I really like Theodor Storm as a poet because he seems to me to be incredibly conventional. There is almost nothing special about either the form or the content of Storm’s poetry, but these little pieces are (forgive the translations if they don’t convey this) perfectly crafted all the same. There is no danger of ambition getting in the way of the message. While it is true that Storm wrote longer poems that I haven’t translated here, even those are all limited in formal and thematic scope. It seems he understood his talents and never thought it was worth the danger of trying to move beyond them, something he did in the formal experimentation of his novellas.
Theodor Storm, author of poems and novellas, was born and lived most of his life on the shores of the North Sea. His most famous poem “The Town”/Die Stadt (not translated here), takes his hometown of Husum as its setting.
Storm was born in 1817 in Husum, a small town in the duchy of Schleswig, at that time ruled by the Danish crown, even though it contained a sizeable German population. He studied law further south, wrote poems and novellas (I’ve written on Aquis Submersus here, and Immensee here), and returned to Husum after it had come under Prussian rule following a brief war with Denmark. There is a political slant to his work at times, but this doesn’t come across in the selection I’ve translated. I don’t feel the patriotism translates well without notes and I’m not sure it’d be enjoyable with them either.
Storm died at the age of 70 from cancer, shortly after
completing “The Rider on the White Horse”, perhaps his greatest
novella.
The Poems
I’ve translated several of Storm’s poems. His topics within them range from life and love to death and decay. My only regret with them is that I haven’t yet translated his more nature-based poems. I find them particularly beautiful. But that means I’m harder on myself – I want to do them justice. Since I myself grew up by a grey and northern coastline, I’m especially fond of Storm’s poetry dealing with his homeland.
But anyway, here are the poems. Following them will be a few
comments.
Beginning of the End
It's just a point, not even pain - It's just a feeling you perceive - And yet it hangs around your thoughts, And yet it makes it hard to breathe.
And when you try to tell your friends, You find you cannot find the words. You tell yourself: "this is no end." And yet there's no peace from its birth.
And now the world becomes so strange, And quietly your hopes depart, Until you see at last - at last! - That death's dark arrow's found your heart.
Insomnia
I woke from dreams in worried fright - Why is the lark's song out in the night?
The day's gone by, the morning's still far, Down onto my pillow there shines a star.
Yet on and on there floats the lark's song - O voice of day, what has gone wrong?
Early Morning
Above the roof the sun's gold shines, And cocks begin to crow the time; The one crows here, the other there, Their call rings out from everywhere. Now in the distance dies the cry - There's nothing more to fill the sky. Oh brave old cocks, sing on your song! They are still sleeping, sleeping on.
A Whisper
It is a whisper in the night, And yet it set my peace to flight. I feel it's there, it wants to say Some thing but cannot find the way.
Is it love's words, their secrets thrown Into the wind, blown far from home? Or is it pain from future days That hopes to help me change my ways?
Husum, Storm’s birthplace and home for much of his life. It’s a lovely little town and the Storm Museum there is worth visiting if you’re ever in the area. Photo by Bernd Untiedt (CC BY-SA 3.0)
"One body and one soul..."
One body and one soul, as once we were, - Seen thus, how great your death to me appears. As you, alone, within the grave decay, So too feel I, myself, decay up here.
"A man held once..."
A man held once by loving arms, Need never ask in life for alms. If he must die far off, alone, Still yet he'll feel those blessed hours, When her mouth loved with all its powers, And now in death she'll stay his own.
Consolation Whatever happens, come what may! If you still live I'll love this day.
The feeling goes, the world to roam - Wherever you are, that's my home.
I see your lovely face before me, And know the future cannot hurt me.
Closing Remarks
If I had to write about these in an essay, I’d find more to say than I will say now. But essays are always unnatural; they just get in the way of enjoying the simplicity of the poetry. Storm’s poetry is often about love, about the changes in love brought by death and separation. In this he seems quite similar to another major German poet of the same period, Eduard Mörike. But Storm’s poetry, at least here, also has a much greater sense of apprehension and anxiety about it. Death is always just around the corner, and however beautiful the natural world is there’s also a sense that Storm is not always certain that he can correctly interpret the world’s symbols. The gap between perception and his understanding seems to torment him, as in “Insomnia” and “A Whisper” – both end in questions.
I hope you enjoyed my translations. If you have any comments, why not leave a comment? If you want more German poetry, I have a piece on Hugo von Hofmannsthal here.
