Report to Greco

by Nikos Kazantzakis

I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen, the day’s work is done. I return like a mole to my home, the ground. Not because I am tired and cannot work. I am not tired. But the sun has set. . . .

Whatever I wrote or did was written or performed upon water, and has perished.

the savage pride of old age, which burns but refuses until the death to turn to ashes?

man can tell himself he is satisfied and peaceful; he can say he has no more wants, that he has fulfilled his duty and is ready to leave. But the heart resists. Clutching the stones and grass, it implores, “Stay a little!”

Without knowing it, the entire universe follows this method. Every living thing is a workshop where God, in hiding, processes and transubstantiates clay. This is why trees flower and fruit, why animals multiply, why the monkey managed to exceed its destiny and stand upright on its two feet. Now, for the first time since the world was made, man has been enabled to enter God’s workshop and labor with Him. The more flesh he transubstantiates into love, valor, and freedom, the more truly he becomes Son of God.

it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes.

I cannot recall my neighbors without bursting into laughter mixed with tears. In those days men were not cast by the dozen in the same mold. Each was a separate world with his own peculiarities. He laughed differently from his neighbor, talked differently. Shutting himself up in his house, he kept his most secret desires hidden out of shame or fear, and these desires luxuriated within and strangled him. But he said nothing, and his life took on a tragic seriousness. In addition there was poverty, and as if this were not enough, the pride which demanded that no one discover this poverty. People fed themselves bread, olives, and mustard stems to avoid having to step outside with patched clothes. I once heard a neighbor remark, “A poor man is someone who fears poverty. I do not fear it.”

to gain freedom from the inner Turk—from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.

THE DAYS were slow-moving and monotonous in that era. People did not read newspapers; the radio, telephone, and cinema were still unborn, and life rolled along noiselessly—serious and sparing of words. Each person was a closed world, each house both locked and bolted. The goodmen within grew older day by day. They caroused in whispers lest they be overheard, or they quarreled secretly, or fell mutely ill and died. Then the door opened for the remains to emerge, and the four walls momentarily revealed their secret. But the door closed again immediately, and life began noiselessly to grind away once more.

It is our duty to set ourselves an end beyond our individual concerns, beyond our convenient, agreeable habits, higher than our own selves, and disdaining laughter, hunger, even death, to toil night and day to attain that end. No, not to attain it. The self-respecting soul, as soon as he reaches his goal, places it still further away. Not to attain it, but never to halt in the ascent. Only thus does life acquire nobility and oneness.

I SPENT my adolescent years beset by youth’s customary difficulties. Two huge beasts awoke inside me, that leopard the flesh, and that insatiable eagle which devours a man’s entrails and the more it eats the more it hungers—the mind.

YOUTH is a blind incongruous beast. It craves food but does not eat, is too timid to eat; it need simply nod to happiness, which strolls by on the street and would willingly stop, but it does not nod; it turns on the faucet, permitting time to drain away uselessly and be lost, as though time were water. A beast that does not know it is a beast—such is youth.

Youth is bitter, bitter and disdainful; it does not comprehend. And when one begins to comprehend, youth has fled.

Youth seeks immortality, does not find it, will not deign to compromise, and thus rejects the entire cosmos—out of pride. Not all cases of youth, only those which are wounded by truth.

Even numbers run contrary to my heart; I want nothing to do with them. Their lives are too comfortably arranged, they stand on their feet much too solidly and have not the slightest desire to change location. They are satisfied, conservative, without anxieties; they have solved every problem, translated every desire into reality, and grown calm. It is the odd number which conforms to the rhythm of my heart. The life of the odd number is not at all comfortably arranged. The odd number does not like this world the way it finds it, but wishes to change it, add to it, push it further. It stands on one foot, holds the other ready in the air, and wants to depart. Where to? To the following even number, in order to halt for an instant, catch its breath, and work up fresh momentum.

We laughed without cause, because we were young; we grieved without cause, again because we were young. We were like fresh unspent bull-calves who sigh because their strength is strangling them.

But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.

“Do you know me, old lady?” I asked. She glanced at me in amazement. “No, my boy. Do I have to know you to give you something? You’re a human being, aren’t you? So am I. Isn’t that enough?”

“Because dancing kills the ego, and once the ego has been killed, there is no further obstacle to prevent you from joining with God.”

I rose and continued to climb this hill with its ruined mansions, its towers sprawled on the ground, and, as a stone crown at the summit, the celebrated citadel of the Villehardouins. The great fortified gate was open, the courtyards deserted. I mounted the crumbling stairs and reached the battlements, forcing a surprised flock of crows to take wing. I looked down at the fertile plain below me and at the smoke which rose from the squat cottages; I could hear the creaking of a cart and a song filled with passion. The atmosphere all around me heaved a sigh. Specters filled the air. The blond daughters of Frankish seigneurs rose from the grave, together with the armor-encased knights who came here to the Peloponnesus in the role of conquerers, married Greek girls, became inoculated with Greek blood, and forgot their homeland.

