Christ Recrucified — Thoughts on the Novel by Nikos Kazantzakis
“ The villagers had scattered, some in the square, some in the churchyard, and tongues were going full tilt…”
As I’ve written previously:
Nikos Kazantzakis was an extraordinary writer of passion and patriotism, and like a good many people I came to him through the film, Zorba the Greek, based on his novel, which was as good a way as any.
I saw the film in an open air cinema in Famagusta, Cyprus, in 1967, which drew quite a crowd, mainly locals, who sat through the film in silence, even though the film was quite funny in places. After the film, when the audience left the cinema, the Greek members of the audience looked solemn, some with tears in their eyes. It was pointed out to me just how important Kazantzakis was to the Greeks, not only as a writer but also as a saviour of their land and culture, and of their hopes.
I had to know more about this writer.
A couple of days after the film I came across a 1964 Faber & Faber copy of his novel, Christ Recrucified, in a Famagusta book shop, and found Nikos’s writing(translated from the Greek by Jonathan Griffin) totally absorbing and which Thomas Mann has described as a novel that is:
“ …without doubt a work of high artistic order formed by a tender and firm hand and…
