone reading these letters will soon become aware of Kazantzakis’s far-reaching involvement with people, places, and ideas that are likely to be unfamiliar especially to non-Greeks and even in many cases to Greeks of the twenty-first century as opposed to those of the first half of the twentieth century, his own time. Thus, I have tried to annotate just about everything, perhaps excessively. Because I do not employ footnote numbers, readers may easily ignore the annotations; conversely, because I place the annotations directly beneath each epistle rather than at the end of the volume, interested readers may access them easily. Many are borrowed from other writers, especially Pandelis Prevelakis; many are gleaned from the Internet, Greek encyclopedias, dialect dictionaries, Who’s Whos, and the like; many have been supplied by Peter Mackridge and a bevy of other friends and colleagues, all of whom are listed with thanks in my acknowledgments, below.

Transliteration

Transliteration is a pain; no matter what ones does, somebody will object. I expect that objections will greet the transliterations in this volume, perhaps because the system I employ is not consistent. Mostly I try to approximate modern Greek pronunciation; this, I am happy to say, seems to be the favored mode employed now in Greece itself, especially on street signs. Thus Kazantzakis’s ancestral village Βαρβάροι is transliterated as Varvari, not Varvaroi and certainly not Barbaroi. Similarly, the proper name Ψυχάρης appears as Psiharis, not Psychares. The same for Χάρης, transliterated here as Haris, more or less the way it is pronounced, not as Chares (horrible!), Charis, or Kharis. On the other hand, familiar words are done more conservatively. Thus for Kazantzakis’s Οδυσέας (with one sigma!) I write Odysseas, not Odiseas, Odisseas, Odhiseas, or indeed Odysseus. Like everyone else, I tend to correct Kazantzakis’s spelling and accentuation, except occasionally when I indicate that these features have been retained in my text. His program of spelling reform was resisted by everyone, even his friend Prevelakis. He eliminated all double consonants that do not affect pronunciation, as well as all accents on a word’s final syllable. Even Ellada became Elada for him, but not for anyone else, which explains (I trust) my own conservatism in this area. Regarding stress, I have chosen not to include accent marks at all, which perhaps is a mistake, but does make life easier. Of course, the best solution is to utilize the Greek alphabet, avoiding transliteration altogether. This I do many times, a practice that should please readers of Greek and make no difference to those who do not read Greek, who will be just as perplexed by the transliteration in such cases. Finally, it is worth noting that I use the Greek form of female names—thus Helen Kazantzakis for a work published in English but Eleni Kazantzaki for works published in Greek.

Acknowledgments

Scholarship, like many other activities, is most often communal, even though the result is often credited to only a single author or editor. Because I could never have produced this book by myself, I wish now to name all those who have helped, hoping that I have not overlooked anyone.

First of all must come the late Eleni Kazantzaki. She originally asked me to translate the Four Hundred Letters of Kazantzakis to Prevelakis. I suggested to her that a volume of Selected Letters drawn from many recipients (and, of course, including the best of those to Prevelakis) would be more useful. She agreed, indeed with enthusiasm. Although I possessed a fairly good knowledge of obvious recipients, my scope was greatly enlarged by Mrs. Kazantzakis, who provided me with names, addresses, and a letter of introduction to numerous people. A Fulbright Research Fellowship to Greece in the spring of 1987 enabled me, greatly aided by my wife, Chrysanthi Yiannakou-Bien, to contact scores of recipients, to visit them, and to photocopy 221 holograph manuscripts of unpublished letters, all carefully saved in various homes, plus 140 holograph manuscripts of published letters, and 74 printed items new to me, a total of 435 items. Together with these, of course, were letters published often in periodicals and books, some of which were readily obtainable but others obtainable only by various instances of good luck or miracle. I must add that all the recipients (with one exception, whom I shall not name) were delighted, even ecstatic, to learn that some of their treasures would be published. I should naturally note as well that people who received letters from Kazantzakis tended to keep them. There were several exceptions: one recipient (Lefteris Alexiou) tore them up in anger, and several feared that they might be politically compromised if such letters were discovered in their possession. Later journeys outside of Greece produced additional unpublished letters—for example, those to Max Schuster housed now in the Columbia University library in New York.

Eleni Kazantzaki initiated the project, but Chrysanthi Bien, already mentioned, nurtured it for twenty years. How many times did she glare with a magnifying glass at an almost illegible word in Kazantzakis’s frantic scrawl and manage most often to decipher it! How many times did she enlighten me regarding a term in no dictionary by saying something like I used to play that same game in Thessaloniki as a child or We, too, ate that same mush for breakfast during the war.

Next I must mention Dr. Patroclus Stavrou and Professor Peter Mackridge. Dr. Stavrou, who cared for Eleni Kazantzaki in her senescence, now manages Kazantzakis Publications and controls the copyright to the letters. He approved the project from the beginning, always encouraged me, and has cooperated at every step. Professor Mackridge, recently retired from Oxford, went carefully through the entire translation in relation to the original Greek, identified errors and solecisms, and offered very fine suggestions for improvement of both text and annotations. He has saved me from numerous (sometimes embarrassing) faults. In addition, he provided extensive information for my annotations of the Anghelakis letters, discovered letters to Kay Cicellis, and also located John Mavrogordato’s diary entries as a source for my annotation about Ambassador Waterlow—overdoing collegiate camaraderie!

