The Cretan Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) was and is a number of things: novelist, playwright, translator, journalist, activist, politician, (meta)communist, husband, son, literary icon, pariah, and cultural figurehead, hotly debated both during his lifetime and now, after his death. Inescapably prolific, his output ranges through genres and styles, encompassing historical fiction (Freedom or Death), Christian / Christian-sceptic novels (Christ Recrucified), philosophical tracts (Askitiki), and almost-gothic novellas (The Serpent and The Lily), amongst a number of other publications and unpublished drafts. While pumping out such an extensive list, he also found time to marry (twice), travel around Europe, and be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine separate times. He was, it seems, non-stop – an irrepressible spirit – a man who ‘went out to buy the newspaper or post a letter, and came back … loaded like a mailman, … sack full of tales’ – and man who, ‘riveted to [his] worktable, … hand poised in the air, still armed with its pencil’, would still find the chance to make someone, sat alongside him, laugh.[1] And his memory looms large, in Greece and around the world.[2]
His political involvement began early, in 1909. Twenty-six, he published a manifesto on linguistic reform, engaging with the widely-discussed “Language Question” that occupied intellectual and political circles throughout the first half of the twentieth century in Greece.[3] He took the traditional side of the Left in this debate, advocating for Demotic Greek over Katherevousa, and, in the following year, he expressed support for Ion Dragoumis, central Demotic Greek proponent, in his essay For Our Youth. All of his works, too, throughout his career, were written in Demotic Greek.
In 1919, though, he became more explicitly political. Eleftherios Venizelos, then Prime Minister of Greece, appointed Kazantzakis as the Director General of the Ministry of Welfare, charging him with the responsibility of bringing 150,000 Greeks back to Greece from the Caucasus, where they were being persecuted by the Bolsheviks. In this government role, he played a part in the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles, and, after this, continued travelling through mainland Europe. It was here that he ‘gained’ his ‘communist sympathies’, radicalised by conditions in post-war Vienna and Berlin, and the influence of Rahel Lipstein and other radical Jewish women in the city, known as “The Fiery Circle”.[4] He began to learn Russian, intending to move to the USSR with his equally radical wife, Galatea Alexiou. Travelling around Europe for much of their marriage, he wrote a number of letters to Galatea, and his communism is evident in these, as he expresses his ‘enlightenment’:[5]
The new face of my God, as I have often written to you, is a Worker who is hungry, who works and rises up in revolt. A Worker who smells of tobacco and wine, a dark, strong one full of desires and thirst for revenge. … My God is tough, full of passion and will, uncompromising, unyielding. The Earth is his field, heaven and Earth are one.
Upon return to Greece, Kazantzakis was arrested for twenty-four hours as the leader of a small communist group in Iraklion. This experience reportedly influenced Cantos 1-6 of his mammoth The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), and were followed by his departure for the Soviet Union, where he wrote a series of articles on the USSR for newspaper Eleftheros Logos.[6] After another brief period of travelling through Europe as a newspaper correspondent, interviewing politicians (including Benito Mussolini) and writing travel reports, he came to Russia again in 1927, a special guest of the Soviet government on the tenth anniversary of the Communist Revolution. While there, he delivered a short speech at a Peace Symposium, and met author Panait Istrati, with whom he struck up a short-lived friendship. When he returned to Greece with Istrati in January 1928, the two men gave an address at the Alhambra Theatre in Athens, lecturing on the Soviet Experiment. This talk incited a demonstration outside of the theatre, which led to the police threatening Kazantzakis with legal action, and Istrati with deportation.
Still enamoured with the USSR, Kazantzakis wrote films on the Russian Revolution and the life of Lenin while in the country, and lectured on the USSR in Berlin while outside.[7] Yet he had become disillusioned with the straight Party doctrine. Uncomfortable with the conception of the USSR as an end-goal of communism – as the finalised product – he developed the concept of “metacommunism”, in alignment with his own personal philosophy, encapsulated in his Askitiki (1923).[8] In this, he argued that revolutionary communism was the specific historical movement in his period that would force the radical break that would enlighten the world. In this, his communism becomes a feature of a wider philosophy, historically located, and thus his politics become intensely personalised. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this opened him up to criticism, and led to a deep suspicion of him – on both sides of the political divide.
