Kazantzakis regarded himself as a poet and in 1938 completed his magnum opus, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, divided into 24 rhapsodies and consisting of a monumental 33,333 verses. Among other distinctions, he was president of the Hellenic Literary Society, received the International Peace Award in Vienna in 1956 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was appointed Director General of the Ministry of Social Welfare (1919) and Minister without Portfolio (1945), and served as a literary advisor to UNESCO (1946). After returning to Greece, he continued to travel extensively, often as a newspaper correspondent.
It was at this time that he developed a strong interest in Nietzsche and seriously took to writing. He studied law in Athens (1902-06) before moving to Paris to pursue postgraduate studies in philosophy (1907-09) under Henri Bergson. Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion, Crete, when the island was still under Ottoman rule. No, I don’t like it at all! Am I not free? I refuse to sign up!”įor the plot, writing history, Greek and foreign editions and adaptations, see: Nikos Kazantzakis “…I look on death every moment and I’m not afraid yet I never say I like it. “Act as if death did not exist, and act with death in mind at every moment…”
#Zorba the greek free
A life force that propels him forward, enabling him to overcome listlessness and inertia, with a deep-running instinct that guides him and keeps him in immediate contact with the essence of things.Īs to the major philosophical questions that preoccupy the narrator, through plain thinking and the experience of a tumultuous life, Zorba shows him that the answers - if they do exist - are not to be found in books, but in life itself, as long at it is lived passionately, free of hopes and expectations. His main traits are an indomitable life force and intuition. The fictional Zorba embodies the very essence of life in all its manifestations. Those who met him speak of a person free of social conventions, illiterate yet ingenious, and profoundly philosophical, which is why he touched Kazantzakis’ soul.
#Zorba the greek how to
Renamed Alexis in the novel, Yorgis Zorbas was a real-life person and friend of Kazantzakis, who taught him how to love life and not to fear death. Though the original Greek title was The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas, it became known internationally as Zorba the Greek. The hero of Nikos Kazantzakis’ best known and most widely translated novel.