Then there are the three great archival centers. Because this project began with the idea of translating only the letters to Prevelakis, I mention first the Prevelakis archive at the University of Crete in Rethymno. Professor Alexis Politis and Professor Emeritus Stamatis Philippides of that institution helped to facilitate my ten-week stay in Rethymno in 2007 and a month’s stay in Iraklio in 2009. Regarding the actual letters to Prevelakis, the stalwart is the curator of special collections, Eleni Kovaiou, who enabled me to view original manuscripts, who searched for the meaning of words in Cretan dialect, and who answered promptly and fully all my queries. What happened in the Rethymno archive was especially important because Prevelakis censored all of Kazantzakis’s curses directed at then-living individuals. Prevelakis’s brother Eleftherios, whom I visited in Athens in 1987, enabled me to restore some of these nasty comments if they occurred in manuscripts he chanced to possess in his apartment. But most of the restorations occurred thanks to Eleni Kovaiou, who oversees the complete archive of correspondence to Prevelakis. And what fun it was relishing Kazantzakis’s censored maledictions, all of which are now restored in this edition of the Selected Letters.

The other two archival centers are the Kazantzakis Museum in the ancestral village, Varvari (renamed Myrtia), and the Historical Museum of Crete in Iraklio. The former maintains many archives of letters to various recipients plus a complete collection of printed materials that are relevant. Its director, Varvara Tsaka, is another stalwart, driving me each day to and from the village, attending to my repeated needs at a time when the museum was undergoing restoration and everything was topsy-turvy, researching my queries via her extensive data bases, and continuing to respond to emailed requests regarding illegible words, dialectical terms, dates of birth and death, and other puzzles I detected after my departure. The museum’s associate curator, Andonis Leventis, installed me in his office during my time there while he busied himself with hammer and vacuum cleaner owing to the restorations. He, too, has been a source of vital information of all kinds. The latter center, in Iraklio, contains all of the manuscript letters to Galatea Kazantzaki, plus letters to various other recipients. The museum’s director, Dr. Alexis Kalokairinos, has supported the project from the start and has been most welcoming. The museum’s curator of libraries and archives, Georgia Katsalaki, helped me on a daily basis during my time in Iraklio, providing access to manuscripts, deciphering nearly illegible words, worrying about Cretan dialect, and asking various people for information on my behalf.

Before proceeding with all the others, whom I am going to list alphabetically, I wish to record here the use I have made of the annotations done by Prevelakis for the Four Hundred Letters, those included in Martha Aposkitou-Alexiou’s collection of letters, and those done by Eleni Kazantzaki for the letters she published in Greek, English, and French. (See the References Cited for a full list of materials utilized.)

Thanks, of course, to Princeton University Press’s two anonymous readers, who read the typescript with care and sent back valuable suggestions.

In addition, thanks go to:

Christos Alexiou for help locating people in Athens; Professor Emeritus Stylianos Alexiou for help concerning family members and difficult words; the late Yorgos Anemoyannis, founder of the Kazantzakis Museum, distinguished theatrical personality, for photocopies of numerous manuscripts of letters to Eleni Samiou Kazantzaki; Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Kazantzakis’s goddaughter, for several hundred photocopied manuscripts of Kazantzakis’s letters to her father, her mother, and herself; Michael Antonakes for information on the church’s opposition to Kazantzakis and for collaboration on the translation of the circular letter of 28 August 1929; Kalliopi Balatsouka for sorting out the letters to Kimon Friar in Princeton’s Firestone Library; Professor Roderick Beaton of King’s College London for vetting the letters’ first section and discovering solecisms, typos, and one egregious mistranslation; Linos Benakis for information about Elli Lambridi’s friend Loukia; Laura Braunstein and other Dartmouth reference librarians in the Baker-Berry Library, always ready to pursue research on difficult questions; my former Dartmouth colleague Laurence J. Davies, now teaching at the University of Glasgow, coeditor of nine volumes of the Conrad letters, for good pointers on how to survive the ordeal of such a project; Professor Emeritus Norman A. Doenges of Dartmouth for help with ancient Greek; Professor Bruce Duncan of Dartmouth for help regarding German pronunciation and for finding the authors of some German poems; ELIA (The Greek Literary and Historical Archive) in Athens for material from the Paxinou-Minotis archive; Dimitri Gondicas, director of Hellenic Studies at Princeton, for opening up for my use the very great resources of Firestone Library; Professor Emeritus Yannis Hasiotis of the University of Thessaloniki for information regarding the letters to Stavridakis; Yiolanda Hatzi, niece of Elli Lambridi, for letters to Lambridi; Evanthis Hatzivassiliou for information regarding Greek leftists; Professor Robert Hollander of Princeton for help with Dante; Professor John Iatrides for information about Greek Civil War figures; Dr. Aglaïa Kasdagli of the University of Crete for information about her father; Professor K. G. Kasinis for help with Palamas’s manuscripts; Muriel King, born of French parents in Saigon, for aid with Kazantzakis’s sometimes idiosyncratic French; Lia Lazou and Don Nielsen for help locating people in Athens; Maria Margarita Malagón-Kurka, an Adirondack neighbor, native of Colombia, for translating the letters to Jiménez; Amy Mims for annotations and also for snippets of translation when a bit of a letter excluded from Eleni Kazantzaki’s Greek edition (1977) is included in Mims’s prior translation of these same letters into English (Helen Kazantzakis 1968); Devin E. Naar of Stanford University for identifying the editor of the newspaper Le Progrès and supplying additional information; Francis X. Oscadel, reference librarian at Dartmouth, for general assistance; Gareth Owens, his wife, Kallia Nikolidaki, and her father in Vori for introduction to Yorgos Stefanidis and help with Cretan dialect; Lewis Owens for assistance obtaining the letters to Martinu; Ben Petre for translating part of the letter, dated 5 February 1944, to Nikos Hatzikyriakos-Gkikas; Anastasios Pourgouras of the American Farm School outside of Thessaloniki for translating a tenth-century liturgical text; Professor Ulrike Rainer of Dartmouth for translating and correcting German; Professor John Rassias of Dartmouth for help with French; Professor Kevin Reinhart of Dartmouth for help with Turkish; Professor Panayotis Roilos for guidance regarding Harvard’s resources on modern Greek; David Roth, student assistant; Professor Barry Scherr of Dartmouth for prompt and expert help with Russian, even while he was preoccupied as Dartmouth’s provost; Professor Emeritus William C. Scott of Dartmouth for help finding quotations in ancient Greek; Don Skemer for willingness to supply photocopies of manuscripts in the Princeton library’s special collections; Niki Stavrou, Patroclus Stavrou’s daughter, now working at Kazantzakis Publications, for valuable help with my annotations; Yorgos Stefanidis for information on Harilaos Stefanidis; S. E. Stephanou for the gift of photocopies of letters to his father, the Reverend Emmanuel Papastefanou; Pitsa Tsakona, librarian at the Benaki Museum, for use of the library’s collections; Angelos Tsakopoulos and his daughter Eleni for supplying the photograph of a manuscript; Miguel A. Valladares, one of Dartmouth’s reference librarians, for extraordinary diligence and skill in finding information about Tomás de Malonyay, and helping me with Spanish texts; Alfred Vincent of Sydney, Australia, for expert information about Erotokritos; Cynthia Wigington for secretarial assistance, typing, and translations from German.

