“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikon Kazantzakis was an author, a philosopher and a spiritual seeker. He is best known for his novels Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. Like his narrator in Zorba, Kazantzakis was an intellectual. He studied law in Greece before studying philosophy in Paris. He was influenced by Henri Bergson and Fredrich Neitzsche.1
The author met the real life Giorgis Zorba in 1915. Zorba travelled to Mount Athos where he planned to become a monk. It was there that the two met. The meeting and friendship changed the writer. Kazantzakis, however, remained spiritually restless.
He says this in the prologue to The Last Temptation of Christ:
“My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.”
These two forces clashed and met in the arena of his novels, and in the arena of his soul. I recommend this author for your summer reading.
Kazantzakis is revered in his native Crete, in Greece and throughout the world.
by Patrick Gaffney
