FREEDOM OR DEATH
by Nikos Kazantzakis
First published in 1955
PREFACE
By A. Den Doolaard
Holland knew the Greek author Kazantzakis from only one book: The Greek Passion. Within three years of publication almost 40,000 copies were sold, a record for a literary work in Holland. Many people, from reading this book, gathered the impression that Kazantzakis was a Christian author, be it of little orthodoxy. But the well-known habit to classify, which automatically urges many Dutchmen to surround everything with partitions and to label it once and for all, here caught only one part of the many-sided figure.
Kazantzakis escapes simplifying definitions as a continent rejects them. A continent like Asia is tundra, steppe, and desert, fertile river valley and jungle. Kazantzakis is Christian and heathen, anarchist, humanist and stoic sage, alternately and sometimes simultaneously. He belongs to no school, and he cannot found a school, no more than could El Greco, who was also born in Crete. Kazantzakis is, before everything else, Cretan; and as such he is more than European only. When one takes a compass, pricks one leg in Mount Ida and swings the other one along the Greek coasts, one touches before the circle has been completed, Phoenicia and Israel, Egypt and Libya. Crete is as far removed from Europe as from Africa and Asia. The ancestors of Kazantzakis came from a group of Cretan villages to which a Byzantine conqueror had banished his Arab mercenaries, amongst whom were many Bedouins. As Africa’s flame scorches Crete in summer, so it burns in the blood of this man who strove, for many long years, to build a synthesis from Greek and Oriental thought.
But the Byzantines were not the only conquerors of the island which was once the most bitterly fought-for place in the Mediterranean. Libyans and Greeks, Saracens and Arabs, Venetians and Turks, in the course of fifty centuries, have overpowered, destroyed and fertilized Crete. What they left behind was silt layer after silt layer on the primeval soil of the Minoan civilization (3000-1500 B.C.) which worshiped life and the life force, and which looked death in the eye without troubling itself about personal immortality. Unlike the Egyptians, the ancient Cretans hardly bothered with eschatology; their worship of life contained an undaunted acceptance of death. “This heroic view, without hope and without fear, serenely directed upon the precipice, that is what I call the view of Crete,” Kazantzakis wrote. And to this primeval soil of his being in later years he returned, after long wanderings through both the physical world and the world of thought, which carried him through Russia and Spain, India and China, Africa and Arabia, and during which the spirits of Homer and Dante, Buddha and Confucius, Nietzsche and Bergson were his guides.
Hence the great diversity in his work. For sixteen years “he worked at a sequel to the Odyssey, in 33,000 verses. This work is now being translated in America. One of his earlier novels, Zorba the Greek, is dionysian and apollonian at the same time, as well as a struggle against the suctional force of the Buddhist Nothing. Besides this book, foaming with heathenish joy of life, he has written profound Biblical dramas, whose value for the stage, however, seems doubtful. In his novel The Last Temptation he arrived at an interpretation of Christ which is as original as it is bold but which remains unacceptable for every dogmatic Christian, even though it shows Kazantzakis’ belief in a personal God.
And now we have a novel in front of us which, at first sight historical, violates the ordinary framework of the historical novel with as much indomitable force as Captain Michales, the hero of the book, angrily smashes his hosts glass by putting two fingers into it and spreading them.
In a philosophical essay written during his youth, Kazantzakis wrote: “You are not one; you are an army. Are you angry? One of your forebears foams on your lips. Do you love? Deep inside you whinnies an ancestor”
In this book the Proteus of contemporary novel writing shows hundreds of persons (amongst whom are many of his own ancestors) from his native land, and he shows them with as much love as ruthlessness. Indeed, in his artist’s mind there is no contrast between these two conceptions. Briefly summarized, this novel tells the story of the revolt of 1889 by the suppressed Cretans against their Turkish oppressors, as well as a love intrigue in which the two Cretan heroes, the captains Michales and Polyxigis, fight with each other and with the noble Turk Nun Bey about the same Circasfian woman. But this skeleton gives only a vague idea of the wild and luxurious outward form. Half of the time the action takes place in the city of Megalokastro (nowadays Neraklion); and the reader receives the strong impression (which becomes a feeling of happiness, in spite of the repeated shocks he has to undergo) that he knows this town and its inhabitants better than his own place.