Many thanks to all those mentioned above and to others, especially additional people who supplied letters and will be mentioned in connection with individual donations. Again, the project could never have been completed without this communal dimension.

The work was done chiefly at our Adirondack farm, Terpni, in Riparius, New York; in the Quaker-inspired Kendal at Hanover retirement community in Hanover, New Hampshire, where we spend eight months of the year; and in Dartmouth College’s extraordinary Baker-Berry Library.

8 June 2010

Peter Bien

Chronology

1883. Kazantzakis is born on 18/30 February in Iraklio, Crete, then still part of the Ottoman Empire. The family of his father, Mihalis, a dealer in agricultural products and wine, was from the nearby village formerly called Varvari, currently Myrtia, now the site of the Kazantzakis Museum. Much later, Mihalis is to become one of the models for Kapetan Mihalis, the hero of the novel called Ο Καπετάν Μιχάλης in Greek and Freedom or Death in English.

1889. Cretan rebels attempt without success to win the island’s freedom from the Turks. The Kazantzakis family flees to mainland Greece for six months.

1897–98. Another Cretan rebellion takes place, resulting in the Cretan state under protection of the Great Powers. Nikos is sent for safety to the island of Naxos, where he is enrolled in a school run by French Roman Catholic monks. This begins his knowledge and love of the French language.

I • At Law School in Athens

1902. The letters begin. Having completed his secondary education in Iraklio, Kazantzakis moves to Athens to study law at the University of Athens.

1906. Before taking his degree, Kazantzakis publishes his essay The Sickness of the Century and his novel Serpent and Lily; he also writes the play Day Is Breaking.

1907. Day Is Breaking wins a drama prize and is produced in Athens, stirring up much controversy. The young Kazantzakis becomes instantaneously famous. He begins his journalistic career and is initiated as a Freemason.

This chronology is based largely on the biographical summaries that Pandelis Prevelakis includes in the Tetrakosia grammata tou Kazantzaki ston Prevelaki (Prevelakis 1965, pp. 3–16, 19–22, 125–27, 383–89, 531–51). It was originally printed in volume 1 of my Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (Bien 1989, pp. xvii–xxiv). Kazantzakis’s birth date is given as old style/new style. This is because Greek dates before 16 February 1923 reflect the Julian Calendar. The Gregorian reform of the Julian Calendar, although accepted in most of southern Europe during the sixteenth century and by Britain and the future United States in 1752, was delayed in Greece until 1923, when 16 February became 1 March. To convert old style (

o.s.

) to new style (

n.s.

), add twelve days if the

o.s.

date falls in the nineteenth century and thirteen days if the

o.s.

date falls in the twentieth century.

II • Pursuing Graduate Studies in Paris

In October 1907 he commences graduate studies in Paris, where he continues to compose both journalistic articles and serious literature.

1908. In Paris, he attends Henri Bergson’s lectures, reads Nietzsche, and completes his novel Broken Souls.

1909. He finishes his dissertation on Nietzsche and writes the play The Master Builder.

III • Politically Active in Greece

Returning to Crete via Italy, he publishes his dissertation, the one-act play Comedy, and the essay Has Science Gone Bankrupt? As president of the Solomos Society of Iraklio, a lobby advocating the adoption in schools of the demotic language (the language spoken by the common people) and the abandonment of the puristic language called katharevousa, Kazantzakis writes a long essay on linguistic reform that is published in an Athenian periodical.

1910. His essay For Our Youth hails Ion Dragoumis, another advocate of the demotic language, as the prophet who will guide Greece to new glory by insisting that it must overcome its subservience to ancient Greek culture. Kazantzakis and Galatea Alexiou, an Iraklio author, intellectual, and bluestocking, begin to live together in Athens, without marrying. He earns his bread by translating from French, German, English, and ancient Greek. He becomes a founding member of the Educational Association, the most important lobby for demoticism.

