Courtesy of Damian Entwistle Photo: The inscription on the tomb
Bleak house? Damian Entwistle finds a lesson at the tomb of Nikos Kazantzakis
‘Bold. Truthful. Penetrating.’
When a visitor makes a circumnavigation of the Venetian walls of Heraklion, Crete, they come to the Martinengo Bastion. There they will find the tomb of Nikos Kazantzakis.
Kazantzakis is, perhaps, the greatest Greek writer of the twentieth century. He is most famous for his novels, the most celebrated being Zorba the Greek, and most infamous (?) The Last Temptation of Christ. Both were adapted for the screen, and brought Kazantzakis to a global audience.
The location of his tomb tells us something about the man. Passionate Cretan, born in Heraklion (when Crete was governed by the Ottomans, and not yet part of Greece), a sometime scourge of the Greek Orthodox Church (which once sought his excommunication), he was denied burial in consecrated ground. The self-penned epitaph inscribed on his grave tells us still more: ‘I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free’ (see picture).
I once ministered, in Meeting, on this epitaph as a rule for life. One Friend found it bleak. For myself, I saw (and still see) only liberation in it. And it must be said there was nothing bleak about Kazantzakis’ life journey, or his literary output as novelist, essayist, journalist, playwright.
In his thirtieth year, Nikos made a month-long retreat to Mount Athos, and came within a hairsbreadth of making vows and taking the habit as a monk in that ancient monastery. But he was shown another way the night before taking his profession. Kazantzakis’ entire life might be regarded as a spiritual pilgrimage. It led him to Mount Athos, and led him away. It took him to university in Athens and Paris; it led him to Mount Sinai, and away; he was to live in Paris and Berlin, in Italy, in Spain, in Russia, in China and Japan. Throughout his life journey, he grappled with the narrow strictures that religion had cast for him, and sought a more expansive and inclusive spirituality, and vision.
Reading his autobiographical book, Report to Greco, many years ago, I learned (to my surprise) that he had a great devotion to, and affection for, Francis of Assisi – a saint of the Catholic church, rather than the Orthodox. More tellingly, perhaps, Francis might be characterised as a man akin to Kazantzakis himself; akin to George Fox: a person who had sought far and wide for answers to human and spiritual questions, posing them to those supposedly qualified to supply answers, but one who had been obliged, nonetheless, to navigate by their own (inward) light. And to do so fearlessly; having once put hand to plough, never looking back.
We have this, from Fox: ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.’ And this, from Francis of Assisi: ‘And after that the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I had to do, but the same Most High revealed to me that I had to live according to the form of the holy Gospel.’
Some of the warmth of feeling I have for Kazantzakis no doubt stems from a close identification with his life journey. Having myself been a Franciscan Friar for five years, one who left just before solemn vows (‘Did he jump, or was he pushed?’), we share that moment of decision, and all that flows from it. And our shared devotion to the little poor man and his charism – poverty, penance (conversion of heart), peace, fraternity, joy in creation – binds us further. (As an aside – one might make the case that Francis might be characterised as an early Quaker – compare the tenets of the Franciscan charism with Quaker testimonies.) I acknowledge, too, a more universal resonance – the conviction that it is the spirit which enables us to ‘know a place to stand in and what to wait in’.
‘I once ministered on this epitaph as a rule for life. One Friend found it bleak. I still see only liberation in it.’
In a manner of speaking, we are all supplied at birth with a cultural dictionary. But if the dictionary of our adulthood has exactly the same entries as the dictionary of our childhood, I think that speaks to a circumscribed life. Kazantzakis’ life and work was a continuing expansion of his dictionary – more exposure, new entries; more enquiry, new understanding.
Sometimes new understanding brings more simplicity, when what once appeared to be disparate and discrete, finally discloses itself to be the pluriform expression of a universal, underlying, truth. I think this is what Kazantzakis spent his life searching for, and trying to realise. It’s what his books, plays, and philosophical and theological essays sought to express.
Towards the end of his life, Kazantzakis began work on a book which he never completed. It was collated and published after this death, by his daughter: the book I referred to earlier. Described as ‘an autobiography of the spirit’, Report to Greco expresses Kazantzakis’ struggles, with searing honesty. We become privy to his developing philosophy, his missteps, his limitations, his roundabout diversions, things learned then forgotten and learned again. It is a very human book.
Seeing this, seeing the man, I am drawn to his bleak epitaph. It speaks to me of the compass and sextant that Kazantzakis had recourse to when navigating the journey of life, the sea of faith.
In his parting words, Kazantzakis disavowed hope for something (the carrot: reward; approbation; heaven). He also disavowed fear of something (the stick: punishment; disapprobation; hell). He asserts, thereby, that choices made because we hope for reward, or because we fear punishment, are not genuinely free choices. This is his testimony to freedom, and to the dignity of the human person.
Kazantzakis’ approach to life didn’t confer certainty or infallibility on him, but it did confer integrity and authenticity. In response to the Greek Orthodox Church’s move to excommunicate him, he offered this statement: ‘You gave me a 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.’
Bold. Truthful. Penetrating. Showing forth humility, not hubris – upholding one standard.
For all these reasons, when I was last in Heraklion, I was happy to stand on the highest point of the Venetian walls and affirm the truth of Kazantzakis’ words.
