Report to Greco
Review of | ISBN 9780671220273 | |
Rating | ||
Shelves | to-read ( 309th ) | |
Format | Paperback edit | |
Status | May 6, 2019 – Shelved May 6, 2019 – Shelved as: to-read | |
Review | Write a review | |
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Report to Greco is a fictionalized account of Greek philosopher and writer Nikos Kazantzakis’s own life, a sort of intellectual autobiography that leads readers through his wide-ranging observations on everything from the Hegelian dialectic to the nature of human existence, all framed as a report to the Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco.
The assuredness of Kazantzakis’s prose and the nimbleness of his thinking as he grapples with life’s essential questions —who are we, and how should we be in the world?— will inspire awe and more than a little reflection from readers seeking to answer these questions for themselves. Originally published: 1961.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه نوامبر سال1989میلادی
عنوان: گزارش به خاک یونان: عریضه به ال کرگو، نویسنده: نیکوس کازانتزاکیس؛ مترجم: صالح حسینی؛ چاپ اول کتاب به سال1368؛ انتشارات نیلوفر؛ در561ص؛ چاپ سوم سال1368؛ ویراست دوم: تهران، نیلوفر، چاپ چهارم سال1384، در555ص؛ شابک9644482581؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان یونان - سده 20م
فهرست: «پیشگفتار»؛ «نیاکان»؛ «پدر»؛ «مادر»؛ «پسر»؛ «دبستان»؛ «مرگ پدر بزرگم»؛ «کرت در برابر ترکیه»؛ «افسانه قدیسان»؛ «آرزوی گریز»؛ «کشتار»؛ «ناکسوس»؛ «آزادی»؛ «مشکلات نوجوانی»؛ «دختر ایرلندی»؛ «آتن»؛ «بازگشت به کرت گنوسوس»؛ «زیارت یونان»؛ «ایتالیا»؛ «دوست شاعرم کوه آتوس»؛ «کرت»؛ «پاریس نیچه شهید بزرگ»؛ «ویَن بیماری من»؛ «برلین»؛ «روسیه»؛ «قفقاز»؛ «پسر عیاش باز میگردد»؛ «زوربا»؛ «هنگامی که نهال ادیسه در درونم بار داد»؛ «نگاه کرتی»، «پی گفتار»؛
این کتاب شرح سفرهای نویسنده، به کشورهای دنیا از جمله «یونان»، «فرانسه»، «آلمان»، «روسیه»، «اتریش»، «قفقاز»، «اورشلیم» و «بیابان کوه سینا»، برای بیان سیر تحول فکری نویسنده است؛ یک بخش از این کتاب به توصیف شخصیتی به نام «زوربا» اختصاص دارد که نویسنده در کتاب دیگری به نام «زوربای یونانی» به وی میپردازند؛ نویسنده در سرلوحهٔ این کتاب مینویسند: (تمام روح من فریادی است، و تمامی اثر من، تفسیر این فریاد)؛ شرحی اتوبیوگرافی گونه، و در شیوه ی رمان است، قهرمان و راوی، خود نویسنده، «کازانتزاکیس» است، حدیث سیر و سلوک خویش باز میگویند؛ اقرار نیوش ایشان، خاک محبوبش «کـِر ِت» است؛ «کرت» هماره فرزندانی را خواسته: مبارز و سلاح در دست؛ و ایشان اینبار، گزارش مبارزه ی خویش را، البته با قلم خویش باز میگویند
نقل از متن: (پدر: پدرم به ندرت حرف میزد، هیچوقت نمیخندید، هیچگاه خود را قاطی نزاع و جنجال نمیکرد؛ فقط گاهی اوقات دندان به هم میفشرد، یا مشت گره میکرد؛ اگر برحسب تصادف بادام سخت پوستی را به دست داشت، با انگشتانش آن را فشار میداد و خردش میکرد؛ یکبار وقتی دید که آغایی پالان بردوش یک نفر مسیحی گذاشته، و مانند خر بر او بار نهاده است، چنان خشمی بر او مستولی شد، که به سوی آن ترک رفت؛ میخواست به او فحش بدهد؛ اما لبانش به هم برآمده بودند؛ چون نمیتوانست کلامی بر زبان آورد، مثل اسب، شروع به شیهه کشیدن کرد؛ آن وقتها من بچه بودم، و در حالیکه از ترس به خود میلرزیدم، به تماشا ایستاده بودم؛ یک روز ظهر هم، که از کوچه ی باریکی