1911. He marries Galatea Alexiou.

1912. He introduces Bergson’s philosophy to Greek intellectuals by means of a long lecture delivered to members of the Educational Association and later published in the association’s bulletin. When the First Balkan War breaks out, he volunteers for the army and is assigned to Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos’s private office.

1914. He and the poet Angelos Sikelianos journey together to Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, where they remain for forty days at various monasteries. He reads Dante, the Gospels, and Buddhist texts there; he and Sikelianos dream of founding a new religion. To earn a living, he writes children’s books in collaboration with Galatea, hoping that they will be adopted by the Ministry of Education for use in schools.

1915. Again with Sikelianos, he tours Greece. In his diary he writes: My three great teachers: Homer, Dante, Bergson. In retreat at a monastery, he completes a book (now lost), probably on the Holy Mountain. He notes in his diary that his motto is come l’uom s’eterna (how man makes himself immortal—from Dante’s Inferno 15.85). He most likely writes the plays Christ, Odysseas, and Nikiforos Fokas in first draft. In order to sign a contract for harvesting wood from Mount Athos, he travels to Thessaloniki in October. There he witnesses the British and French forces as they disembark to fight on the Salonica Front in the First World War. In the same month, reading Tolstoy, he decides that religion is more important than literature and vows to begin where Tolstoy left off.

1917. Because of the need for even low-grade coal during the war, Kazantzakis engages a workman named George Zorbas and attempts to mine lignite in the Peloponnese. This experience, combined with a 1915 scheme for harvesting wood on Mount Athos, develops much later into the novel Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas (Zorba the Greek). In September he travels to Switzerland, where he resides as the guest of Yannis Stavridakis, the Greek consul in Zurich.

1918. He goes on pilgrimage in Switzerland to the sites associated with Nietzsche. He forms an attachment to an intellectual Greek woman, the philosopher Elli Lambridi.

1919. Prime Minister Venizelos appoints Kazantzakis director general of the Ministry of Welfare, with the specific mission of repatriating the 150,000 Greeks who were being persecuted by the Bolsheviks in the Caucasus owing to Greece’s aid to the Whites in the Russian Civil War. In July Kazantzakis departs with his team, which includes Stavridakis and Zorbas. In August he travels to Versailles to report to Venizelos, then participating in the peace conference. Afterwards, Kazantzakis proceeds to Macedonia and Thrace to oversee the installation of the refugees in villages there. These experiences are used much later in Christ Recrucified (entitled The Greek Passion in America).

1920. The assassination of Ion Dragoumis on 31 July (o.s.) dismays Kazantzakis. When Venizelos’s Liberal Party is defeated at the polls in November, he resigns from the Ministry of Welfare and departs for Paris.

1921. He tours Germany, returning to Greece in February.

IV • Fleeing Greece; Resident in Austria, Germany, Italy

1922. An advance contract with an Athenian publisher for a series of school textbooks enables him to leave Greece again. He remains in Vienna from 19 May until the end of August. There he contracts a facial eczema that the dissident Freudian therapist Wilhelm Stekel calls the saints’ disease. In the midst of Vienna’s postwar decadence, he studies Buddhist scriptures and begins a play on Buddha’s life. He also studies Freud and sketches out Askitiki (published in English as The Saviors of God; Spiritual Exercises). September finds him in Berlin, where he learns about Greece’s utter defeat by the Turks, the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Abandoning his previous nationalism, he aligns himself with communist revolutionaries. He is influenced in particular by Rahel Lipstein and her cell of radical young women. Tearing up his unfinished play on Buddha, he starts it again in a new form. He also returns to Askitiki, his attempt to reconcile communist activism with Buddhist resignation. His dream being to settle in the Soviet Union, he begins to study the Russian language.

1923. The period in Vienna and Berlin is well documented owing to copious letters from Kazantzakis to Galatea, who continues to reside in Athens, refusing to join her husband. Kazantzakis completes Askitiki in April and resumes work on Buddha. In June he goes on pilgrimage to Naumburg, where Nietzsche spent his childhood years.

1924. While spending three months in Italy, Kazantzakis visits Pompeii, which becomes one of his obsessive symbols; then he settles in Assisi, completes Buddha there, and indulges his lifelong discipleship to Saint Francis.

V • Meets Eleni Samiou; Begins Odyssey; Divorces Galatea; Travels to Soviet Union

Soon after his return to Athens he meets EIeni Samiou. Back in Iraklio, he becomes the guru of a communist cell of disgruntled refugees and of veterans from the Asia Minor campaign. He begins to plan his epic Odyssey, and he perhaps writes Symposium.

1925. His political involvements lead to his arrest, but he is detained by the police for only twenty-four hours. He composes cantos 1–6 of the Odyssey. His relationship with Eleni Samiou deepens. In October he leaves for the Soviet Union as correspondent for an Athenian newspaper, which publishes his impressions in a series of long articles.

1926. He and Galatea are divorced; she continues her professional career under the name Galatea Kazantzaki even after she remarries. He travels to Palestine and Cyprus, again as a newspaper correspondent. In August he journeys to Spain to interview Miguel Primo de Rivera, the Spanish dictator. October finds him in Rome interviewing Benito Mussolini. In November he meets Pandelis Prevelakis, his future disciple, literary agent, confidant, and biographer.

