The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel

After I finished Frye's The Educated Imagination, a book highly recommended for any English undergrad, I moved on to a minor, almost forgotten book and author. The author is Nikos Kazantzakis, also known for writing Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ among many others, a twentieth century Greek (Cretan) modernist writer. I call him a modernist on the basis that his stories are highly satured with mythological content and subjects, virtual interrogations of the role of myth in humankind's development. His situation is nothing unique: everyone knows the movies he spawned, but rarely show interest in the novels themselves. It is a sad predicament as his stories are very easy to understand with a sound understand of chiefly Greek and Christian mythology, and for those advanced thinkers a bit of Bergson and Nietzsche, and a sprinkle of Marx, too.

The novel I am reading is The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, written by Kazantzakis, and translated by Kimon Friar. Kazantzakis takes the classical tale of Odysseus, but begins his story after the slaughter of the suitors. After reading Frye's The Educated Imagination, this novel, which I have tried to finish countless times before, is starting to make sense, maybe dollars in time. It is a novel about many things, such as the inner world of myth, its role in our lives, man's fallen, wandering spirit, as well as the tempestuous, sometimes turbid soul of man seeking true enlightenment, or spiritual fulfillment. Above all things, I believe it's a complete interrogation of the meaning of myth in, and for the twentieth century - it is a search FOR our identity in the twentieth century, exploring the great ideas that have shaped our century. The story is saturated in the classical, mythological world of Greece, because for Kazantzakis myth holds the key to the true inner workings of our souls - especially the tale of Odysseus, who is the quintessential mythological wanderer, a lost soul in a mucked-up world. Hence, in the novel, Odysseus goes on a reckless adventure to the edge of our (inner) world, from the Mediterranean to heart of Africa to the South Pole to explore from pole to pole his wanderlust and fallen soul. Except, of course, the novel allegorically interrogates some of the great "mythologies" of our time, from Marx to (his two masters) Bergson--whom K. studied as a pupil--to Nietzsche, as well as classical and biblical concepts through a new (allegorical) odyssey. This Odysseus, however, is a true Ubermensch, one worth following from creation to Last Judgment like a medieval drama cycle.

Truly, I cannot stress how important this ill-appreciated book is to our times, ignored or forgotten by the academic establishment. Accuse his novel of being antiquated, in verse and subject, as you please, but he is one of the last, great masters to write a modern epic in noble verse. He is the odd man out, as Blake and Dali were, once upon a time. But it is the rebel without a (modern) cause who always stands the test of time.

O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap,

I love to wear you cocked askew and to burst in song

to rouse our hearts, so long as you and I both live.

Good is this earth, it suits us! Like the global grape

it hangs, dear God, in the blue air and sways in the gale,

nibbled by all the birds and spirits of the four winds.

Come, let's start nibbling too and so refresh our minds!