میگذشت، تا برای ناهار به خانه برود، صدای جیغ و داد زنان را شنید، و بسته شدن درها را؛ تـُرک نکره ی مستی با شمشیر آخته، سر به دنبال مسیحیان گذاشته بود؛ پدرم را که دید، در دم به سوی او حمله ور شد؛ گرما بیداد میکرد، و پدرم که خسته ی کار بود؛ دل و دماغ نزاع را نداشت؛ لحظه ای پیش خود فکر کرد که به کوچه ی دیگری بزند، و فرار کند- کسی نگاه نمیکرد؛ اما چنین کاری شرم آور بود؛ پیش بندی را که بر تن داشت، باز کرد و آن را دور مشتش پیچید؛ و درست لحظه ای که ترک نکره شروع به بالا بردن شمشیرش نمود، مشت محکمی به شکم او کوبید، و پخش زمینش کرد؛ آنگاه خم شد و شمشیر را از دست ترک بیرون آورد، و راهش را به سوی منزل کشید؛ مادرم پیراهن تمیزی برای او آورد؛ خیس عرق بود؛ و من -گمان میکنم در حدود سه سالم بود- بر روی صندلی نشسته بودم، و خیره نگاهش میکردم؛ سینه اش پر مو بود، و بخار از آن بلند بود؛ به محض آنکه پیراهنش را عوض کرد، و خنک شد؛ شمشیر را در کنار من بر روی صندلی انداخت؛ سپس رو به زنش کرد، و گفت: وقتی که پسرت بزرگ شد و به مدرسه رفت، این را به عنوان قلم تراش به او بده.)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛14/12/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی (less)
This is not a memoir or auto-biography as such, but something much deeper, much profound and spiritual. At times, the Christian and the spiritual preaching are too much for me, but his prose-poetry style clears it’s all.
And you have to visit Greece at least once to feel what he is talking about! The magic of this country will get you by the throat after you sink deep in his words.
Vienna 1921. Closeted inside an apartment there, my favourite is deeply engrossed in writing a play on "Buddha'. He had been grooming himself into a state of ascetic discipline for some time to write this play. Cut off from the enticing city outside, he listened to the voice of this new master sitting inside him - " Desire is flame, love is flame, virtue, hope ,"I" and "you", heaven and hell are flames. One thing and one thing only is light: - the renouncement of flame". His mind was like a yellow heliotrope and Buddha the sun. Slowly, the writer was getting submerged in Buddha.
When he finished the play, he felt that he had paved a new road to salvation. Now he had no fear as no desire could conquer him. He slowly opened the window of his apartment. Leaning out of the window he looked at the men, women, cars, groceries, fruits and drinks on the street outside. He then went to the street outside to mingle with that wave of crowd and to breathe the city. He walked to the nearby movie theatre to see what was going on there. The movie appeared boring. Next to him sat a girl and he could smell her cinnamon breath. From time to time her knee touched him. He shuddered, but he did not draw away. In that semi darkness, he could see her smiling glance. He got up to leave and she followed him. Strangely, he struck up a conversation with her and soon they were in a park outside. It was summer and the night was sweet as honey. The moon shone above and the song of a nightingale hidden deep in the lilacs could be heard.
"Frieda, Will you spent night with me ". These terrible words escaped from his lips.