1927. He visits Egypt and Sinai, again as a newspaper correspondent. In May he isolates himself on Aegina in order to complete the Odyssey. Immediately afterwards he hastily composes scores of encyclopedia articles to earn a living, then collects his travel articles for the first volume of Taksidevondas (Journeying). Dimitrios Glinos’s periodical Anayennisi (Renaissance) publishes Askitiki.

VI • Resident Almost Eighteen Months in the Soviet Union

In late October 1927 Kazantzakis travels to Russia once again, this time as the guest of the Soviet government on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He encounters Henri Barbusse. He delivers a bellicose speech at a peace symposium. In November he meets Panaït Istrati, a Greek Romanian writer then very much vogue in France. With Istrati and others, he tours the Caucasus. The two friends vow to share a life of political and intellectual action in the Soviet Union. In December, Kazantzakis brings Istrati to Athens and introduces him to the Greek public via a newspaper article.

1928. On 11 January, Kazantzakis and Istrati address a throng in the Alhambra Theater, praising the Soviet experiment. This leads to a demonstration in the streets. Kazantzakis and Dimitrios Glinos, who organized the event, are threatened with legal action, Istrati with deportation. April finds both Istrati and Kazantzakis back in the Soviet Union, now in Kiev, where Kazantzakis writes a film scenario on the Russian Revolution. In Moscow in June, Kazantzakis and Istrati meet Gorki. Kazantzakis changes the ending of Askitiki, adding The Silence. He writes articles for Pravda about social conditions in Greece, then undertakes another scenario, this time on the life of Lenin. Traveling with Istrati to Murmansk, he passes through Leningrad and meets Victor Serge. In July, Barbusse’s periodical Monde publishes a profile of Kazantzakis by Istrati; this is the first introduction of Kazantzakis to the European reading public. At the end of August, Kazantzakis and Istrati, joined by Eleni Samiou and Istrati’s companion, Bilili Baud-Bovy, undertake a long journey in southern Russia with the object of coauthoring a series of articles entitled Following the Red Star. But the two friends become increasingly estranged. Their differences are brought to a boil in December by the Roussakov affair—that is, the persecution of Victor Serge and his father-in-law, Roussakov, as Trotskyites. In Athens, a publisher brings out Kazantzakis’s Russian travel articles in two volumes.

1929. Alone now, Kazantzakis continues his travels across the length and breadth of Russia.

VII • Trying to Make a Career Outside of Greece, Especially in Spain

In April he departs for Berlin, where he lectures on the Soviet Union and attempts to publish articles. In May he settles with Eleni Samiou in a remote farmhouse in Czechoslovakia to write, in French, the novel first entitled Moscou a crié and then renamed Toda-Raba. This recounts his recent vicissitudes in Russia, only minimally disguised. He also completes a novel in French called Kapétan Élia, one of the many precursors of Kapetan Mihalis. These are his first attempts to develop a career in western Europe. At the same time, he undertakes a basic revision of his Odyssey in order to reflect his changed view of the Soviet Union.

1930. To earn money, he produces a two-volume History of Russian Literature, which is published in Athens. The Greek authorities threaten to bring him to trial for atheism on account of Askitiki. Kazantzakis remains abroad, first in Paris, then in Nice, where he translates French children’s books for Athenian publishers.

1931. Back in Greece, he settles again on Aegina, collaborating with Prevelakis on a French-Greek dictionary (demotic as well as katharevousa). In June, in Paris, he visits the Colonial Exhibition; this gives him fresh ideas for the African scenes in the Odyssey, whose third draft he completes in his hideaway in Czechoslovakia.

1932. Kazantzakis and Prevelakis plan additional collaborations to alleviate their financial woes. These involve film scenarios and translations. The plan is largely unsuccessful. Among other things, Kazantzakis translates the whole of Dante’s Divine Comedy into Greek terza rima in forty-five days. He moves to Spain in an effort to develop a career there. He begins by translating Spanish poetry for an anthology.

1933. He writes his impressions of Spain. He completes a terzina on his general, the painter El Greco, born in Crete—the germ of his future autobiography, Report to Greco.

VIII • Back in Greece, Having Failed Elsewhere; Traveling in Far East; Odyssey Completed and Published; Visit to England

Unable to support himself in Spain, he returns to Aegina, where he undertakes a fourth draft of the Odyssey. After revising his Dante translation, he composes a set of terzinas.

1934. To earn money, he writes three textbooks for the second and third grades of primary school. When one of these is sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, his financial woes are alleviated for a time.

1935. After completing the fifth draft of the Odyssey, he sails for Japan and China in order to produce more travel articles. Upon his return he purchases a building lot in Aegina.

1936. Still attempting to establish a career outside of Greece, Kazantzakis writes, in French, the novel Le Jardin des rochers (The Rock Garden), drawing upon recent experiences in the Far East. He also completes a new version of the Kapetan Mihalis theme, caIling it Mon père (My Father). For money, he translates Pirandello’s Questa sera si recita a soggetto (Tonight We Improvise) for the National Theater; he then turns out his own Pirandellesque play, Othello Returns, which remains unknown during his lifetime. Next, he translates Goethe’s Faust, Part I. During October and November he is in war-torn Spain as a correspondent; he interviews both Francisco Franco and Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo. His home in Aegina is completed. This is his first permanent residence.

1937. In Aegina, he completes the sixth draft of the Odyssey. His travel book on Spain is published. In September he tours the Peloponnese. His impressions are published in article form; later they will become Journey to the Morea. He writes the tragedy Melissa for the National Theater.