I confess I’ve never really gotten the hype with Thomas
Mann. Or rather, the moment I start reading him I’m usually left either
disappointed or confused. I blame his reputation. German students like me flock
to read him but soon find they spend more time in the dictionary than the
stories themselves. Death in Venice is a particular pain to understand
the language of, and that’s not even half the battle of making sense of that
tale. Nonetheless, once I read it in English (the poor Cambridge academics who
supervise me are doubtless shaking their heads in disappointment) I found it
rather enjoyable, and intellectually challenging too. Nevertheless, due to the
arcane rules of Cambridge examinations I can’t talk about Death in Venice
next year, though Mann himself remains on the syllabus. Looking for
alternatives, I turned to “Gladius Dei”, hoping it would have something
interesting to say.
“Gladius Dei” – I was attracted by the title, meaning “the
sword of God” – is not nearly as action-packed as its title suggests. And nor
is it as focused on the past as the Latin hints at either. Instead, it shows
the clash between modern art and the sensibility that drove it with the older
ideas that once justified artistic creation but which, in 1902 (the time of the
novella’s composition), had very much fallen out of fashion. It is the tale of one
man, Hieronymus, and his struggle against modernism as a whole.
Translations are from David Luke’s Death in Venice and
Other Stories.
The Odeon Square in Munich, where Hieronymus breaks down at the climax of “Gladius Dei”. Photo by Luidger CC BY-SA 3.0
Introduction: Munich, the Fallen City
“Munich was resplendent.” “Gladius Dei” begins with a description
of Munich, and Munich in some way is the main character of the novella. The
German Jugendstil, their Art Nouveau, was at the height of its popularity in
the city at the time the novella was written. From the very first paragraph,
listing “festive squares” and “colonnades” and “fountains” we are immersed into
this world of art. We meet the people, particularly women, who live in the city
– as types, rather than as people. They are all relaxed and indolent. There is
no rush about them.
Then we are taken into “the elaborate beauty-emporium of
Herr M. Blüthenzweig”, where artistic reproductions and books are all on
display, ranging in topic from the very modern to the classical. And here there
is the first sense that art and its creation are not done in isolation, but influenced
by consumers and their tastes – “among all this the portraits of artists,
musicians, philosophers, actors and writers are displayed to gratify the
inquisitive public’s taste for personal details.”
Next, we meet the key reproduction, which forms the focal
point of the novella – but we don’t learn what it is in the novella’s first
part. Instead, we are introduced to it through (literal) framing – “there is a large
picture which particularly attracts the crowd: an excellent sepia photograph in
a massive old-gold frame”. The frame is significant – its age contrasts with
the contents, which are “sensational” and highly modern, promoted by “quaintly printed
placards” and “this year’s great international exhibition”. Ironically, like
the citizens of the novella, we are shown modern art by means of its popular reputation
rather than its particular contents.
The narrative then moves back onto the street from its focus,
completing the framing of the central picture. The final paragraph discusses
the popularity of the art while returning to the novella’s opening words. “That
it should continue so to thrive is a matter of general and reverent concern; on
all sides diligent work and propaganda are devoted to its service; everywhere
there is a pious cult of line, of ornament, of form, of the sense, of beauty…
Munich is resplendent.” Though “Gladius Dei” ends its first part with the same
words that begun it, here the tone is changed. From the purely celebratory beginning,
now there is something seedy about the art – hinted at by words like “propaganda”
and “cult”. It is this tension and seediness that the centre of Mann’s tale hinges
upon.
Hieronymus and the Madonna
With the second section of “Gladius Dei” we are introduced
to Hieronymus, whose name, reminding me of the artist Bosch, immediately
conjures up images of the past. Against the brightness of resplendent Munich we
are told that “when one looked at him, a shadow seemed to pass across the sun
or a memory of dark hours across the soul”. He is inscrutable, but we are told
he resembles a portrait in Florence of a monk who also raged against the world.
In this way, Mann connects the present anger of Hieronymus with a historical precedent,
that of the priest, Girolamo Savonarola. The two of them also share the same
name.
Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican priest who shares a passionate hatred of modernity with Hieronymus, alongside some physical features too.