"Not tonight. I will come Tomorrow", the girl replied
He came back to his apartment. Something terrible suddenly happened to him. His face started swelling and he heard the blood rushing to his head. His soul had become enraged. Little by little, his lips, cheeks and forehead bloated into a big mass. Stumbling along the room, he went to look at the mirror and he was aghast with his horribly disfigured face. His eyes were like two barely visible slits.
The next day he remembered his promise to the girl Frieda. He called the chambermaid and gave her a telegram to be sent to Frieda- "Don't come today, Come tomorrow". A day went by, two, three and a week had passed with no improvement in his illness. Afraid that the girl might come, he kept on sending her the telegram- "Don't come today, come tomorrow". Finally he could not stand it any longer and fixed an appointment with Dr. William Stekel, the renowned professor of psychology and disciple of Sigmund Freud.
The professor began to hear his confession. He related his life history, the events in Vienna, his search for salvation in Buddha. At the end, the professor burst into a shrill, hysterical laughter and said -"Enough, Enough!, the professor laughed a bit sarcastically and continued, “This disease you are suffering is called "Ascetics' disease" and it is extremely rare in our times, because what body, today, obeys the soul?. In ancient times, the saints who stayed in Theban deserts used to run to the nearest city when they felt compelled to sleep with a woman. Just as they reached the city, their face used to turn as revolting just as yours. With such a face they could not face any woman. So they ran back to their hermitage in desert thanking God for delivering them from sin. You have the same situation. You will be rid of the mask glued to your face only if you leave this city".
My writer returned home. He did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, he said to himself. He waited another two weeks. The disease showed no sign of parting. Finally, one morning he packed his suitcase and headed to the railway station to leave Vienna. The city was awakening. The sun had come down to the streets. He was in a fine mood and he felt weightless as he walked. He could move his eyes now. A cool breeze caressed his face like a compassionate hand. He could feel the swelling subsiding. When he reached the station, he took out his hand mirror and uttered a cry of joy. He had regained his normal face. The disease was gone.
In a country like India, where spiritual experience is full of sham shading, this experience of a spiritual adventurist is profound and authentic. The man who underwent this spiritual adventure was the literary giant of Modern Greece and one of the greatest novelists of the last century- Nikos Kazantzakis. This is not only the opinion of a humble admirer like me but also of great men like Albert Schweitzer, Jawaharlal Nehru and great writers like Thomas Mann and Albert Camus. (In 1957 when Camus received Noble prize, Kazantzakis was slated to win. The Academy thought he fostered communist ideologies and so he lost the prize by one vote. A month later Camus wrote a graceful letter stating that Kazantzakis had deserved the Nobel 'a hundred times more' than himself .)
There are certain writers who affect the very marrow of our being from the first reading itself. Like good wine, years have only matured my profound appreciation of this writer. No writer of the last century has experienced the interminable struggle between the flesh and the spirit as Kazantzakis. As a result, every molecule of his writing carries the dye of his flesh and blood.
Kazantzakis was born in Crete, an island that is now part of Greece but was once a Turkish colony. During the Cretan revolt of 1897, his family moved to Greece. He studied law in Athens and in 1907 he went to study under the great philosopher Henri Bergson, who influenced his writing considerably. Bergson's 'Elan vital'-the life force that can conquer matter became his motif in many of his astonishingly beautiful Novels like- Zorba the Greek, Greek Passion (I personally rank it as one the ten greatest novels of Twentieth century) , Freedom or Death, Last temptation of Christ and his famous autobiography "Report to Greco", from which I have summarized the above incident. In 1945, he married his lifetime companion and Greek intellectual, Helen Kazantzakis. Helen has incidentally written a famous biography about Mahatma Gandhi.
Kazantzakis was a highly religious man but he did not belong to any religion. He imbibed many ideologies like socialism and communism but never lifted any flag. The Greek Orthodox Church excommunicated him as he sought his own Christ in his famous Novel "Last Temptation'. When he died on October, 1957 due to an Asian Flue he contracted in a clinic in Germany, his body was not allowed a burial in Greek soil. He came to sleep beside his Grandfather in his birthplace Herakleion in Crete. His epitaph is a summation of his ideals- "I hope for Nothing, I fear nothing, I am free".
