Report to Grego
Authors: Nikos Kazantzakis
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Introduction: The Writing of “Report to Greco”
Chapter 6: T
HE
D
EATH
OF
M
Y
G
RANDFATHER
Chapter 13: A
DOLESCENT
D
IFFICULTIES
Chapter 16: R
ETURN TO
C
RETE
. K
NOSSOS
Chapter 17: P
ILGRIMAGE
T
HROUGH
G
REECE
Chapter 19: M
Y
F
RIEND
THE
P
OET
. M
OUNT
A
THOS
Chapter 23: P
ARIS
. N
IETZSCHE THE
G
REAT
M
ARTYR
Chapter 28: T
HE
P
RODIGAL
R
ETURNS
Chapter 30: W
HEN
THE
G
ERM
OF
“T
HE
O
DYSSEY
” F
ORMED
F
RUIT
WITHIN
M
E
by Helen N. Kazantzakis
N
IKOS
K
AZANTZAKIS
asked his God for ten additional years, ten additional years in which to complete his workâto say what he had to say and “empty himself.” He wanted death to come and take only a sackful of bones. Ten years were enough, or so he thought.
But Kazantzakis was not the kind who could be “emptied.” Far from feeling old and tired at the age of seventy-four, he considered himself rejuvenated, even after his final adventure, the tragic vaccination. Freiburg's two great specialists, the hematologist Heilmeyer and the surgeon Kraus, concurred in this opinion.
The whole of the final month Professor Heilmeyer shouted triumphantly after each visit, “This man is healthy, I tell you! His blood has become as sound as my own!”
“Why do you run like that!” I kept scolding Nikos, afraid that he might slip on the terrazzo and break a bone.
“Don't worry, Lénotska, I've got wings!” he answered. One sensed the confidence he had in his constitution and his soul, which refused to bite the dust.
Sometimes he sighed, “Oh, if only I could dictate to you!” Then, grasping a pencil, he would try to write with his left hand.
“What's the hurry? Who is chasing you? The worst is past. In a few days you'll be able to write to your heart's content.”
He would turn his head and gaze at me for a few moments in silence. Then, with a sigh: “I have so very much to say. I am being tormented again by three great themes, three new novels. But first I've got to finish Greco.”
“You'll finish it, don't worry.”
“I plan to change it. Will you get some paper and a pencil? Let's see if I can manage.”
But our combined labor lasted less than five minutes.
“Impossible! I don't know how to dictate. I can think only when the pencil is in my hand.”
A
ncestors, parents, Crete, childhood years . . . Athens, Crete, travels . . . Sikelianos, Vienna, Berlin, Prevelakis, Moscow . . .
N
ow I remember another crucial moment in our lives, another hospital, this time in Paris. Nikos gravely ill again with a temperature of 104, the physicians all in a turmoil. Everyone had lost hope; only Kazantzakis himself remained unperturbed.
“Will you get a pencil, Lénotska? . . .”
Still plunged in his vision, he dictated to me in a broken voice the Franciscan haikai he placed in the saint's mouth: “I said to the almond tree, âSister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.”
Before we departed for China, he left the Report in the hands of a young painter, his “midwife” as he called him, because he used to come at the crack of dawn, climb up to Nikos' study, troubled by all the great problemsâGod, men, artâand begin the interminable
whences, whithers
and
how longs,
whereupon Nikos, laughing, admiring the youth's passion and his violent love for his art, “delivered.” He “dropped” ideas and unburdened himself.
“The house might catch on fire,” Nikos told him. “I'd rather leave the manuscript with you. If it's burned at this point, I'll never be able to rewrite it. The great shame is only that I never finished it.”
But how could he have ever finished it? What had he left undone in those last few months before the journey?
He began the
Report
in the autumn of 1956, upon our return from Vienna. When he needed a changé, he took up the translation of Homer's
Odyssey,
which he and Professor KakridÃs were working on together.
