Of Crete and Other Demons: A Reading of Kazantzakis's Freedom and Death

Abstract

Once seen as a patriotic evocation of the Greek nationalist struggle of the nineteenth century, Freedom and Death can now be seen to revolve around a number of interrelated conflicts: sexual (in the overlapping, triangular relationships of Mihalis-Nuri-Emine and of Michalis-Polyxingis-Emine); internal (Mihalis's struggles with his "demons"); and ideological/psychological (the "gravitational" pull of Crete and the ancestors versus the centrifugal, enlightening trajectory of Kosmas). Kazantzakis revisits and implicitly criticizes earlier intellectual positions of his own (aestheticism, nationalism). At the same time, the novel pursues a parallel quest (unresolved) to that articulated in the two novels on the Christ story (conflict/union with the divine). But since Freedom and Death is a work of fiction, not of philosophy, it deserves to be read for the play of nonhuman forces acted out by its human protagonists, and hence may be compared with later South American fiction, especially that of Márquez.

Nikos Kazantzakis’s phenomenology and its relevance to the study of organizations

“…His selective use of symbols transcend through time and space (Dombrowski 2010). The epitome of Kazantzakis's work was the experience of the human struggle in the context of man's experience of (a) void, (b) creaturely existence, (c) meaning and (d) death (Beaton 1998). His use of imagery sought to challenge already established norms with the intention to generate reflexivity about the meaning of existence itself (Bien 1963;Bien 2007a;Calotychos 2010).…”

“…However, for Kazantzakis the individuals runs the risk of losing sight of the temporality of existence, thereby undermining the significance of temporality itself. Kazantzakis's emphasis on the making of transitions is designed to illustrate the experience in which a heightening tension between content and process, matter and spirit, and life and death reaches an impasse and demands some form of resolution (Bien 1963;Beaton 1998). For example, an emphasis on affirmation is made to illustrate the development of the human virtue in which the individual is able to commit to a higher purpose without being merely confined by earthly demands (Bien 2012).…”