There is another fascinating incident that Kazantzakis mentions at the beginning of his autobiographical novel 'Report to Greco'. It is about his imaginary encounter with another great Cretan El Greco, the famous painter. He imagines himself being led up to the summit of 'God-trodden Sinai'. Suddenly he senses that the God with whom he has wrestled all his life is about to appear for a final reckoning. He turns, 'with a shudder'. But-
"It was not Jehovah, it was you, grandfather, from the beloved soil of Crete. You stood there before me, a stern nobleman, with your small snow-white goatee, dry compressed lips, your ecstatic glance so filled with flames and wings. And roots of thyme were tangled in your hair. You looked at me, and as you looked at me I felt that this world was a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wind, man's soul a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wings, that God puffs above them, and that salvation does not exist."
Yet Greco's message is not that 'salvation does not exist'. When Kazantzakis beseeches him for a command, Greco answers- "Reach what you can, child." But this does not satisfy him. He asks again. '"Grandfather give me a more difficult, more Cretan command." ' Now Greco vanishes, but 'a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled: "Reach what you cannot!"
'Reach what you cannot' can be a fine motto for every one of us. Unfortunately, we fail to transcend and realize our full potential in our daily drudgery for survival. We become slaves to the taverns of hope and cellars of fear in the path of our life. We have to smash boundaries, deny whatever our daily eyes see, rivet our eyes on our mission, ascend without descend and die every moment to give birth to the impossible. That alone gives a human meaning to our superhuman struggle.
May you have the courage to liberate yourself from the manacles of fear and forge ahead with full steam to "Reach what you cannot".
Read this book and get transformed yourself
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It is the story of Kazantzakis’ lifelong spiritual, moral, and intellectual journey. He chose Homer, Bergson, Nietzsche, Buddha, Lenin, St. Francis of Assisi, and Zorba as his inspiration.
What did he learn? He denounces the hope that leads many to believe in heaven and the fear of hell that cripples us and leads to a fanaticism that keeps us from fully embracing our lives here. He believes our search for meaning, our personal odyssey, is ennobling in itself. Life is a struggle, often against dark and terrifying forces, and we can find joy by having the courage to take responsibility for our lives.
On his tombstone on Crete, there is no name, no dates, only the words ‘I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.’
You can find in his message the mystical traditions of Gnostics, the Kabbalah, Sufism, and Buddhism as well as in pre-Socratic thinking. I was also reminded of Spinoza pantheism.
But what stood out for me was how he presented his thoughts. He writes with great emotion, exuberant, and at times almost dreamlike, yet it always sounded authentic and sincerely felt. I don’t know how anyone can read it without being moved. Albert Schweitzer tells us ‘no author has made such a deep impression on me. His work has depth and durable value because he has experienced so much. . . and suffered so much.’ A surprising and extraordinary book.
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sight
smell
touch
taste
hearing
intellect
Night has fallen, the day’s work is done. I return like a mole to my home, the ground. Not because I am tired and cannot work. I am not tired. But the sun has set.”
Tools are what I get from people. Sometimes I gain tools from living in the world and other times my tools are garnered through the living of others. Sometimes I’m working on being with people and other times I’m working on being with myself. Right now I am glad to have chosen to be with Kazantzakis’ novel because his struggle to reconcile the duality of his ancestors/nature within himself transfers an ease to my own struggling mind. Not a sedentary ease, but one that motivates me to figure out how to communicate/connect in better ways with what I desire, my Golgotha. People call for an end to their struggles; I hope to love mine. Because I can see that struggle will not cease in my world; it’s too rambunctious, too willful, too imaginary.
