Nikos Kazantzakis

NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS (1883-1957). Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion, Crete, as the eldest son of the merchant and landowner Michalis Kazantzakis. He had two sisters. He spent his childhood and school years in Heraklion until 1902, when he graduated from high school, with brief stays in Piraeus (in 1889, at the start of the Cretan Revolution, for six months) and Naxos (1897-1899, where he attended the French Commercial School). In 1902, he moved to Athens and enrolled in the Law School, from which he graduated with honors in 1906. That same year, he published his first writings in the magazine "Pinakothiki" under the pseudonym Karma Nirvani, and released his first book "Serpent and Lily," dedicated to Galatea Alexiou. The following year, he joined the Masonic Lodge of Athens and went to Paris for further legal studies, where he also attended philosophy classes with Henri Bergson. From 1907 to 1909, he wrote his first plays (including "Dawn" [commended at the Pantelideios Dramatic Competition], "Fasga," "The Master Builder" [awarded at the Lassaneios Dramatic Competition]), the novel "Broken Souls," as well as essays and studies, all published in magazines of the time ("Noumas," "Panathinaia"). In 1909, he published his dissertation in Heraklion titled "Friedrich Nietzsche in the Philosophy of Law and the State." In 1910, he settled in Athens with Galatea, whom he married the following year in Heraklion, and participated in founding the Educational Group. Until 1915, he was involved in translating works by Bergson, Plato, Nietzsche, Büchner, Darwin, and others, volunteered in the Balkan Wars, served in Venizelos' office, wrote five textbooks for elementary schools with Galatea Alexiou (who signed them), and met Angelos Sikelianos, with whom he traveled to Mount Athos. In the summer of 1907, he unsuccessfully attempted to exploit a lignite mine in Mani with miner Giorgis Zorbas, and in the fall, he traveled to Switzerland, where he had a romantic relationship with Eleni Lampridou. In 1919, he took action for the repatriation of Greeks from the Caucasus as the general director of the Ministry of Welfare and met Eleftherios Venizelos in Paris. Over the next three years, he traveled across Europe and Greece, participated in the Conference of Educational Reformers in Berlin and the Conference on Sexual Pedagogy in Dresden, studied Freud's works, met Leo Shestov, and wrote "The Saviors of God." In 1924, upon returning to Greece, he traveled to Italy and met Eleni Samiou in Athens. From October 1925 to February 1926, he stayed in Russia as a correspondent for the newspaper "Eleftheros Logos." He made two more trips to Russia, one at the end of 1927 at the invitation of the Soviet Government and another from April 1928 to April 1929, while also visiting Italy and Spain (1926, 1932-1933, 1936-1937, 1950), Egypt, and Sinai (1927) as a journalist. In 1926, he divorced Galatea and traveled with Eleni to Palestine and Cyprus. That same year, he published the first excerpt from "The Odyssey" in the magazine "Anagennisi," which he completed in its first draft in 1927 in Aegina and published in December 1938 after a total of seven drafts. In 1928, he faced legal prosecution due to organizing a gathering for the Soviet Union alongside the Greek-Romanian writer Panait Istrati at the Alhambra Theater in Athens. During his summer trip to Russia, he continued his writing endeavors. That same year, he gained recognition in France through an article by Istrati in the magazine "Monde." Kazantzakis's relationship with Istrati ended in December of the same year in the Soviet Union. He continued to travel with Eleni to Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Spain, Japan, China, and England, with intermittent returns to Aegina (1943-1944) and Athens (1945, where he founded the Socialist Workers' Union, ran for the Academy of Athens, served as a minister without portfolio in the Sofoulis government, and married Eleni). In 1946, he settled in France, initially in Paris (as a literary advisor at UNESCO headquarters) and later in Antibes, from where he traveled across Europe. That same year, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature jointly with Angelos Sikelianos. Between 1928 and 1944, he published works including "Toda Raba," "History of Russian Literature," "Tercines," a translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy," and Goethe's "Faust I," "The Rock Garden," the tragedy "Melissa," as well as memoirs from his travels. In France, he wrote "The Fratricides" and "Captain Michalis," and in 1953, he completed the novel "Christ Recrucified," which provoked reactions from the Greek Church and the Vatican. That same year, he was hospitalized in Paris due to a lymph disorder. In 1954, the novel "Zorba the Greek" was awarded the prize for the best foreign book in France. In 1955, he traveled to Alsace and met with Albert Schweitzer and in Lugano, where he began writing "Report to Greco," published posthumously. In the summer of 1956, the Greek Popular Theater of Manos Katrakis successfully staged the theatrical adaptation of "Christ Recrucified," and in 1957, the film "He Who Must Die," also based on the previous work, was screened at Cannes. Kazantzakis attended the premiere. That summer, he traveled to China and upon returning via Japan, he was vaccinated, resulting in gangrene. He was initially hospitalized in Copenhagen and then in Freiburg, where he contracted Asian flu and died at the age of seventy-four. His body was transported to Heraklion and buried at the Martinengo Bastion, near the Venetian castle of the city. The information was sourced from the entries: Pantelis Prevelakis, "Nikos Kazantzakis: Contribution to the Chronography of His Life," Athens, 1960; Pantelis Prevelakis, "Kazantzakis Nikos," in "World Biographical Dictionary," vol. 4, Athens, Ekdotiki Athinon, 1985; "Nikos Kazantzakis, The Chronicle of a Creation: Unpublished Correspondence Kazantzakis-Martinou," edited by Giorgos Anemogiannis, Nikos Kazantzakis Museum edition, Crete, 1986; Dimitris Plakas, "Chronology of Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)," magazine "Diavazo" issue 190, 27.4.1988, pp. 26-33; Alexis Ziras, "Nikos Kazantzakis" in "Interwar Fiction: From the First to the Second World War (1914-1939)," vol. D, Athens, Sokolis, 1992, pp. 126-171; Patroklos Stavrou, "Nikos Kazantzakis 1883-1957," magazine "Elitrochos," issue 15, Summer 1998, pp. 9-19. (Source: Archive of Greek Writers EKEVI.)