Freedom or Death, by Nikos Kazantzakis

Today I finished reading "Freedom or Death", by Nikos  Kazantzakis. I've been a huge fan of Kazantzakis for many years now and was glad that I finally got around to reading this particular work.

Ostensibly, the book is about the rebellion of the Cretans against the Ottoman Empire in the year 1889, seen through the eyes of Captain Michales.

Kazantzakis, of course, goes deeper, meditating upon the Cretan psyche in terms of its identity, nationalism, religion, and character.

I also think that there is an undercurrent of the ever-present Minoan ethos that figures so prominently in most of Kazantzakis' works (he was born in Crete). Strip away the philosophical and cultural flourishes of a Kazantzakis work and you'll find a pre-historic, earthy, almost proto-mythic quality that reduces humanity to the simplicity of a life/death dichotomy. Such a philosophical bent is not untypical of modernist writers but it seems always more heightened with Kazantzakis.

I think you also find such thinking in the Old Testament wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes and Job. The Book of Job in particular has as its base point the understanding that the individual human exists for a brief moment between two abysses and that the only positive choice is a full leap of faith into the creator God.

Kazanzakis, like many of the best modernist writers, understood the situation of man as existing between two voids, but, unfortunately, unlike writers such as Hermann Broch, he rejected the positive choice of falling into the infinity of God but instead embraced and explored a synthesis of life-death as an alternative to God.

So I don't agree with Kazantzaki's conclusions, but I greatly appreciate and am interested in his exploration of the theme of man's primal, existential situation.

All in all, I think that "Freedom or Death" is a very good book, though I don't think that it rises to the levels of other such Kazantzakis' works such as "The Greek Passion", "The Last Temptation", or "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel". It is certainly better than the vastly over-rated "Zorba the Greek".