“We've got to manage to finish it in time so I won't go down to Hades with a lame leg,” he used to say half ironically, half with fear.
During these same months, sections from the English translation of his own
Odyssey
kept arriving at frequent intervals, together with entire pages listing words difficult to translate. How much time, how much labor were consumed, also, by that
Odyssey!
Not to mention the numerous publications of his other works in Greek. There were texts which had to be corrected or supplemented; and Russia, the
manuscript of which had been lost; and Pierre Sipriot of the French radio, who plagued him with his “Colloquies”; and the film; and a trip to India at the invitation of Nehru, which we prepared for but did not take because we feared the many innoculations required.
No, he did not manage to finish the Report to Greco in time; he was unable to write a second draft, as was his custom. He did manage, however, to rewrite the entire first chapter and one of the concluding sections: “When the germ of The
Odyssey
formed fruit within me,” which he sent before his death to be published in the periodical Nea Estia. In addition, he managed to read over his manuscript and to make penciled corrections or additions here and there.
Alone, now, I re-experience the autumn twilight which descended ever so gently, like a small child, with the first chapter.
“Read, Lénotska, read and let me hear it!”
I
collect my tools: 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. . . .
I
could go no further; a lump had risen in my throat. This was the first time Nikos had spoken about death.
“Why do you write as though ready to die?” I cried, truly despondent. And to myself: Why, today, has he accepted death?
“Don't be alarmed, wife, I'm not going to die,” he answered without the slightest hesitation. “Didn't we say I'd live another ten years? I need ten more years!” His voice was lower now. Extending his hand, he touched my knee. “Come now, read. Let's see what I wrote.”
To me he denied it, but inwardly, perhaps, he knew. For that very same night he sealed this chapter in an envelope together with a letter for his friend PantelÃs Prevelakis: “Helen could not read it; she began to cry. But it is good for herâand for me alsoâto begin to grow accustomed . . .”
It seems his inner daemon had prodded him to abandon the Faust: Part Three which he so desired to write, and to lay the keel of his autobiography instead.
The
Report
is a mixture of fact and fictionâa great deal of truth, a minimum of fancy. Various dates have been changed. When he speaks about others, it is always the truth, unaltered, exactly what he saw and heard. When he speaks about his personal adventures, there are some small modifications.
But one thing is certain: If he had been able to rewrite this
Report,
he would have changed it. Exactly how, we cannot know. He would
have enriched it, for each day he recalled new incidents which he had forgotten. Also, he would have poured it (so I believe) into the mold of reality. His actual life was full of substance, of human anguish, joy, and painâ“dignity,” to put it in a single word. Why should he have changed this life? Not for lack of difficult moments of weakness, flight, and pain. On the contrary, it was precisely these difficult moments which always served Kazantzakis as new steps enabling him to ascend higherâto ascend and reach the summit he promised himself he would climb before abandoning the tools of labor because night had begun to fall.
“Do not judge me by my actions, do not judge me from man's point of view,” another struggler once entreated me. “Judge me from God'sâby the hidden purpose behind my actions.”
This is how we should judge Kazantzakis. Not by what he did, and whether what he did was or was not of supreme value; but rather by what he wanted to do, and whether what he wanted to do had supreme value for him, and for us as well.
I, for one, believe it did. In my thirty-three years by his side I cannot recall ever being ashamed by a single bad action on his part. He was honest, without guile, innocent, infinitely sweet toward others, fierce only toward himself. If he withdrew into solitude, it was only because he felt the labors required of him were severe and his hours numbered.
His round, round eyes pitch black in the semidarkness and filling with tears, he used to say to me, “I feel like doing what Bergson saysâgoing to the street corner and holding out my hand to start begging from the passers-by: âAlms, brothers! A quarter of an hour from each of you.' Oh, for a little time, just enough to let me finish my work. Afterwards, let Charon come.”