****
I got extremely caught up in this epic struggle, a look at the author’s life with all the embellishes and harsh critiques one has of one’s self. At first, I was a bit surprised at my unflagging interest because of the book’s heavy religious discussions, but it was more of a metaphysical questioning than an attempt to settle into any one religion. Kazantzakis journeys through Christianity, Nietzsche, Buddha, Lenin, Zorba, and many others, never reaching a summit (it’s okay to not reach the summit we find out), only stopped by death.
Some excerpts that I had to write down, for its’ look or for its’ meat. Here are a few; I’ll spare you the lengthy ones.
“And first of all I’m going to have it out with Michelangelo. The other day I saw a small copy of the Last Judgment he painted at Rome. I don’t like it.”
“The Church of Christ in the state to which the clergy had brought it suddenly seemed to me an enclosure where thousands of panic-stricken sheep bleat away night and day, leaning one against the other and stretching out their necks to lick the hand and knife that are slaughtering them.”
“Whoever says salvation exists is a slave, because he keeps weighing each of his words and deeds at every moment. ‘Will I go to heaven or to hell?’…How can a soul that hopes be free? Whoever hopes is afraid both of his life and the life to come; he hangs indecisively in the air and waits for luck or God’s mercy.”
“We ascended because the very act of ascending, for us, was happiness, salvation, and paradise.”
Okay, I’ll stop there, but I feel so good at having been inspired to think so much about the beliefs that I hold as an individual that it is hard to stop mulling it over. I don’t necessarily agree with the above or other statements although I feel I have been shown so many strong truths. Much better than a typically plot driven story, more interactive. More pertinent. Where he goes does not matter so much as what he synthesizes in his head. The struggle. (less)
All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel—to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.(less)
لآ ..، أنـا صـوتُـك ".
The title of the book was a little bit tricky and confusing for me. I assumed the author intended to view his life as a set of cumulative experiences ( it is) in a form of scientific/autobiography kind of report ( hilarious i know ). Thus, I judged the book based on certain criteria and was frustrated at first with the lack of historical details and their accuracy. However, It became clear (though there were many hints at the beginning of t ...more
The ideas, the constant fight between "God exists? What is God? Where is God?" and "God exists. God is. god is here/there/everywhere" is remainded on every page / every 3-4 pages.
As said, this is supposed to be an autobiographic novel. kazantzakis did great things in his life, but I read them all on wikipedia. in this book you are at ons moment - OMG, just do something with your life, stop melodramating, stop dreaming. do something. this is what actually one of his female encounters in Berlin told him. and I thought she couldn't be more right.
Kazantzakis is obsessed with life, death, the big questions. If you want an answer, of course you won't be provided with any. his inner fights are so common, we all experience them, his questions, his Yes-s and No-s. kazantzakis didn't try to teach us a lesson, there is so condescension in his writing. he is a man looking for some answers.
Maybe the answer is in the simple things of life. the life on Crete is so idyllic in its simplicity. the life in the desert as well. But Crete is described with so much love, i wanted to be there, to sit on the beach, watch the sun and the sea, eat some grapes and just be. i think this is what this book is all about. Especially in the complicated and highly technological nowadays, it gives simplicity and returning to the really great things, to nature, a new meaning.
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A friend recommended this book for me, saying it is his ‘bible’ .. so I was intrigued, specially that this friend fall into the ‘smart-interesting-out of the ordinary’ description in my opinion. In this book, if you are the type who reflects on their personal story - like I do - you’ll have too many stops. I must warn you though, the book isn’t the easy read type. And I must say, in order to read this book to its fullest, you really need to have a background (or do a lot of research) about the geo-political and historical events. I’m very thankful for having an internet connection that shows me all the pictures of the places mentioned, and fed my imagination with endless backstage pictures. With every olive tree, every sea wave and every time the air of the mountain is full with the smell of rain, I’ll fall in love with Greece more than I already do. My next visit to Greece need more time for sure.