1938. After the eighth and final draft of the Odyssey, he supervises the printing of the epic in a sumptuous edition. Publication takes place at the end of December. He suffers again from the facial eczema that occurred in Vienna in 1922.

1939. He plans a new epic in 33,333 verses to be called Akritas. From July through November he is in England as a guest of the British Council. While residing in Stratford-on-Avon, he writes the tragedy Julian the Apostate.

1940. He writes England and continues to sketch out Akritas and to revise Mon père. To earn money, he produces novelistic biographies for children. Mussolini’s invasion of Greece in late October makes Kazantzakis confront anew his ambivalence concerning Greek nationalism.

IX • Confined to Aegina During the German Occupation; Writes Zorba and Many Plays; Begins to Translate Homer’s Iliad

1941. As the Germans overrun mainland Greece and then Crete, Kazantzakis assuages his grief with work. He finishes the drama Buddha in first draft, revises his translation of Dante, and begins a novel originally entitled The Saint’s Life of Zorba.

1942. Confined to Aegina for the duration of the war, he vows to forsake his writing as soon as possible in order to reenter politics. The Germans allow him a few days in Athens, where he meets Professor Yannis Kakridis, an expert on Homer; they agree to collaborate on a new translation of the Iliad. Kazantzakis finishes the first draft of this translation between August and October, then plans a novel on Jesus to be called Christ’s Memoirs—the germ of The Last Temptation of Christ.

1943. Working energetically despite the privations of the German occupation, Kazantzakis completes the second drafts of Buddha, Zorba, and the Iliad translation. Then he writes his own version of the Prometheus trilogy.

1944. In the spring and summer he completes the plays Kapodistrias and Constantine Palaiologos. Together with the Prometheus trilogy, these cover ancient Greece, Byzantium, and modern Greece.

X • In Athens During Round Two of the Civil War; Resolves to Help Liberated Greece via Political Action; Briefly a Cabinet Member; Marries Eleni Samiou

After the Germans withdraw, Kazantzakis moves immediately to Athens, where he is offered hospitality by Tea Anemoyanni. He witnesses the phase of the civil war known as the Dekemvriana.

1945. Fulfilling his vow to reenter politics, he becomes the leader of a small socialist party whose aim is to unite all the splinter groups of the non-communist, democratic Left. He is denied admission to the Academy of Athens. The government sends him on a fact-finding mission to Crete in order to attest to the German atrocities there. In November he marries his longtime companion Eleni Samiou and is sworn in as minister without portfolio in Themistocles Sofoulis’s coalition government.

1946. The uniting of the democratic socialist parties having occurred, Kazantzakis resigns his post as minister. On 25 March, the anniversary of the start of the Greek War of Independence, his play Kapodistrias opens at the National Theater. The production causes an uproar, including threats by a right-wing nationalist to burn down the theater. The Society of Greek Writers recommends Kazantzakis for the Nobel Prize, together with Angelos Sikelianos. In June he begins a sojourn abroad that is meant to last only forty days but that actually lasts for the remainder of his life. In England he attempts to convince British intellectuals to join him in forming an Internationale of the Spirit; they are neither interested nor amused. The British Council offers him a room in Cambridge, where he spends the summer writing a novel called The Ascent—one more precursor of Kapetan Mihalis. In September he moves to Paris. Political conditions in Greece force him to remain abroad. He arranges for Zorba to be translated into French.

XI • Final Exile: Resides Briefly in England, Then in France; Writes Final Novels and Plays; Travels to China

1947. Börje Knös, the Swedish philhellene and government official, translates Zorba. Kazantzakis, after pulling many strings, is appointed to a post at UNESCO, his job being to facilitate translations of the world’s classics in order to build bridges between cultures, especially between East and West. He himself translates his play Julian the Apostate. Zorba is published in Paris in French translation (in 1954 it wins a prize as the best foreign book).

1948. He continues to translate his plays. In March he resigns from UNESCO in order to devote himself fully to his own writing. Julian is staged in Paris (one performance only). Kazantzakis and Eleni move to Antibes, where he immediately composes the play Sodom and Gomorrah. Zorba is accepted by publishers in England, the United States, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia. Kazantzakis writes the first draft of Christ Recrucified in three months, then spends two more months revising the novel.

1949. He begins a new novel, The Fratricides, about the civil war then raging in Greece. Next come two more plays, Kouros and Christopher Columbus. His facial eczema returns; he goes to Vichy for treatment at a spa there. In December he begins Kapetan Mihalis.

1950. This novel occupies him until the end of July. In November he turns to The Last Temptation. Meanwhile, Zorba and Christ Recrucified have been published in Sweden.

1951. He completes the first draft of The Last Temptation, then revises it after reworking Constantine Palaiologos. Christ Recrucified is published in Norway and Germany.

1952. Success brings its own problems: Kazantzakis finds himself increasingly preoccupied with translators and publishers in various countries. He is also increasingly bothered by his facial ailment. He and Eleni spend the summer in Italy, where he indulges once again his attachment to Saint Francis. A severe infection in the eye sends him to the hospital in Holland, where he studies the life of Saint Francis while recovering. His novels continue to be published in Norway, Sweden, Holland, Finland, and Germany—but not in Greece.

1953. He is hospitalized in Paris, still suffering from the eye infection (he eventually loses the sight of his right eye). Examinations reveal a lymphatic disorder that has presumably caused his facial symptoms throughout the years. Back in Antibes, he spends a month with Professor Kakridis perfecting their translation of the Iliad. He writes the novel Saint Francis. In Greece, the Orthodox Church seeks to prosecute Kazantzakis for sacrilege owing to several pages of Kapetan Mihalis and the whole of The Last Temptation, even though the latter still has not been published in Greek. Zorba the Greek is published in New York.

