Kazantzakis

by Bien, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780691128139
• ISBN10: 0691128138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-02
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Putting Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's vast output into the context of his lifelong spiritual quest and the turbulent politics of twentieth-century Greece, Peter Bien argues that Kazantzakis was a deeply flawed genius--not always artistically successful, but a remarkable figure by any standard. This is the second and final volume of Bien's definitive and monumental biography of Kazantzakis (1883-1957). It covers his life after 1938, the period in which he wroteZorba the GreekandThe Last Temptation of Christ, the novels that brought him his greatest fame. A demonically productive novelist, poet, playwright, travel writer, autobiographer, and translator, Kazantzakis was one of the most important Greek writers of the twentieth century and the only one to achieve international recognition as a novelist. But Kazantzakis's writings were just one aspect of an obsessive struggle with religious, political, and intellectual problems. In the 1940s and 1950s, a period that included the Greek civil war and its aftermath, Kazantzakis continued this engagement with undiminished energy, despite every obstacle, producing in his final years novels that have become world classics.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Technical Notes	p. xix
Kazantzakis's Attraction to Fascism and Nazism in the 1930s	p. 1
Travel Writing	p. 16
Spain	p. 22
Journey to the Morea	p. 33
Greek Politics, 1922-1936; Metaxas	p. 43
Writings CA. 1935-1939: Jardin Des Rochers	p. 60
Writings CA. 1935-1939: Othello Returns	p. 81
Writings CA. 1935-1939: Melissa	p. 86
Writings CA. 1935-1939: Julian the Apostate	p. 100
Period 1940-1944: The Albanian Campaign and Axis Occupation	p. 111
Buddha	p. 134
Alexis Zorbas: A Philosophical Interpretation	p. 144
Alexis Zorbas: A Political Interpretation	p. 157
Prometheus Trilogy and Greekness	p. 165
Kapodistrias	p. 197
Constantine Palaiologos	p. 224
Athens, October 1944-June 1946	p. 237
London and Paris, 2 June 1946-2 June 1948	p. 273
Sodom and Gomorrah	p. 279
The Political Comprehensiveness of Christ Recrucipied	p. 292
The Fratricides	p. 328
Kouros	p. 356
Christopher Columbus: Kazantzakis's Final Play	p. 363
O Kapetan Mihalis: An Epic Manque	p. 372
Kazantzakis's Long Apprenticeship to Christian Themes	p. 394
The Last Temptation as a Religious Novel	p. 428
Is the Last Temptation a Religious Novel or a Political Novel?	p. 442
Kazantzakis's Meta-Christian Saint Francis as a Model of Soul-Force Creating his own Fate	p. 453
Report to Greco	p. 524
Kazantzakis and Women	p. 547
Notes	p. 551
Bibliography	p. 583
Index	p. 603
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