Every mask is torn down; everyone’s virtues and vices are brought to light. In the spirit we float with the author over towers and minarets; and Kazantzakis not only raises the roofs from the houses with his magic wand, but also the trapdoors from the dark caverns in which man hides secret wishes and passions.
All this is bathed in an eternal light, like an El Greco. And that makes even the most horrible scenes supportable. It is this fourth dimension of a supernatural forgiveness, never described in so many words but always audible as a floating overtone, that makes these wild sinners into children of God never for these people the God of Love but the Old Testament God of Revenge.
Much of the action in this book may seem unbelievable, however stirring the author’s narration is. But whoever knows a little about the Cretans and their history will realize that the people in this book are real, even if the author makes some of them bigger than us which is a condition for a true epic. And one should also remember where and when the story of the book is laid: on an island, after a long century of oppression by the Turks. No power lifted a finger to help them. The Cretans stood alone “and with their rifles called to God. They stood before God’s gate and fired their weapons, that He should hear them.” It was the Crete where for two days and nights 200 rebels and 65 monks defended their monastery Arkadi against 15,000 Turks. When, at last, the enemy finally rammed in the gate of the monastery, a young fighter fired off his pistols into the open barrels of an underground powder vault, where 600 women and children were hiding. They all perished, together with the hundreds of defenders and attackers inside the crumbling walls.
Freedom or Death! Crete is an island in which burns a flame. Even in peacetime the many people in this book are driven by a demonical fire. They do not fear death, and they love life in the sensual way which, in a somber ” and sunless North, may seem sinful to ascetic spirits. But over Crete blows a tornado of light. And this book, epic, heroic and tragic, is a world in itself, above which, with Wings outspread, floats an eagle: Kazantzakis.
FREEDOM or DEATH
CHAPTER 1
CAPTAIN MICHALES gnashed his teeth. He usually did so when wrath took charge of him. “Captain Wildboar” was his apt nickname in Megalokastro. With his sudden rages, his deep, dark eyes, his short, stubborn neck and jutting jaw, the heavy, broad-boned man really was like a wild boar rearing for the spring.
He crumpled a letter in his fist and stuffed it into his wide corduroy belt. He had been a long time spelling it out and seeking for its meaning… . He won’t come (he understood) this Easter either, and so his ill and dying mother and his poor sister won’t see him, because, so he says, he’s still studying… . What the devil is he studying? Will he always go on studying? He doesn’t say that he hasn’t the courage to return to Crete because he’s married a Jewess and not a countrywoman of ours. That’s what that favorite son of yours has come to, Brother Kosta! If only you were living! If only you were there to lift him by the ankles and hang him head downward from the beam like a sack of seed!
Captain Michales stood up fine giant of a fellow.
The crown of his head nearly touched the ceiling of his shop. The black tasseled band that bound his hair behind had fallen loose on his back, and Captain Michales grabbed at it and pulled it tighter round his thick-boned skull. Then he strode to the door to get some air.
Charitos the apprentice, a wild shoot of a brown-haired village lad with frightened, blinking eyes and protruding ears, crouched behind a coil of ship’s rope. His glance wept over the sails, planks, pots of paint and tar, heavy chains, iron anchors all sorts of ship’s gear and tools. But in his fear he saw nothing but the Chief, now standing on the threshold, filling the whole of the doorway and staring out toward the harbor. Captain Michales was his uncle, but Charitos called him the Chief and trembled before him.
“As if I hadn’t enough trouble already this evening,” Captain Michales muttered. “What does the dog expect of me, sending word to me that I must go over to that miserable house of his this evening? And now, on top of it, the vexation with my nephew! His mother would have me write to him, and I did write to him. But he doesn’t even show up!”
He gazed leftward at the harbor at the steamers, the sailing ships and the sea. Sounds rose from up on the mole: dealers, sailors, boatmen and porters were swarming among oil and wine casks and piles of rubbish, shouting, cursing, loading and unloading. They were hurrying to be done with it by the time the sun went down and the fortress gate closed. The sea poised sultrily; the harbor stank of rotting oranges, turnips, wine and oil. Two or three middle-aged Maltese women sprinkled with spray stood on the walls and chattered hoarsely. They were waving to a broad-beamed Maltese steamer which Was coming in with a cargo of bottles.