1954. The pope places The Last Temptation on the Roman Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. Kazantzakis telegraphs the Vatican a phrase from the Christian apologist Tertullian: Ad tuum, Domine, tribunal appello (I lodge my appeal at your tribunal, Lord). He says the same to the Orthodox hierarchy in Athens, adding: You gave me your 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 am. In the summer, Kazantzakis begins a daily collaboration with Kimon Friar, who is translating the Odyssey into English. In December he attends the première of Sodom and Gomorrah in Mannheim, Germany, after which he enters the hospital at Freiburg im Breisgau. His disease is diagnosed as benign lymphatic leukemia. The young publisher Yannis Goudelis undertakes to bring out Kazantzakis’s collected works in Athens.

1955. Kazantzakis and Eleni spend a month in a rest home in Lugano, Switzerland. There, Kazantzakis begins his spiritual autobiography, Report to Greco. In August they visit Albert Schweitzer in Gunsbach. Back in Antibes, Kazantzakis is consulted by Jules Dassin regarding the scenario for a movie of Christ Recrucified. The Kazantzakis-Kakridis translation of the Iliad comes out in Greece, paid for by the translators themselves because no publisher will accept this new version. A second, revised edition of the Odyssey is prepared in Athens under the supervision of Emmanuel Kasdaglis, who also edits the first volume of Kazantzakis’s collected plays. The Last Temptation finally appears in Greece, after a royal personage intervenes with the government in Kazantzakis’s behalf.

1956. In June, Kazantzakis receives the Soviet bloc’s Peace Prize in Vienna. He continues to collaborate with Kimon Friar. He loses the Nobel Prize at the last moment to Juan Ramón Jiménez. Dassin completes the film of Christ Recrucified, calling it Celui qui doit mourir (He Who Must Die). The collected works proceed; they now include two more volumes of plays, several volumes of travel articles, Toda-Raba translated from French into Greek, and Saint Francis.

1957. Kazantzakis continues to work with Kimon Friar. A long interview with Pierre Sipriot is broadcast in six installments over Paris radio. Kazantzakis attends the showing of Celui qui doit mourir at the Cannes film festival. The Parisian publisher PIon agrees to bring out his collected works in French translation. Kazantzakis and Eleni depart for China as guests of the Chinese government. Because his return flight is via Japan, he is forced to be vaccinated in Canton. Over the North Pole his arm swells and begins to turn gangrenous. He is taken to the hospital in Freiburg im Breisgau where his leukemia was originally diagnosed. The crisis passes. Albert Schweitzer comes to congratulate him, but then an epidemic of Asian flu quickly overcomes him in his weakened condition. He dies on 26 October, aged seventy-four years. His body arrives in Athens. The Greek Orthodox Church refuses to allow it to lie in state. The body is transferred to Crete, where it is viewed in the cathedral church of Iraklio. A huge procession follows it to interment on the Venetian ramparts. Later, Kazantzakis’s chosen epitaph is inscribed on the tomb: I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

I • At Law School in Athens

To His Father

—Manuscript in Historical Museum of Crete, Kaz. 2, A/A 1; printed in Parlamas 1959 (incomplete), pp. 205–6, and in Alexiou and Stefanakis 1983, pp. 335–38.

Athens, 21 September 1902

My dear revered father,

I arrived here just yesterday and sent you a postcard in order to announce to you that I arrived here excellently; I really never had a better journey—I didn’t get seasick, nor was I cold. My only sorrow (though great) was that I was going far away from you, far away from paternal and maternal love. I am now very sad because of this, since I am not near you.

A quite sufficient consolation amid my sadness is that the family with whom I’m staying pleases me exceedingly. Their consideration is great and, above all, not just a pretense. As soon as I arrived, they had soup ready, as well as milk, coffee, and lots more. I especially like the cleanliness and fine quality of their meals. When I got up today, they brought me milk and then asked me what I wanted them to cook today. In a word, they consider me as one of their children.

The room in which I sleep has been very nicely refurbished. They bought a new bed. I have my wash basin there, my desk, another table on which I place my books, a wardrobe for my clothes, and in general everything that’s needed. No one enters. I have quiet for studying. Another of this family’s advantages is that they are of a very good class and therefore able to connect me with very fine acquaintances. Their son, the same age as me, is in the Polytechnic University studying engineering. He is very calm, another Grammatikakis, and studies a lot. He knows German. Since I, too, want to learn that language because it will be exceedingly useful to me, I have decided for that reason to benefit from the opportunity and to get him to give me lessons. He accepted with great pleasure, and I’m going to start German on 1 October. In this way I will avoid the monthly stipend for a teacher I would have needed to employ.

Mr. Stagalis is fifty to fifty-five years old and very educated. He is a talkative, first-rate person. He is very orderly. He has arranged for us to be at table for midday dinner exactly when the bell rings, and in the evening at eight o’clock. He wants me to return around eight in the evening. When I go out afterwards, I must go for a stroll with the family. I like this very much; it’s a way for me to avoid many dangers. He has something else that is bound to please me above all: he is a great lover of fruit.