Peloponnesus is the famous temple of Apollo at Bassae.

The factor which renders Greece’s mountains, villages, and soil buoyant and immaterial is the light. In Italy the light is soft and feminine, in Ionia extremely gentle and full of oriental yearning, in Egypt thick and voluptuous. In Greece the light is entirely spiritual. Able to see clearly in this light, man succeeded in imposing order over chaos, in establishing a “cosmos”—and cosmos means harmony.

and familiarity breeds contempt.

No other people had comprehended sport’s hidden and manifest value so perfectly. When life has succeeded by dint of daily effort in conquering the enemies around it—natural forces, wild beasts, hunger, thirst, sickness—sometimes it is lucky enough to have abundant strength left over. This strength it seeks to squander in sport. Civilization begins at the moment sport begins. As long as life struggles for preservation—to protect itself from its enemies, maintain itself upon the surface of the earth—civilization cannot be born. It is born the moment that life satisfies its primary needs and begins to enjoy a little leisure.

In Greece, as everywhere, once realism begins to reign, civilization declines. Thus we arrive at the realistic, magniloquent, and faithless Helleuistic era, which was devoid of suprapersonal ideals. From chaos to the Parthenon, then from the Parthenon back to chaos—the great merciless rhythm. Emotions and passions run wild. The free individual loses his powers of discipline; the bridle which maintained instinct in strict balance flies from his hands. Passion, emotionality, realism . . . A mystical, melancholy yearning suffuses the faces. The fearful mythological visions become merely decorative. Aphrodite undrapes herself like an ordinary woman, Zeus acquires roguishness and elegance, and Heracles regresses to a brute. After the Peloponnesian war Greece begins to disintegrate. Belief in the fatherland is lost; individual self-sufficiency triumphs. On the stage the protagonist is no longer God or the idealized youth, he is the wealthy citizen with his lascivious pleasures and passions—a materialist, skeptic, and libertine. Talent had already replaced genius; now good taste replaces talent. Art becomes filled with children, coquettish women, realistic scenes, and men either brutal or intellectual.

kissed her hand, and the sea carried me off. To be young and healthy, twenty-five years old; to love no particular person male or female (this would narrow your heart and keep you from loving all things with equal disinterestedness and fervor); to travel on foot, alone, from one end of Italy to the other, with a carpetbag over your shoulder; and for it to be springtime, and then for summer to arrive, and after that autumn and winter laden with fruit and rain—what impudence for man to desire any greater happiness!

For the entire extent of this honeymoon with my soul I felt, to a greater degree than ever again in my life, that body, mind, and soul are fashioned of the same clay. Only when a person ages or falls into the grips of illness or misfortune do they separate and oppose one another. Sometimes the body wishes to assume command, sometimes the soul raises its own rebellious banner and wishes to flee. And the mind stands by impotently, watching and recording the dissolution. But when a person is young and strong, how united in loving brotherhood these triplets are, how they nurse on the same milk! I

forgive. I raced from city to city. Paintings, statues, churches, palaces. What greed, what yearning! My hunger and thirst could not be sated. An amorous breeze kept blowing across my temples. Never again in my later life did I feel such sheer bodily delight, either from women, ideas, or contact with God. Abstract concerns not having overwhelmed me as yet, I found pleasure in seeing, hearing, and touching. The inner world was one with the outer.

for the first time was walking alone and free in a foreign country, and so great was my joy that sometimes, I remember, I felt terror-stricken. For as I well knew, the gods are envious creatures, and it is hubris to be happy and to know that you are happy.

A cool breeze blew as evening approached, and the people wore robes of gold as they went by in the sun’s last rays.

Everything was so childishly simple. Not a single problem bothered me; the apple of life had not a single worm inside. Appearances sufficed; I did not seek to discover if anything existed behind them.

It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

“Of one of these two possibilities: either I would grow accustomed to this happiness, whereupon it would lose its intensity and all its glory, or I would not grow accustomed to it and would always consider it as great as before, in which case I would be lost completely. I saw a bee drowned in its honey once, and learned my lesson.”