Hieronymus first goes to a church on the Ludwigstrasse to
pray, and then he comes across the art house of Blüthenzweig. Going inside, he
sees the reproduction first mentioned in part 1 of “Gladius Dei”:
“It was a Madonna, painted in a wholly modern and entirely unconventional manner. The sacred figure was ravishingly feminine, naked and beautiful. Her great sultry eyes were rimmed with shadow, and her lips were half parted in a strange and delicate smile. Her slender figures were grouped rather nervously and convulsively round the waist of the Child, a nude boy of aristocratic, almost archaic slimness, who was playing with her breast and simultaneously casting a knowing sidelong glance at the spectator.”
This is sacrilege. A holy image turned lustful – “ravishing”,
“sultry”, and the “knowing sidelong glance” all suggest that the glorification
inherent in such a choice of subject has taken a back seat. Hieronymus overhears
two young men discussing the painting, neither of whom respects its religious
subject matter. “She does make one a bit doubtful about the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception” one says. But they inform the reader that the painting
has been bought by the Pinakothek Gallery and that its artist is being feted
around the city. Their language is almost comically cultural, as if – to use
the modern phrase – they are a bunch of posers. I would be surprised if this was
not exactly what Mann has in mind. Hieronymus, meanwhile, finishes looking at
the painting, and leaves, ending part 2.
Part 3 is only a page long, but it describes Hieronymus’
struggles to rid himself of the image of the sexualised Madonna. At last,
however, “on the third night” he receives what he perceives to be a command
from God, and decides that he must go and protest the display of such a work of
art. And now the story approaches its climax.
Action and Inaction – the Bloodless Climax of Gladius Dei
Part 4 begins as Hieronymus heads onto the street, filled
with righteous rage. “It is God’s will”, he thinks to himself, echoing the cries
of “Deus Vult” that launched the first crusades. Outside the weather has begun
to worsen, and a storm appears to be approaching. He reaches Blüthenzweig’s shop
and goes inside, seeing evidence all around him for the spiritual decay of
humankind. For example, there is a “gentleman in a yellow suit with a black
goatee” who has a “bleating laugh” – both the laugh and the goatee suggest
something animalistic about him. Coming across Blüthenzweig as he’s finalizing
a transaction Hieronymus hears him call it “most attractive and seductive”.
Blüthenzweig is a capitalist, an art dealer with little
appreciation for art itself. That is Hieronymus’ interpretation anyway, as he claims
the dealer despises him “because I am not able to buy anything from you.”
Meanwhile, Hieronymus is entirely concerned with the non-monetary value that
art has. Is it good for the spirit, or not? In the case of the Madonna, he sees
it as actively pernicious – “vice itself.” Blüthenzweig rejects this immediately
– “The picture is a work of art… and as such it must be judged by the
appropriate standards”. The painting has been bought by the gallery and is
universally acclaimed. Both Blüthenzweig and Hieronymus have their own idea of
what the “appropriate standards” are, but Blüthenzweig’s idea is marked by a
focus on the external – acclaim – while Hieronymus’ is internal – “the
spiritual enrichment of mankind”.
Hieronymus does not let Blüthenzweig convince him. He cries
of hell, of the torments of purgatory. Beauty is a lie used by the representatives
of Jugendstil to avoid considering the health of the soul. Instead, art ought
to be “the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s
terrible depths, into every shameful and sorrowful abyss”. It must be about
compassion, not beauty. Hieronymus demands that Blüthenzweig burns the reproduction,
which naturally he does not have any interest in doing. He calls in Krauthuber,
one of his workers, to throw Hieronymus out of the shop. Krauthuber is “a son
of the people, malt-nourished, herculean and awe-inspiring” and with “heroic
arms.” He represents, it seems to me, a sidestepping of the Christian view of
art that Hieronymus represents towards the Classical, where art, especially if
one takes Nietzsche’s view, was all about advancing the spirit and glorifying
it.
Just not in the Christian sense of the spirit or
glorification. Alone on the street, Hieronymus falls into madness, surrounded
by the markers of a depraved age – “carnival costumes”, “naked statues”, and “the
busts of women”. He sees them all piled into a pyramid and set to flames. It is
here, as the novella ends, that he quotes Savonarola, who had had a similar
vision of God’s vengeance, “Gladius Dei super terram… Cito et velociter” – “behold
there is the sword of God above the Earth, fast and swift”. He has achieved
nothing for his madness, but perhaps Hieronymus succeeded in saving his soul.
Who can say?
