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LAWRENCE DURRELL
REVIEW OF FREEDOM AND DEATH BY NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
Kazantzakis has emerged rather late from the comparative obscurity of demotic Greek to take his proper place as an artist of European magnitude. His latest novel will confirm his position as the greatest living Mediterranean novelist. It is set in his native island, Crete, during the Turkish occupation, and its central character Captain Michaelis, is the embodiment of the heroic island chieftain of the Greek War of Independence. The story unfolds against a great sprawling canvas crowded with actors and full of brilliantly observed detail. It moves in the stately old-fashioned manner of the epic novelists like Tolstoy or Victor Hugo; it takes its time, and its values are never explicit. The action itself states them.
As for Freedom and Death these two absolutes are canvassed through the central character, Captain Michaelis, who illustrates in thought and action the rather elusive quality which the Greeks call "philotimo", and which translates rather wanly as "patriotic self-respect" or "amour-propre"; it is rather more radical than either. It is like a sort of trembler-fuse built into the psyche of the Greek which can make him die for glory as easily as for shame. It is responsible for the whole range of quixotries and absurdities which make the Greeks seem sometimes larger than life to us and often a good deal more tiresome. I suppose it belongs to the now dead age of chivalry and it reminds one of the terrible remark of Stendhal: "The genius of poetry is dead, and the genius of suspicion has entered the world."
Captain Michaelis is burning with zeal to free his native island; yet his "philotimo" will permit him to swear blood-brothership with a Turkish Bey whom he loves; they mix their blood in a cup and swear upon Mohammed and Christ respectively as they stir it with their daggers ...
These romantic resistance heroes lived before the Age of Doubt. I suppose one has to go back to Malory to find fitting comparisons. Byron was captivated by their wild chivalry, their absolute self-assurance, free from any vestige of self-regard. They were liberated men because their code of values contained not a single grain of doubt. They lived by uncontrollable impulses by a passion which rationalised itself around the ethos of country and of creed. "There are people" write Kazantzakis, "who call to God with tears or a disciplined, reasonable self-control. But the Cretans call to Him with guns. They stand before God's door and let off rifles to make Him hear, "Insurrection" bellows the Sultan and in raving fury sends Pashas, soldiers and gangs. "Insolence" cry the Francs and let loose their warships. "Be patient, be reasonable, don't drag me into blood shed", wails Hellas, the beggar-mother, shuddern. But the Cretans answer "Freedom or Death" and make a din before God's door."
I have been told that the central portraits in this novel have been drawn from life, from Kazantzakis' own ancestors and childhood memories; certainly they are all magnetically alive. Not less alive is the luminous and magnificent landscape of Crete as brilliant as a peacocks tail. And yet there is nothing artificially poetic about the writing. It is simply based on perfectly straightforward observation and plain statement.
All this might give one the impression that Kazantzakis was a writer lacking in sophistication a sort of inspired village blacksmith. But this isn't so. He belongs to the small leisured class of Athens, speaks at least two European languages well, and is a much travelled man; his travel diaries of Europe reveal the structure of a temperament which is both inquisitive and contemplative. His Spanish diary reminds one a bit of Kayserling in its appreciation of moral and aesthetic values. This makes his triumph all the greater in FREEDOM AND DEATH, for he has successfully presented us with a picture of Crete in the 1860's written, not as philosopher wishing to point a moral, but as one Cretan talking to another. In this I imagine he has been helped by two factors; the first is that the values of the Cretan today are almost exactly as they were in the time of Captain Michaelis. Little has changed in Crete. The second, perhaps more important, is that the Greek language is still in a formative stage and each writer has to use it selectively and turn it to his own purposes. The Cretan dialect is a peculiarly rich and rugged one and its skilful and selective use gives the novel a rough surface and an authenticity of line without in any way making it a costume-piece, a Walter Scott essay in chivalry. An interested reader might do well to compare this book to the first-person singular acounts written by the resistance men of the period; he will find that it has the same sort of impact as, say, the diary of Kolokotronis the Klepht, the chronicle of Makriyannis, or to choose a very recent example, the diary of Psychoundakis which Patrick Leigh Fermor translated early this year. Captain Michaelis fits snugly among these books which were all written by shepherds or sheep-stealers. Yet unlike the others it is a conscious work of art by a contemporary master, and moreover a poet. This makes Kazantzakis' triumph a greater one, for Captain Michaelis, so simple in construction, might in lesser hands have been a heavilly padded costume drama jingling with Drury Lane armour. As it is, its very lack of sophistication in the European sense, give it a tonic and bracing quality. It has the abrupt economy, the brutal charm of an ancient chronicle; and its rhythms remind one of the stately old-fashioned dances of Crete which endure to this day.
on 18/30** February in Iraklion, Crete, then still part of the Ottoman Empire.
with his father and sisters
