Nikos Kazantzakis

""Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be." This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow."

"There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces."

"...as Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote, 'Art is the representation not of the body but of the forces which created the body.'"

"How can anyone have a true sense of the Hebrew race without crossing this terrifying desert, without experiencing it? For three interminable days we crossed it on our camels. Your throat sizzles from thirst, your head reels, your mind spins about as serpent-like you follow the sleek tortuous ravine. When a race is forged for two score years in this kiln, how can such a race die? I rejoiced at seeing the terrible stones where the Hebrews' virtues were born: their perseverance, will power, obstinacy, endurance, and above all, a God flesh of their flesh, flame of their flame, to whom they cried, "Feed us! Kill our enemies! Lead us to the Promised Land!" To this desert the Jews owe their continued survival and the fact that by means of their virtues and vices they dominate the world. Today, in the unstable period of wrath, vengeance, and violence through which we are passing, the Jews are of necessity once again the chosen people of the terrible God of Exodus from the land of bondage."

"In contrast to Hesse, I think about Kazantzakis, who is not as deep as Hesse, but has some human warmth, some Greek sunshine, in his prose. To me he speaks with a Jewish heart. I approve of Hesse; I love Kazantzakis."

"Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer."

"In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can."

"The focal point of Greek-American cultural interest has definitely shifted in recent decades. Where formerly there was a somewhat affected and strained focus on classical Hellas, the contemporary awareness is much more in tune with the literature of modern Greece. This shift has almost been entirely due to the increasing availability of English translations of modern Greek writings, for not many American-born Greeks comfortably read novels or poetry in the original Greek. The beginnings of the new mood can be traced to the translations of the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis in the 1950s. These also stimulated interest in other Greek writers, notably the poets Constantine P. Cavafy, a product of the Greek diaspora in Alexandria, Egypt, and George Seferis, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1963."

"I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards … and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence."

"Inhuman solitude made of sand and God. Surely only two kinds of people can bear to live in such desert: lunatics and prophets. The mind topples here not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, losing human stability, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says, and taking this, slings it into men's consciousness. Only in the desert do we see the birth of these fierce, indomitable souls who rise up in rebellion even against God himself and stand before Him fearlessly, their minds in resplendent consubstantiality with the skirts of the Lord. God sees them and is proud, because in them his breath has not vented its force; in them, God has not stooped to becoming a man."

"Like Teresa of Avila, Kazantzakis indicates that behind all appearances lies a struggling divine essence (the "Invisible") that is striving to merge with our hearts just as the mystic is striving to merge with God's. Nonetheless God's striving is on a cosmic scale such that there is something trivial involved when we push anthropocentric images too far in our description of God. Behind any religious face like Buddha's or Confucius's or Jesus' lies the awesome reality of the Tao of the Great Spirit or God — the Great Ecstatic. … We must tame some passions to unleash some others in Kazantzakis's religious eroticism. But no human passion is sufficient to put God under our thumbs. Kazantzakis defines "God" in Spain as "the Power that always gives us more than we are able to receive and always asks for more than we are able to give.""

"Kazantzakis is very clear about his belief in some "mystic law" at work in the world. … It must be admitted that Kazantzakis is at least tempted by nihilism and atheism. But … there are too many passages in his oeuvre where he makes it clear he does not want a merely human "god." Nor does he want a "god" who would be limited by our puny imagination. It is those who turn Kazantzakis's partial criticism (and partial appropriation) of traditional theism into an agnosticism or atheism who are unfaithful to Kazantzakis's texts. … neither a pantheistic nor a Buddhist/nihilist interpretation can stand up under the the weight of Kazantzakis's many writings about God."

"I am suggesting that, for Kazantzakis, it is God who is "Immortal." What this means is that Kazantzakis is searching neither for heaven nor Nirvana nor ataraxia. Kazantzakis believes in matter, or better, in the transformation of matter into spirit and in the attachment of an embodied human being to spirit as if fastened by a nail. The (nonanthropocentric) "God" of Kazantzakis is a name given to a dark force at work in the world that in many ways is more like an agitated Yahweh or God the Father than like an anesthetic or passive receiver of human woes. In any event, Kazantzakis's theism is Buddhist if what you mean by Buddhism includes a consideration of the aforementioned Unborn or Undying, and it is in the Abrahamic tradition if what one means by Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is an an embracing of mysticism… Bien puts Kazantzakis's mysticism into focus when he says that human knowing (gnosis) — "You and I are one, Lord" — is necessarily followed by unknowing (agnosis) — "Even this one does not exist." The former element is reminiscent of the kataphatic tradition of Christian mysticism, otherwise known as the via positiva. But the latter element does not necessarily lead to nihilism, as some scholars allege, in that it is part of traditional apophatic theology or the via negativa. This negativity is not absolute, but rather indicative of the psychic renewal consistent with Buddhism and Christianity (including Greek Orthodoxy). It is a "rest in the life force's evolution toward ever-increasing value.""