Theories of Art and the Modernism of “Gladius Dei”
By the time that Mann is writing “Gladius Dei” Hieronymus’
view of art was well out of date. Even in the 19th century, art had
already become popular, its form and content determined by market forces –
think of Dickens in England during that time, or Dumas in France. That’s not to
say that lofty goals had departed from artistic endeavours, but rather that
they were often secondary to the need to feed oneself and one’s family,
especially as artistic production became democratised and a new generation of
writers and artists who were not aristocratic in background came to prominence.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see where Mann sits in
all this. Though in “Gladius Dei” he shows the vapid banality of Blüthenzweig
and his customers, Hieronymus is a ridiculous figure too. The contrast between
the violence of the novella’s title and the ultimate lack of action and change seems
to mock Hieronymus’ hopes to change society’s relation to art for the better.
Likely, Mann sits somewhere in the middle – he respects Hieronymus’ love for
the spiritual mission for art, while acknowledging the historical forces that
make this view secondary, and indeed challenging to hold. The old values, in a
world where “God is dead”, simply aren’t reliable anymore.
It’s also worth considering how the form of “Gladius Dei” reflects modernism in its composition. For one, there’s Mann’s ambivalence towards all of his characters, so that it’s not clear who is worth supporting, if anybody. Then there is also the satirical use of religion (just like the Madonna itself) and its language when Hieronymus thinks God is commanding him to defeat Blüthenzweig and the reproduction. It’s clear that Mann doesn’t think Hieronymus is really hearing God or want the reader to think so either. The inconclusiveness of the novella’s conclusion is also, in its own way, modernistic. We are given no guidance – it’s not even clear if we should pity Hieronymus. All, I think, that is clear is that the Jugendstil movement and the Christian artistic sensibility of Hieronymus are both inadequate in Mann’s view. But what is good art – Mann’s ideas on that are impossible to work out.
Thomas Mann in 1905, three years after “Gladius Dei” was completed. I’m not sure how far I approve of the coldness of his writings. Intellectualism alone is not what I’m after as a reader.
Conclusion
Personally, I’m closer to Hieronymus than Mann is. Not in the sense that I think literature and art should be about fulfilling a Christian message, but rather that I do think there should be a strong message in them about the value of humanity. A literature must be affirmative, glorifying our lives and life itself in all their complexity, whether good or bad. This is the secret to Tolstoy’s greatness. Mann doesn’t care enough about people for that. In this, he reminds me a little bit of Isaac Babel, another writer who is much more intellectual than emotional. It can make stories that are thought provoking, but terribly cold…
I thought “Gladius Dei” was ok. I mean, it’ll be easy to write about it next year once I’m back at Cambridge. But the measure of a book’s value isn’t how easily I’ll be able to ram it into an essay. I’ll keep reading Mann, but I hope one day I’ll understand where he keeps his heart locked away. Irony just doesn’t cut it for me – our own world is too ironic, too dispassionate, already. The solution to an ironic and dead world isn’t acceptance, but a conscious search for meaning and value, like Kazantzakis managed in Report to Greco. But perhaps I’m asking too much.
If you’ve read “Gladius Dei” and have an opinion on it, why
not drop by the comments and let me know what you thought?
Report to Greco was pretty much the last thing the great Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, and though it is complete in and of itself, it was only really a first draft. It is an autobiography, but not of the sort that most of us are used to. In spite of a fascinating life full of adventure and travels, in Report to Greco the focus is very much on the internal adventures of the mind. Kazantzakis explores the spiritual discoveries, challenges, and epiphanies that made him who he was as a person and, equally importantly, as a writer. It is a beautifully written book, challenging and rewarding in equal measure, and easy to recommend to one tormented by those accursed questions: what must we believe, and what must we do?
I loved it. For the truth is, except for the pressures of reading lists and friends’ recommendations, I read for the same reasons I live – to find a justification for my life, and a way of looking at the world that redeems it and all its suffering. In this journey many writers have helped me – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Whitman, and Rilke come to mind – but no author of fiction, in a single book, has been so determined to find answers as Nikos Kazantzakis in Report to Greco.
“My life’s greatest benefactors have been journeys and dreams. Very few people, living or dead, have aided my struggle.”
