Dostoevsky, Kazantzakis' Unacknowledged Mentor

Abstract

HE MAIN streams that run through Kazantzakis are those that 1 still flow strongly in the minds of many artists and thinkers of the twentieth century, and even yet determine many currents; however, the very origin of these streams of thought was in the nineteenth century. Both Nietzsche and Bergson are children of that age, as was Dostoevsky, the third very essential nutrient in Kazantzakis. Thus, Kazantzakis' artistic skill and intellectual prowess primarily rest on his ability to understand and to apply the thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Apparently, without a serious study and knowledge of Dostoevsky, and of Russian literature in general,1 Kazantzakis would have been dominated by the thought of his Western teachers, Nietzsche and Bergson, whom he had systematically studied, and he would probably have evolved as a novelist of Western culture. Tom Doulis thinks that Kazantzakis, in contrast to many contemporary Greek writers, rejects the Western tradition of writing realistic novels by combining and including in his novels many unrealistic, improbable, and impossible elements and events. A deep religious fervor many times mixed with a scurrilous anticlericalism is one major characteristic that marks Kazantzakis' novels as definitely not contemporary, realistic, or even Western European. Such tendencies are not endorsed by the rational writers of the West, who define reality as within the realm of the possible and probable.2 Regardless of Kazantzakis' intellectual