"We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide … both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action."

"You have your brush, you have your colours, you paint paradise, then, in you go."

"All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind."

"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."

"You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am."

"We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal."

"I am a mariner of Odysseus with heart of fire but with mind ruthless and clear."

"I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me."

"Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: "Death does not exist.""

"I strive to discover how to signal my companions before I die, how to give them a hand, how to spell out for them in time one complete word at least, to tell them what I think this procession is, and toward what we go. And how necessary it is for all of us together to put our steps and hearts in harmony. To say in time a simple word to my companions, a password, like conspirators. Yes, the purpose of Earth is not life, it is not man. Earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling. Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create — so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us — let us create for Earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle. This anguish is our second duty."

"The moment is ripe: leave the heart and the mind behind you, go forward, take the third step. Free yourself from the simple complacency of the mind that thinks to put all things in order and hopes to subdue phenomena. Free yourself from the terror of the heart that seeks and hopes to find the essence of things. Conquer the last, the greatest temptation of all: Hope. This is the third duty."

"I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow. I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions."

"Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all."

"I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery."

"Nothing exists! Neither life nor death. I watch mind and matter hunting each other like two nonexistent erotic phantasms — merging, begetting, disappearing — and I say: "This is what I want!" I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free. [Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα, δεν φοβούμαι τίποτα, λυτρώθηκα από το νου κι από την καρδιά, ανέβηκα πιο πάνω, είμαι λεύτερος.] This is what I want. I want nothing more. I have been seeking freedom."

"Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry. Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling and shouting within you. It is your duty every moment, day and night, in joy or in sorrow, amid all daily necessities, to discern this Cry with vehemence or restraint, according to your nature, with laughter or with weeping, in action or in thought, striving to find out who is imperiled and cries out. And how we may all be mobilized together to free him."

"Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: "I am in pain! I want to escape your happiness! I am stifling!" Amidst our deepest despair someone within us cries out: "I do not despair! I fight on! I grasp at your head, I unsheathe myself from your body, I detach myself from the earth, I cannot be contained in brains, in names, in deeds!""

"Having seen that I was not capable of using all my resources in political action, I returned to my literary activity. There lay the battlefield suited to my temperament. I wanted to make my novels the extension of my own father's struggle for liberty. But gradually, as I kept deepening my responsibility as a writer, the human problem came to overshadow political and social questions. All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present. The more the intelligence unveils and violates the secrets of Nature, the more the danger increases and the heart shrinks."

"Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with it. I feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to merge with my heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us."

"I will not accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty. The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the nets of necessity."

"The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him."

"God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!"

"I am NOT nothing! A vaporous phosphorescence on a damp meadow, a miserable worm that crawls and loves, that shouts and talks about wings for an hour or two until his mouth is blocked with earth. The dark powers give no other answer. But within me a deathless Cry, superior to me, continues to shout. For whether I want to or not, I am also, without doubt, a part of the visible and the invisible Universe. We are one."

""Love responsibility. Say: "It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame." "Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. Do not seek friends; seek comrades-in-arms."

"I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body."

"I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe fears, hopes, and shouts with me. I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him."

"It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors talking with your mouth. It is not you who desire, but innumerable generations of descendants longing with your heart. Your dead do not lie in the ground. They have become birds, trees, air. You sit under their shade, you are nourished by their flesh, you inhale their breathing. They have become ideas and passions, they determine your will and your actions. Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time. They live, desire, and act in your loins and your heart. In this lightning moment when you walk the earth, your first duty, by enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and invisible, of your own being."

"You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts."

""Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" … But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth."

"Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech, purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful brows. This is your second duty. For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the great sunless heart of your race."

"Everything you do reverberates throughout a thousand destinies. As you walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow."

"You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain."

"Your first duty, in completing your service to your race, is to feel within you all your ancestors. Your second duty is to throw light on their onrush and to continue their work. Your third duty is to pass on to your son the great mandate to surpass you."

"It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man."

"Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask questions, we listen, we shout for help."

"The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss. Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. … But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man."

"The Cry within me is a call to arms. It shouts: "I, the Cry, am the Lord your God! I am not an asylum. I am not hope and a home. I am not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. I am your General! "You are not my slave, nor a plaything in my hands. You are not my friend, you are not my child. You are my comrade-in-arms! "Hold courageously the passes which I entrusted to you; do not betray them. You are in duty bound, and you may act heroically by remaining at your own battle station. "Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want! Which road should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the one I also take: follow me!"