At times the dominant force is Nietzsche, at times Homer or
Bergson or Buddha or Lenin. To go through Report to Greco trying to plot
the exact nature of Kazantzakis’ growth is a fool’s errand. He contradicts
himself, forgets himself, and repeats himself. As we ourselves do, in our own
development through life. To read this book is to be bourn along a river whose
current and banks are ever-changing. The journey is more important than the
specifics precisely because it is Kazantzakis’ attitude that is most memorable
here. In Report to Greco he demonstrates how life can truly be lived
according to the injunction memorably stated by the dying Tolstoy “Search,
always keep on searching”.
It is not enough to know that Kazantzakis had engraved on
his gravestone: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free”. It is not even
enough to know his intellectual forebears. It is necessary to know the attitude
that could guide a man’s life such that at the end of his days he truly could
believe in those words and rest. That story of a life is Report to Greco’s
gift to us.
The Structure and Messages
Report to Greco is not really an autobiography, and trying to read it as one is a little foolish. Comparing it even to Kazantzakis’s Wikipedia page is going to lead to a lot of confusion. In spite of the book’s length and variety, it seems that there remained a huge amount of Kazantzakis that he nonetheless conceals, or else thinks is not worth writing about – “rinds they were. You tossed them into the garbage of the abyss and I did the same”. The book’s introduction by Kazantzakis’s widow, Helen, explains that as Kazantzakis lay dying he was nonetheless remembering still more events, still more travels, which would have made it into a second draft. These passed away with him. But so much is here that we have little to complain about.
Report to Greco begins in Kazantzakis’ home in Crete. It talks of his quiet mother and warlike father, and of ancestors on both sides. The teachers who influenced him, the schoolfellows who first accompanied him, and later disappointed him, are all described lavishly. I have not been to Crete or even Greece, but after Report to Greco andZorba the Greek I feel like I need to go soon. Still, Kazantzakis doesn’t stay long in his homeland. Soon he begins the travels that make up the majority of the book. To Italy, to France, to Germany, Austria, Russia, the Caucasus, Jerusalem… the list is almost endless. And certainly, if Kazantzakis had lived longer, no doubt it would have been. His companions are monks and priests and poets and thinkers. Their conversations range widely, but always reflect Kazantzakis’s occupation with the big questions. What must we do, and what must we believe?
From everyone he gets a different answer. From the monks on
Mt Athos he gets one, from the monks on Mt Sinai another. The revolutionaries
of Russia give him faith in humankind – at other moments it disappears. At
times God exists, at times a void. And when we reach the end of the book I’m
not sure we’re all the wiser as to what Kazantzakis actually believes, except for
in those big ideas that would seem cheap without the whole of Report to Greco
to serve as their explanation and justification.
A young Nikos Kazantzakis. Report to Greco doesn’t follow a strict timeline, but flits between spiritual events in the author’s life to showcase his development.
Of freedom he writes:
“love of liberty, the refusal to accept your soul’s enslavement, not even in exchange for paradise; stalwart games over and above love and pain, over and above death; smashing even the most sacrosanct of the old moulds when they are unable to contain you any longer”
And then of his own life there is this cryptic message:
“I was becoming a sea, an endless voyage full of distant adventures, a proud despairing poem sailing with black and red sails over the abyss.”
God is not important, because “the very act of ascending,
for us, was happiness, salvation, and paradise.” But God, perhaps, lurks at the
end. The achievement of Report to Greco is to make God irrelevant by
showing how much of His creation can be enjoyed and savoured by us while we are
still among the living. Affirmation requires a creator, but it doesn’t require
a Beyond at all.
Travel and the Language of Affirmation
Report to Greco is a journey of the body as well as of the spirit. In some way, the journey of the latter needs the journey of the former. Through different people, and through different books, Kazantzakis comes to flourish. But as I reader I loved the places too, and though this is not a travel book, Report to Greco still has a lot to say about the locations Kazantzakis passed through during his life. We get the sense that places were inhabited by their ideas and beliefs just as much as they were by people. As he heads towards Mt Sinai Kazantzakis writes of the place: “This arid, treeless, inhuman ravine we were traversing had been Jehovah’s fearsome sheath. Through here He had passed, bellowing.” I too have had the experience, in the Himalayas and the desolate Pamir mountains of Tajikistan, of feeling a spirit passing in the wind.
Kazantzakis’ language also contributes to the feeling in Report
to Greco of being closer to these big questions. His prose is always
straightforward, and his images are influenced by his upbringing on Crete and
his love of the Classics. These images reflect the rawness of his passion in
searching for answers, and drag us after him. Our own images are often cliched
and soulless and keep listeners and readers from truly feeling the truth of our
own feelings, our own spiritual upheavals.