Upon the Axis Occupation of Greece in 1941, Kazantzakis attempted to join EAM, the Communist-led resistance movement, and was rejected, under suspicions that he was a right-wing spy.[9] He then attempted to join the Greek government, where they hid in exile in Cairo, yet he was also rejected by them, under suspicions that he was a communist spy. Unable to act politically, he withdrew into literary retreat in his home on Aegina for most of the war, and, venturing to Athens in December 1944, was swiftly caught up in the violent bloodshed of the December Events.[10] He, his second wife Eleni, and their maid, Soula, were arrested and interrogated by right-wing authorities on the suspicion of being communists, and, after this experience, Kazantzakis returned to his explicitly political action. Still suspected by the actual Communist Party, he signed a number of open letters on the “White Terror” and persecution of communists, and led the Socialist Workers’ Movement as part of the Sofoulis government. Indeed, still suspected by the right wing, too, fascist thugs threatened to burn down the National Theatre on the premiere of his 1946 play, Kapodistrias, and it was quickly withdrawn from performance.[11] Indeed, as he wrote to Pandelis Prevelakis in 1939, he seemingly could not win: ‘It seems that there is no regime that can tolerate me, and very rightly so, since there is no regime that I can tolerate.’[12]
Due to the increasingly difficult political situation in Greece, Kazantzakis was essentially forced to remain outside of the country after this point. after this point. He stayed for a short while in Britain, unsuccessfully attempting to convince British intellectuals to form an Internationale of the Spirit in Cambridge, before moving to Antibes, in France. In 1953, the Greek Orthodox Church attempted to prosecute him for ‘sacrilege’ in two of his novels – Freedom or Death and The Last Temptation – even though the latter novel had not even been published in Greece.[13] He was ostracised by many of his countrymen, but still somewhat welcome outside of Greece, and was invited to China in 1957 by the Chinese government, alongside his wife, Eleni (pictured).
On the 26th October 1957, at the age of seventy-four, Kazantzakis died in Freiburg after catching Asiatic Flu. He was buried in Crete, in Iraklion, and his epitaph, famous even now, declares his philosophy:
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
As a Greek, Kazantzakis was intensely aware of the ancient Greek tradition, and did not shy away from using that tradition in his own literature. He especially didn’t shy away from using it in displaying his politics. In his The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), he forfeits the final book of Homer’s Odyssey and replaces it with a class revolution against Odysseus, after his murder of the suitors and maids. Odysseus quells this revolution, but, soon, grows bored in Ithaca, and leaves, travelling through Mycenae, Crete, and Egypt, and becoming increasingly radicalised towards a kind of proto communism. In Egypt, he meets a group of revolutionaries – Rala, a stand-in for Rahel Lipstein, and Nile, a stand-in for Lenin – and engages in political debate with them, criticising their staunch proto-communist ideology, and advocating Kazantzakis’ own conception of metacommunism. The book ultimately ends with Odysseus founding a utopian community in Africa, that community being destroyed, and him seeking enlightenment before dying on an iceberg – it is, frankly, bizarre – but clearly illustrates a patterning of Kazantzakis’ politics and philosophy through the ancient epic. Those passages that call for revolutionary action, which Kazantzakis advocated, are still so rousing as to strike a chord even now:
The crowd shuddered, tossed between two scorching fires;
from ancient times their backs had bent to the cruel yoke –
much bitter gall, dark horrors, hands made stiff and tough
at their lord’s rowbench sometimes, then at the hard plow –
how might the enslaved soul ever raise its head in pride?
But now among downtrodden hearts a cry burst out
as frightened freedom opened her still tender mouth
because an armless man dared speak, because the first
bold voice was heard opposing the soul-grabbing king:
‘No! We shall not bow down! Our turn has come, man-slayer!’
I.332-341; trans. K. Friar [14]
Another example would be his At The Palaces of Knossos (1988), a children’s serial novel written in 1940 for publication in the youth periodical Neolaia. The magazine was part of Ioannis Metaxas’ fascist state propaganda, and it seems that Kazantzakis only contributed to it for monetary reasons; he collaborated with Metaxas, but actively disliked a number of members of the government apparatus, and was always short of money.[15] The text, however, digests the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for a young audience, steeped in revolutionary ideas, and there is the potential to read Theseus as the foreign, communist-adjacent saviour, arriving to free Knossos from Minos’ tyranny.[16] This is graded up to an older audience in his Kouros (1951), which takes the same myth and seeks, through mythical patterning, to break the audience from their apathy towards the oppression of leftists and the civil strife around them in Greece, and to agitate for change around them.[17]
This use of the classical world is understandable for an author who loudly proclaimed his mission in his written word. As he said to Pierre Sipriot on French Radio (Paris), on 6 May 1955:
A true novelist cannot but live the reality of his own times, and in doing so become aware of his responsibilities. He thus attempts to help his fellow man to face up to and solve the pressing problems of the day to the greatest possible extent. In as far as a contemporary work of literature reflects the times in which we live, it is necessarily one of the most subtle and effective forms of action. Or rather it itself can become the seed of action. Provided that a novelist is aware of his mission, he tries to push reality to adopt the form he judges to be the most fitting for man. In other more balanced, self-confident times, beauty could suffice to fulfil the author’s ideal. The writer of today, if he is truly alive, is someone who suffers and worries at the sight of reality. He is led to cooperate with all the still-surviving powers of light to advance man’s burdensome destiny a little. The modern writer, if he is true to his mission, is a fighter.[18]
This profile was written by Anna Coopey
[1] Quote by Eleni Sikelianos (trans. A. Mims) (1968): Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based On His Letters (Bruno Cassirer), p. 13.