Nikos Kazantzakis, being a heavy reader for Nietzsche (he did his PhD on Nietzsche’s work), went through many stops of his life in the book, most of the time, implicitly telling the ‘wisdom’ behind what happened. He gives his inner multi-layered confusions a voice. Questions about the god within the self, or the self within god and the world around him, I would say, fall in the core of my personal wanderings. Memory stops in this autobiographical journey is a painful delight, starting from the early pages .. sentence jump to those who seek more, a very tempting trap, that one goes to eyes closed with pleasure.
The brilliant writer aimlessly tried to find the hidden order within the apparent chaos, securitizing through what his memory selected to keep and highlight .. linking his present readings of past peaks of life and experiences. It is fascinating, what the memory decides to keep guiding us through the mirage of tomorrow. As his story unfolded, so did mine. I came to confront and reconcile with my earliest memories, my inner fears and acknowledge my irrepealable flaws. But it also showed me how to read what I’m learning with every mistake, to look beyond the immediate.
‘reach what you cannot’
Love foils everything in this book, it transcends the classical oversold meanings attached to it. In the book, endless everyday and life stories explain, what ‘love’ truly is, and how it is practiced. The love of a family, a country, a friend, and most importantly the self. How the search for love and the push by it are controlling the trajectories of the life. Only when you learn how to recognise the tiny little things and the grand gestures, you can truly feel love.
The cruelty of the world did not make us (if it is a cruelty in the first place), it is our responses to this cruelty and the power we invest to work with the hardship are what we remember. It is never about the triumph, it is about the endless attempts to overcome, whether achieved or not. Every time we push back, another stone in our destiny is nudged, moved or pushed away, shaping the path. The best part is the mistakes we make .. now I truly enjoy and accepts many of my previous faults as blessings in disguise.
Only by allowing life to reach to our bones, experiencing it to its fullest, we truly live.
I'm surely reading this one again .. (less)
His lifetime spans from 1883, through the Cretan Revolt that started in 1897 and takes you through his education on Naxos before further education at Athens, his job as a journalist, his books and his travels. His search for religion and study of Buddhism based on his Greek Orthodox upbringing are mirrored in the same quest by the Englishman in Zorba The Greek. I have only been, briefly, to Heraklion, on Crete, once but have vowed to return and to find his tomb to pay homage.
Kazantzakis' father, Michael, returned from Naxos to fight for Crete and wrote back to his son, a 14 year old Nikos;-
"I'm doing my duty, fighting the turks. You fight too: stand your ground and don't let those Catholics put ideas into your head. They're dogs, just like the Turks. You're from Crete, don't forget. Your mind isn't your own, it belongs to Crete. Sharpen it as much as you can, so that one day you can use it to liberate Crete. Since you can't help with arms, why not with your mind? It too is a musket. Do you understand what I'm asking of you? Say yes! That's all for today, tomorrow and always. Do not disgrace me !"
We learn that, for instance, Nikos had a love of cherries, a love that he gave to Zorba in 'Zorba the Greek' for Zorba to eat until he was sick, never to want a cheerry again. Many influences, detailed in this book, have shaped and influenced his novels - this is a must read for anyone who has read any of Kazantzakis' novels and wants a deeper insight into what made the man tick. Some of the more passionate chapters, for me, come after his visit to Assisi, through Mount Athos, Jerusalem and to the desert at Sinai. Here I was much reminded of Carlo Carretto's In Search Of The Beyond where both authors seem to have had similar thought patterns about the spirituality of the desert. (less)
I remember while reading the introduction I was feeling touched and wanted to cry...The strength to write predicting your own leaving from this world in such a poetic way is really amazing...I would reccomend it to anyone who believes this life is a continuous fight to develop ourselves...to turn more flesh into spirit...to rise ourselves higher.
An adventurous and spiritual life worth living.
Nikos Kazantzakis definitely belongs to his island over the abyss.
My goal after this book:
To turn my life (flash) into an eternity.