The sun sank in a red sky; the last day of March was-ending. A sharp northerly breeze sighed, and Megalokastro shivered. Shopkeepers chafed their hands, stamped their feet and drank herb infusions some even drank rum to get warm. Up above, the peaks of Strumbula were covered with snow, and farther off Psiloritis rose, dark blue. Frozen masses of snow glimmered in white streaks from deep hollows protected from the wind. But the sky shone crystalline, steel colored.
Captain Michales raised his glance to the massive Kule, a strong, thickly built tower to the right of the harbor entrance with the winged marble lion of Venice on its front. Megalokastro was entirely surrounded by walls and fierce, battlemented towers, which had been built by its Christian masters in the heyday of ancient Venice and had been slaked with Venetian, Turkish and Greek blood. Here and there remains of earlier taste were still left, as for instance the stone lions of Venice, carrying the Gospel in their claws, and the Turkish axes which had been carved on the fortifications on that bloody autumn day when the Turks had trampled Megalokastro after long years of hopeless blockade. And everywhere among the tumbled blocks there now luxuriated an undergrowth of fig trees, stinging nettles and caper bushes.
Captain Michales lowered his gaze and fixed his eyes on the base of the Kule tower. The veins of his temples swelled, and he sighed. There, in that dungeon, against which the waves beat, was the accursed prison where generations of Christian warriors had gasped out their lives, chained hand and foot. Truly the bodies of Cretans, strong though they are, do not come up to the strength of their souls, he thought. I accuse God of not having given us Cretans bodies of steel with which to hold out for the hundred, two hundred, three hundred years until we have set Crete free. Then we could turn to dust and ashes.
His anger rose again, and he thought of his nephew living abroad as a “Frank.” He’s studying, he says. What the devil is he studying? He’ll come back like his Uncle Tityros the schoolmaster, a seedy creature with glasses and a hollow rump! A good pig, but, dammit, with worm!
He spat in a large arc and hesitated a moment longer before going to the small spice shop kept by Demetros.
You have come down in the world, bold race of Mad-michales the Turk gobbler! he said to himself, and in his mind’s eye his fear-inspiring grandfather Mad-michales appeared in flesh and blood. How could he die, he who had so many children and grandchildren? Far and wide the old people still remembered him, the way he used to gaze along the coast of Crete, shading his eyes with his hand: he was watching to see if the Muscovite ships were coming out of the sea and sky. He would tilt his fez awry, saunter up and down the walls of Megalokastro, bow before that accursed Kyle and sing in the Turks’ faces, “The Muscovites are coming!” His hair and his beard had been long, his boots high and hitched to his belt, and never it was said did he take them off. He had worn, too, a long black shirt, for enslaved Crete was in mourning, and every Sunday after Mass he used to swagger along with his grandfather’s bow over his shoulder and a quiver full of arrows as well.
“Those were men,” Captain Michales snarled, frowning. “Those were giants, not worms like us! So were their womenfolk. Yes, even wilder. Ah, time, time! Mankind’s going downhill, going to the devil!”
A curtain rose within him and revealed, after his grandfather, a skeleton with loamy nails his grandmother. When she had reached a ripe age she had left the rough-walled house and her heap of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to bury herself in a deep cave up above her native village, at the foot of Psiloritis. For twenty years she had stayed in that hole. One of her granddaughters, who had married a man in the village, brought her every morning a lump of barley bread, some olives and a small bottle of wine (there was water enough In the cave), and at Easter two red eggs in remembrance of Christ the Lord. And every morning the old woman appeared, crouched at the cave’s entrance, plaster-white like a ghost, with her long hair and nails and her rags, gazed at the rising sun and flourished her thin arms at it for a long time, either in blessing or as a curse. Then she dived back into the maw of the mountain. f Twenty solitary years. But one morning they did not see her come out. They understood. They called the village priest, climbed up there with burning torches and found her, a crooked trestle of bones in a little, bath like hollow, with her arms crossed and her head gripped between, her knees.