[2] For an extensive online archive on Kazantzakis’ life, see the Historical Museum of Crete’s Kazantzakis Online Archive – https://www.historical-museum.gr/webapps/kazantzakis-pages/en/introduction/intro.php (accessed 01-05-2025, 12:14).
[3] On the Language Question, see Peter Mackridge (2000): “The Greek Language Controversy” from Hellenic Communication Service L.L.C. – https://www.helleniccomserve.com/greeklanguage.html (accessed 01-05-2025, 13:52).
[4] For more on the “Fiery Circle” and Rahel Lipstein, see Renate Weil (1988): Burned, Banned, Forgotten: Small Encyclopaedia of German-Speaking Women Writers, 1933 to 1945, Second Edition (Pahl-Rugenstein), pp. 134-135. The Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive has digitised copies of some of Lipstein and Kazantzakis’ correspondence.
[5] The Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive has digitised copies of some of Galatea and Kazantzakis’ correspondence. She later became one of his strongest critics, particularly in relation to an essay that he wrote in 1938 (“Fear and Hunger”), notorious for its justification of the fascist movements of the 20th century as an important part of the historical period and transition. For more on Galatea, who is a famous author in her own right, and often goes ignored because of her famous ex-husband, see Anna Fyta (2021): “Galatea Kazantzaki (Alexiou) (1884-1962): A Modernist Greek Author’s Decadent Poetics” (pp. 271-294) from Feminist Modern Studies, Vol. 4, Global Decadence (Taylor & Francis).
[6] Angelos Sikelianos was meant to accompany him on this trip, but pulled out (according to Kazantzakis, because of cowardice). The two were good friends from meeting in 1914, but, after this fallout, didn’t speak for sixteen years. They reunited in 1942, lived alongside each other for a short period during the occupation (on Aegina), and kept in correspondence until Angelos’ death. For more on Sikelianos, see his BNC profile.
[7] On Kazantzakis’ time in the USSR, see Vasilis Moschos (2024): “Nikos Kazantzakis’ trips to the USSR in the 1920s” (pp. 20-44) from Twentieth Century Communism, Vol. 2024, No. 26 (Lawrence Wishart).
[8] For more on Kazantzakis’ complicated relationship with communism, see Minas Savvas (1971-1972): “Kazantzakis and Marxism” (pp. 284-292) from Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 2, Nikos Kazantzakis Special Number (Indiana University Press).
[9] For more on EAM and the resistance against the Axis Occupation in Greece, see: Solon N. Grigoriadis (1982): Συνοπτική Ιστορία της Εθνικής Αντίστασης, 1941-1944 (Καπόπουλος); and Mark Mazower (1993): Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 (Yale University Press), pp. 85-154.
[10] On the December Events, a period of violent clashes in Athens during December 1944, and known as the Dekemvriana, see Michalis Charalampidis (2014): Δεκεμβριανά 1944, Η μάχη της Αθήνας (Αλεξάνδρεια).
[11] On Kazantzakis’ Kapodistrias, see: Peter Bien (1977): “Kazantzakis’ Kapodistrias, a (Rejected) Offering to Divided Greece, 1944-1946” (pp. 141-173) from Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 3 (Taylor & Francis); and Vassilis Lambropoulos (2008): “Governance, Hubris, and Justice in Modern Tragedy” (pp. 22-35) from Thesis Eleven, No. 93 (Sage Publications).
[12] Translation Peter Bien (2007): Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit, Volume Two (Princeton University Press), p. 88.
[13] On Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation, see Darren J. N. Middleton (ed.) (2005): Scandalising Jesus? Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On (continuum).
[14] For a political reading of the first twelve books of Kazantzakis’ The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), see Anna Coopey (2022): Modern Revolt, Ancient Revolutionaries: Leftist Classical Reception in Kazantzakis’ ‘The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel’.
[15] On Ioannis Metaxas’ (para-)fascist Fourth of August Regime in Greece, see Harry Cliadakis (2014): Fascism in Greece: The Metaxas Dictatorship 1936-1941 (Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen). For an examination of Kazantzakis’ (negative) relationship with the Regime through his 1937 Melissa, see Anna Coopey (f/c): “Anti-Metaxan Classics: A Critical Mythical Method in Kazantzakis’ Melissa (1937)” from Demetriou, K. & Serafim, A. (eds.) (f/c): [Title TBC] (Brill).
[16] For this reading of At the Palaces of Knossos, see Anna Coopey (2023): “Navigating the Labyrinth: Communist Engagement with Theseus and the Minotaur in 1940s Literature” from The St Andrews Arts and Divinity Faculty Journal (University of St Andrews).
[17] For this reading of Kouros, see Anna Coopey (f/c): “Life Can’t Be A Dream”: Myth, Therapy, and the Wake Up Call in Kazantzakis’ Kouros (1951) (Modern Greek Studies Colloquium, 30 May 2025, University of Reading).
[18] Accessed in translation from the French through the Nikos Kazantzakis Online Archive.