If you are going to try and track down a god, what better place to start than here? Mt Sinai. Photo by Mohammed Moussa CC BY-SA 3.0
Meanwhile, who can read something like this without feeling
its power, even if you do not believe it? – “Away, away! To the wilderness!
There God blows like a scorching wind; I shall undress and have Him burn me.”
Or his words on a statue: “Just as a hawk when it hesitates at the zenith of
its flight, its wings beat and yet to us it appears immobile, so in the same
way the ancient statue moves imperceptibly and lives”. I myself can scarcely
differentiate a hawk from any other such bird, or the trees in the forest. I
lack that knowledge, that experience.
On his own style Kazantzakis writes “In vain I toiled to
find a simple idiom without a patchwork of adornments, the idiom which would
not overload my emotion with riches and deform it.” Kazantzakis’s regular use
of such natural images is part, I think, of the whole thread of affirmation in Report
to Greco. He lives in this world more closely than I do, and by using the
world in his images he shows the value he finds in it. The riches are in the
world, not in the virtuosity of the language he uses to describe it. As a
result, the language is breath-taking because it’s the product both of love and
of experience. Few modern writers have both, at least where nature is concerned.
A Few Complaints
There are problems here, and things that are out of date.
The contradictions and repetitions in Kazantzakis’s spiritual development would
probably be cut by a harsher editor, even though they likely reflect what he
actually experienced. The fact is, a repeated epiphany loses much of its value
to a reader. Still, I like the way that the current structure demonstrates just
how we can reach the same conclusions from many different circumstances. In
some way that reinforces what I feel to be one of the book’s underlying messages:
it is the attitude we take to things rather than the specific experiences we
have that count for becoming who we are.
Less easily looked past are the instances of old-school sexism, which is really just a little boring. (“Women are simply ornaments for men, and more often a sickness than a necessity”) This is a man’s spiritual journey, and it often feels like women are excluded from the peak Kazantzakis is climbing towards. All the same, the sexism here isn’t as bad as it is in Zorba. Much worse, however, is the tacit defence of Stalin. Report to Greco was written in the years immediately after Stalin’s death so there’s really no reason for Kazantzakis to be so silent on Stalin’s atrocities – in the Soviet Union Khrushchev hadn’t exactly kept quiet himself. I also cannot believe that Kazantzakis wasn’t aware of them either, since he travelled so widely in the Soviet Union. All he has to say, however, is these words, given to his female companion at the time.
“Lenin is the light, Trotsky the flame, but Stalin is the soil, the heavy Russian soil. He received the seed, a grain of wheat. Now, no matter what happens, no matter how much it rains or snows, no matter how much it fails to rain or snow, he will hold that seed, will not abandon it, until finally he turns it into an ear of wheat.”
Well, this, and a little story about Stalin’s bravery while he was a revolutionary in Tbilisi. Isn’t that great? The irony, probably not deliberate, is that Stalin might have had a much easier time growing his seed if he didn’t actively cause huge famines in modern-day Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Genocide doesn’t grow fruits, and I’m disappointed Kazantzakis leaves any dark from his portrayal of Stalin. It would be better not to mention him at all if this bad taste in the mouth is all we’re offered. Kazantzakis’ love of the Revolution’s ideals is perfectly understandable – the chapter taking place in Russia has a particularly memorable moment where Kazantzakis witnesses a large parade and feels a great unity with his fellows. But it’s a real shame he didn’t think Stalin could be separated from his revolutionary origins.
Conclusion
There are many reasons to read Report to Greco, but enjoying it demands an open mind. The book rewards those who are willing to let themselves be bourn across time and space through Kazantzakis’s life. If we ourselves are not searching for answers, Kazantzakis’s desire to find them will no doubt seem somewhat foolish. But if we are, then even if we don’t agree with his conclusions – and why should we? – we will appreciate the spirit that drove him to reach them. Kazantzakis’s attitude towards life is what inspires me most of all. The German-language poet Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet that we must “live the questions for now”; Kazantzakis shows what such a life can look like. This is the great gift of Report to Greco. The task now, for all of us searchers, is to go out filled with the same faith that animated him and find our own.
And then perhaps, we may come to have upon our headstones the same words that lie on his. “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free”.
Have you read Report for Greco? What did you think of
it? Let me know in the comments below.