For the unsophisticated soul of youth does not easily tolerate the sight of beauty being reduced to nothing while God stands by and neglects to lift His hand to make it immortal. If I were God, thinks the young man, I would distribute immortality lavishly, never once permitting a beautiful body or valiant soul to die. What

I have never been a misanthrope; indeed, I have always loved people (from a distance) and whenever someone came to see me, the Cretan in me awoke and I took a holiday in order to welcome a fellow human being to my house. For a good while I would enjoy myself, listening to him and entering into his thoughts, and if I could help him in any way, I did so joyfully. But as soon as the conversation and contact became too prolonged, I withdrew into myself and longed to be left alone. People sensed I had no need of them, that I was capable of living without their conversation, and this they found impossible to forgive me. There are very few people with whom I could have lived for any length of time without feeling annoyed.

But as soon as the conversation and contact became too prolonged, I withdrew into myself and longed to be left alone. People sensed I had no need of them, that I was capable of living without their conversation, and this they found impossible to forgive me. There are very few people with whom I could have lived for any length of time without feeling annoyed.

“Do you know the highest peak a man can reach?” I asked in an effort to comfort him. “It is to conquer the self, the ego. When we reach that peak, and only then, Angelos, we shall be saved.”

As in love, so in hospitality, surely he who gives is happier than he who receives.

The poor woebegone captains hear the Siren and do not believe, however. Entrenched behind prudence and cowardice, all their lives they keep weighing the pros and cons on a delicate assay balance. And God, not knowing where to throw them, desiring them neither to ornament hell nor defile heaven, orders them suspended between corruption and incorruptibility, upside down in the air.”

“Some people become heroes through God’s decree, some through their own struggles. I struggle.”

Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed; it is universal. The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death. The stronger the soul and the flesh, the more fruitful the struggle and the richer the final harmony. God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.

The human being is a centaur; his equine hoofs are planted in the ground, but his body from breast to head is worked on and tormented by the merciless Cry. He has been fighting, again for thousands of eons, to draw himself, like a sword, out of his animalistic scabbard. He is also fighting—this is his new struggle—to draw himself out of his human scabbard. Man calls in despair, “Where can I go? I have reached the pinnacle, beyond is the abyss.” And the Cry answers, “I am beyond. Stand up!”

Solitude is fatal to any soul which fails to burn with a great passion. If, in his solitude, a monk does not love God to the point of frenzy, he is doomed. The minds of several of the monks had tottered. These brothers had nothing to think about, nothing to desire. Half closing their eyes, they sat down in a row in the courtyard and waited for the hour when they would enter the chapel, the refectory, their cells—that was all. Their memories had grown murky, their teeth had fallen out, their loins ached. They were not men, but neither were they animals. Nor were they angels yet. They were neither male nor female, neither alive nor dead. In a stupor, their arms folded, they waited for death, just as bare stalks await the spring.

man’s supreme desire is for sanctity. Well and good, but first we must traverse all the lower desires, we must learn to despise the flesh, and also the thirst for power, gold, and rebellion. What I mean is, we should live our youth and all the manly passions to the hilt, should disembowel all these idols and discover that they are overstuffed with chaff and air, should empty and cleanse ourselves so that we will never be tempted to look back. Then, and only then, should we present ourselves before God. . . . This is how the true Striver acts.”

“Never cease wrestling with God. There is no better discipline. But do not assume that in order to wrestle with more confidence you must pluck out the dark roots inside you—the instincts. The sight of a woman frightens you to death. You say it is the Tempter—’Get thee behind me, Satan.’ Yes, it is the Tempter, but if you wish to conquer temptation, there is only one way: embrace it, taste it, learn to despise it. Then it will not tempt you again. Otherwise, though you live a hundred years, if you have not enjoyed women, they will come whether you are sleeping or stirring and will soil your dreams and your soul. I have said it once and I say it again: whoever uproots his instincts uproots his strength—for with time, satiety, and discipline this dark matter may turn to spirit.”

“You should not ask if you will succeed or not. That isn’t what matters the most. The only thing that matters is your struggle to carry it further. God reckons that—the assault—to our account and nothing else. Whether we win or lose is His affair, not ours.”

I HAD GROWN weary. I was young, after all, and youth’s insatiability is burdensome. It will not condescend to acknowledge man’s limits; it seeks much but is capable of little.

The world is our monastery, the true monk he who lives with men and works with God here, in contact with the soil. God does not sit on a throne above the clouds. He wrestles here on earth, along with us. Solitude is no longer the road for the man who strives, and true prayer, prayer which steers a course straight for the Lord’s house and enters, is noble action. This, today, is how the true warrior prays.

Observing how my old friends had settled in, I was seized with terror. I vowed never to shut myself up inside the four walls of an office, never to come to terms with the good life, never to sign an agreement with necessity. I used to go down to the harbor and gaze at the sea. It seemed a doorway to freedom.

could Father Joachim have been correct in urging me to pass through the entire earthly inferno and purgatory if I wished to reach paradise—to experience joy, pain, and sin, and afterwards to transcend joy, pain, and sin if I wished to be saved?