Mrs. Stagali, about forty years old, takes good care of me. Right now that I’m writing you, she is making my bed. Her characteristic is that she takes great care regarding health in the house. Last evening I wanted to go out on the roof in order to sit a little in the fresh air, and she made me put on my jacket and button it. When I went out, it was a bit damp, so she made me come back down and sit in the living room, which was warm. She knows Italian very well; consequently, I’ll benefit from that as well.

I’m writing you still tired from walking everywhere yesterday. Today I intend to go up to the Acropolis; thus, I’ll see the best sections of Athens and, when university begins, I’ll be able to go to class regularly, without other disturbances because, my revered father, as I have told you previously, I want to work. Fortunately, the son of the family with which I am staying will provide an example, since he is the best in the Polytechnic.

As I’m writing you, I hear the noise of this very large city through my window shutters. A person here truly feels that he is in a megalopolis. Newspaper vendors shouting as they go up and down; grocers, milkmen, carriages; trams continually racing here and there.

Tomorrow—Sunday—I am going to visit Professor Mistriotis. As you see, dear father, five or six days need to go by for someone to settle in and get used to this new life.

Please tell mother not to be sad because I am far away. This separation had to take place and, besides, I’ve had the great good fortune to manage to find here, too, lots of almost maternal care. In addition, convey my every kind wish to my sisters.

It really is, revered father, very sad for someone to go far away from his father, mother, and siblings; however, this had to happen since you want me to become a true human being one day and not to be ashamed of calling myself your child.

So, my dear parents: patience! My love and respect for you increases here away from home. In addition, you’ll have letters from me on a regular basis, and I hope that they’ll always tell you that I am in good health and doing fine.

I wanted to write you more, but what? I’ve already told you what is most important: I am pleased with the family.

My kind wishes to my dear Uncle Manolakis. I was very moved when he bade me farewell and am certain that he loves me more than all the other uncles do. Best wishes as well to his wife, Aunt Lenaki, and her entire family. To Aunt Chrysanthi and Theoharis; to Uncle Nikolakis; to Mr. Theakakis and his wife. Especially to Nikos, whom I ask to please write to me sometimes if he so desires. Best wishes as well to Mr. Ioannis—I’m very sorry because I saw him only when I was leaving; his care for Akladha cannot be easily forgotten. Best wishes to Yannis Karouzos, to Mr. Ioannis Kasimatis, and generally to everyone I know. (I might be forgetting someone at this moment.)

Especially my very best wishes and most heartfelt respects to my dear mother. She must not cry. I’m doing fine here and, besides, it won’t be long before I see her again—the months go by quickly. Also to Anestasia and Eleni, whom I miss very much. Also to Yannis, who loves me so much; also to Despina.

Again, best wishes to all my acquaintances; I might be forgetting someone now.

At the present time I don’t have anything else to write you.

With the most ardent hugs and kisses,

your loving son,

Nikolaos

P.S. The moment when I was signing the letter Mrs. Stagali asked me please to write best wishes on her behalf and on behalf of her husband. My address is:

Mister

Nikolaos Kazantzakis

Law Student

Alexander the Great Street, no. 46A

Athens

his father: Kazantzakis’s revered (and feared) father, Mihalis Kazantzakis (1856–December 1932), was from a family that inhabited the village of Varvari (now renamed Myrtia), 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from Iraklio. The Kazantzakis Museum is located here, in the public square. 21 September 1902: This and other dates of letters written from Athens in these early years of the twentieth century are of course in old style (o.s.). Add thirteen days for new style (n.s.), which did not go into effect in Greece until 16 February 1923, which became 1 March. (For o.s. dates in the nineteenth century, add twelve days for n.s.) Grammatikakis: School friend, also fellow student in university. go out on the roof: Many homes had flat roofs on which one could sit or even sleep in hot weather. Professor Mistriotis: Georgios K. Mistriotis (1840–1916), professor of ancient Greek literature and rector of the University of Athens, specializing in Homer; adjudicator in competitions; editor of ancient texts; a great supporter of katharevousa and opponent of demotic. dear mother: Maria (Marigo) Christodoulaki (1862–March 1932), from Mylopotamos, a small village 45 kilometers (27.9 miles) from Iraklio and 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) from Rethymno. Anestasia: More properly: Anastasia (1884–1967), Kazantzakis’s sister, later Mrs. Saklambani. Eleni: Kazantzakis’s sister (1887–1992), later Mrs. Theodosiadi.

To Andonis Anemoyannis

—Manuscript in Kazantzakis Museum; printed in Dimakis 1979, pp. 26–30.

Athens, 16 November 1902

My dear Andonis,

O speak to me, speak to me without cease! I want to feel life once again through your speech and writing, to see the Homeland once again, to spread throughout the boundless depths of my soul that sea breeze which, enclosed in your letter, comes to me from Crete, from my sweet Homeland.

Write to me, Andonis. I want to allow my heart to listen to your every syllable—as though hearing faraway harmony arriving from there in the distance, from there where waves purl and heaven laughs more gaily. I want to see your letter, Andonis, and to say—I who live far from home—that it comes to me from the Homeland, from that land which encloses within it everything I have loved in the world, from that land which birthed me and rebirthed me with life and love.

I don’t want you to say, my friend, that I am starting to daydream again. Nevertheless, my soul is seething, agitated by a certain vague desire, an incomprehensible soul-fluttering, a magical attraction, a hidden pain:

—nostalgia!

I go up to the Parthenon to lean my head against the marble and to plunge my sight down below—where, Andonis, I barely discern the sea shining blue, there where I surmise, beyond the indistinct depths of the horizon, my sweet Homeland, just as one discerns a star inside a cloud, beauty beneath a