KAZANTZAKIS ON FEAR, HOPE, AND FREEDOM

Grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, Heraklion, Crete
Photo by Christos Tsourmplekas (2009)


"I hope for nothing.  I fear nothing.  I am free."
Epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis

Like many others of my generation, I was introduced to the works of Nikos Kazantzakis through Michael Cacoyannis's 1964 film version of the author's great novel, Zorba the Greek.  I saw the film for the first time in the early seventies at an old Washintgon movie house that featured foreign films.  Soon thereafter, I stuffed a duffel bag with several Kazantzakis books and headed off for a month in Greece, hoping to find Zorba's spirit — and perhaps my own — among ancient stones and the mysterious waters of the Aegean.

After more than two weeks of traveling from one island to another throughout the Greek archipelago, I reached Heraklion, Crete, where Kazantzakis was born in 1883 and buried in 1957.  On the first day after my arrival in Haraklion, I arose early and walked through half-deserted streets to the Kazantzakis grave site, just outside the city walls.  It was quiet place, and beautiful in its  simplicity — a plain, rough-hewn wooden cross, a few large stones covering the grave, and a topstone on which Kazantazkis' chosen epitaph was engraved:

Detail From Photo by Frente (2003)

The most common English translation of the epitaph is: "I hope for nothing.  I fear nothing.  I am free."  Other translators, however, have insisted that a more accurate translation is:  "I expect nothing.  I fear nothing.  I am free."

The first translation may be the most literal, but the second — at least in my view — is the one that best captures the true spirit of Kazantzakis' philosophy.  Influenced by Buddhist teachings, Kazantzakis was not opposed to that form of hope that is often coupled with faith and optimism.  He was opposed to hope that is based upon desire and  expectations of favorable outcomes, because he believed that desire and expectations, like fear, keep people focused on future events, rendering them incapable of living and experiencing life in the present moment.

The ten words of Katzantzakis' epitaph — so spare, so unambiguous, so courageous — were a bit of an epiphany for me.  For the first time in my life, I realized that freedom — my lodestar from an early age — was not a place, not a level of financial security, not some type of achievement;  it was, instead, the ability to abandon expectations and to live fearlessly in the ebb and flow of every moment. It was one of the most liberating messages I have ever received, and though I often fall short of the mark, I have never doubted the wisdom of what I learned on that morning thirty-eight years ago.

I still have the tattered paperback copy of Zorba that was in my rucksack on that sun-drenched morning that I stood before the grave site of Kazantzakis.  Looking now at the passages that I underlined when I first read the book, I find nothing that does not still resonate with me.  I offer some of these passages below in the hope that others may also find something of value.

That's what liberty is, I thought.  To have a passion, to amass pieces of gold and suddenly to conquer one's passion and throw the treasure to the four winds.

* * * * *

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning . . . Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics; woe to anyone who begins to decipher them and guess what they mean . . . When you see them, you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars.  It is only years later, too late, that you understand . . . 

* * * * * 

Zorba sees everything every day as if for the first time.

* * * * *

The house appears empty, but it contains everything, so few are the necessities of man.

* * * * *

The greatest prophet on earth can give men no more than a watchword, and the vaguer the watchword the greater the prophet.

* * * * *

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.

* * * * *

Everything seems to have a soul — wood, stones, the wine we drink and the earth we tread on. Everything, boss, absolutely everything!

* * * * *

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.  And all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

* * * * *

What a voluptuous enjoyment of sorrow those hours of soft rain can produce in you!  All the bitter memories hidden in the depths of your mind come to the surface:  separations from friends, women's smiles which have faded, hopes which have lost their wings like moths . . . 

* * * * *

This was true happiness:  to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.  To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To take part in the Christmas festivities and, after eating and drinking well, to escape on your own far from all the snares, to have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right: and to realize all of a sudden that, in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.

* * * * *

It is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature.  We should not be in a hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

* * * * *

I looked at Zorba in the light of the moon and admired the jauntiness and simplicity with which he adapted himself to the world around him, the way his body and soul formed one harmonious whole, and all things — women, bread, water, meat, sleep — blended happily with his flesh and became Zorba.

* * * * *

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

* * * * *

[Zorba] is dominated by the basic problems of mankind.  He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities.  Like the child, he sees everything for the first time.  He is forever astonished and wonders why and wherefore.  Everything seems miraculous to him, and each morning when he opens his eyes he sees trees, sea, stones and birds, and is amazed.

* * * * *

"The idea's everything, he (Zorba) said.  "Have you faith?  Then a splinter from an old door becomes a sacred relic.  Have you no faith?  Then the whole Holy Cross itself becomes an old doorpost to you."

* * * * *

That is what a real man is like, I thought, envying Zorba's sorrow.  A man with warm blood and solid bones, who lets real tears run down his cheeks when he is suffering; and when he is happy he does not spoil the freshness of his joy by running it through the fine sieve of metaphysics.

* * * * *

Each time that within ourselves we are the conquerors, although externally utterly defeated, we human beings feel an indescribable pride and joy.  Outward calamity is transformed into a supreme and unshakable felicity.

Nikos Kazantzakis
1883 - 1957

It has been said that Kazantzakis was the most important and most translated Greek writer of the 20th century.  He didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature when he was nominated in in 1957 — having lost by one vote to the French novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus — but he is clearly worth reading for those who strive daily to make sense of man's struggle in what often appears to be a chaotic world.

They think of me as a scholar, and intellectual, a pen-pusher.
And I am none of them.
When I write, my fingers
get covered not in ink, but in blood.
I think I am nothing more than this:
an undaunted soul.


Words Nikos Kazantzakis
used to 
describe himself in 1950.