Captain Michales shook his head, took his eyes from the prison and let the dead sink down again within him
In the little spice shop Demetros sat sleepy and swollen-eyed on a narrow sofa. He held a fly whisk and moved it languidly from side to side to keep the flies from the little bags of cloves, nutmeg, mastic and cinnamon and the little glasses of laurel and myrtle oil. Yellow headed, cucumber-nosed, perpetually morose. Now a scratch, now a yawn, now a blink of the sleep-heavy eyes. Still he had not dropped off to sleep, and it seemed to him as if, from over the way, Captain Michales swung round and looked his way. Demetros raised the fly whisk to bid him good evening, but his vigorous neighbor turned his head in the other direction, and Demetros sank back into his doze.
Captain Michales shoved his hand into his broad, twisted belt, found the crumpled letter, pulled it out and tore it into a thousand pieces.
“As if one schoolmaster wasn’t enough to make our family look silly! Now we’ve got this one! And whose son? Yours, Brother Kosta, and it was you who grabbed a torch, set fire to the magazine and blew the Arkadi monastery saints, crucifixes, monks and all, Christians and Turks sky-high!”
Vendusos, the well-known lyre player, came hurrying along to the harbor, wrapped in a woolen jacket. He had ordered a cask of wine from Kissamos for his tavern and wanted now to collect it. But when he saw from a distance that Captain Michales’ headband was pulled down to his eyebrows, he understood and veered off.
“The dragon’s in another of his rages this evening,” he muttered. “I’d rather go a different way.”
The sun sank over Strumbula’s cliffs, the streets fell into shadow, the white minarets became rose-colored, and in the harbor dealers, carpenters, dockers and boatmen sought relief from their day’s work. The men and the barking ships’ dogs made a great din, but the world turned mild. Captain Michales pulled a tobacco pouch from his belt and rolled himself a cigarette. His anger passed away in smoke. He stroked his raven-black chin.
“My son, my Thrasaki, must live,” he mu
ttered.. “He’ll wash our faces clean again. He’ll set a torch to his Uncle
Tityros. And he’ll set a torch, too, to that nine-times-wise nephew of mine, who isn’t ashamed of mixing our blood with that of moneylenders. He’ll take up the standard of our clan!”
And suddenly life seemed good to him, and God just.
Captain Michales no longer had accusation against Him.
A Turk, a bald-headed old man in rags and clogs, drew near, trembling, raised quivering eyes and looked at Captain Michales.
Captain Michales looked down at him and shook his head. “What do you want, Ali Aga?” he asked roughly.
All Aga was his neighbor, but he could not bear the disgusting fellow. That slimy snail, half man, half woman, neither man nor woman sat hi the afternoons with the Greek women of his neighborhood and took part in women’s gossip.
“Sir,” the old man murmured, “I was sent by Nuri Bey. ‘Greetings,’ he says, ‘and will you give him the pleasure,’ he says, ‘of coming this evening to his konak?’” “All right, I’ve had the message already through his servant the black one. You may go.” “He says it’s very urgent.”
“Go, I tell you.” It annoyed Michales to hear the womanish eunuch voice.
Ali Aga bit his tongue, turned with a shiver to the wall and made off.
“What have I to do in Turks’ houses? What does the dog want with me? Why doesn’t he come himself? I shan’t go!” He wheeled around. “Charitos,” he called, “go in and saddle my mare!”
He had suddenly had the idea of taking a ride on his mare, to work off grandfather, grandmother, nephew and Nuri Beya ride on his mare, and he’d be rid of the lot!
Just as he raised his arm to take down the key and lock up, a fresh, joyous neigh rang out from the street. Captain Michales knew that horse’s voice and turned. Black and shining, sleek and slim, the noble, frothing beast came forward, stepping proudly. A plump, barefoot Turkish lad held it firmly by the rein and was leading it at a walk and unsaddled through the streets of Megalokastro to calm it. It had certainly come some distance at a gallop, for there was foam showing at its mouth, on its chest and under the shoulders. But its strength was still unimpaired, and, snorting, it tossed its foam-flecked neck and dripping mane. Every now and then it pranced, stamped hard with its slender forelegs on the paving, and neighed.
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