Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis


This is a book of Nikos Kazantzakis that I found a bit disappointing but then I guess the book was set in a gloomy time in the history of Crete. An island occupied by Turkey but with Greek ancestry, it is about the freedom struggle of Crete. Crete has seen several uprisings and the book is set probably towards the end of the 1800s or the early 1900s just before the First World War. The book takes the reader through the uprising, how it started, the feeling that culminated in fighting and the foregone conclusion. As usual, spoiler alerts.

At the heart of the novel is Captain Michales who is like the Braveheart in this novel. A humorless man, he feels nothing but pain and agony with Crete being occupied. He has fought in a previous uprising and survived. Was given amnesty and safe passage to escape to Greece but refused to go. “Freedom or Death” was his slogan. And eventually his agony causes him to begin the fighting by provoking the Turks. After a few retaliations, Crete soon is in flames with Cretans taking to the mountains and the countryside while the Turks arming themselves in the city of Megalokastro.

A few interesting parts of the novel as expected by Nikos Kazantzakis. Captain Michales has a brother Tityros whom the family is practically ashamed of as he is considered “un-Cretan”. He is a schoolmaster and unlike the rest of family, he is a mild cultured man. Tityros’ marriage is arranged to a woman who has no parents and has only a brother who is a wastrel. However, the woman refuses to part from her brother. It is almost as if Kazantzakis hints at an incestuous relationship between the brother and sister. After the marriage, the brother continues to live in the same house and Tityros is denied any place in the family though he formally lives in the house. He tries to confront the brother and sister, but the brother is stronger and he is forced to relent. Captain Michales is furious when he finds out and is about to set the wastrel straight but Tityros stops Michales stating he has a plan but refuses to reveal it. The plan involved poisoning the brother and Tityros successfully murders his brother in-law. His hope was that his wife would finally accept him, but the wife kills herself to join her brother. However, Tityros’ wife denounces him private calling him a murderer the night before she kills herself. Several question arise – why does she denounce him in private when denouncing him public would land Tityros in prison? No one denounces Tityros even though it is well known he was the murderer. On the contrary, he is perceived differently by everyone, with an almost new found respect. Did they really admire a murdered? Or did everyone assume the incestuous relationship and approved of Tityros putting an end to it? Kazantzakis lets the story hang brilliantly without giving away the story letting you to guess what lay below the surface.

The second is an interesting piece of history. The Ottoman empire fell after the first world war. Until then, it was a dominant power in Europe. The novel refers to the “Franks” who are probably the French, the Germans, the Austrians and other like the Hungarians. Crete looked towards Greece and Russia for salvation to free them from the Turks. But, Greece at the time, was too weak to wage a war against the Turks. The rest of Europe, too, had no interest to be dragged into a war over Crete as it was Greece that stood to advantage if Crete was to be free. Instead, they hoped that if the Sultan of Turkey were willing to give away Crete, either because he no longer wished to rule over it due to old age or as a result of a larger war elsewhere, Crete could be divided among the rest of the Europeans. And, thus, Crete was left along in it’s struggle of freedom as the help it hoped would come from Greece would never arrive. Cretans are advised to bury their weapons and forget about freedom.

The third is an interesting character Kazantzakis brings in towards the end – a young man called Kozmas, a nephew of Captain Michales. Grew up under a father who tormented his family causing his own daughter to become almost deranged, he migrated to Europe to study. And here another interesting twist. He finds and marries a Jewish girl who has lost her family to a Cossack raid that killed many in her Jewish village. How did they find each other? Did Kozmas find in her some image of his own sister who was essentially a orphan living with her parents? Kozmas’ father had died in a Cretan uprising. Kozmas eventually comes to Crete with a letter for the head of Cretans explaining the political situation and advising Cretans to surrender and make peace. As Kozmas returns to his family house with his new wife, where his mother and sister live alone, both he and his wife feel that the house is haunted with his father’s ghost. Kozmas sets out for the countryside to meet Captain Michales and also his dying grandfather Captain Sefakas. He leaves his wife behind. As he says his goodbye, it feels like it is a final parting. And it indeed is. When he meets Captain Michales who is holding out against Turkish soldiers at his post, but is determined to die fighting, in a fit of madness Kozmas seizes on their slogan “Freedom or death” and is killed by Turkish soldiers. Captain Michales too is shot dead by the Turks. Back in Megalokastro, Kozmas’ wife has a miscarriage and loses their child. What was Kazantzakis trying to say with this double death? That Kozmas would never escape his father’s clutches? And by bringing his wife home, he was condemning her to misery just as his own sister was in that house?

The book flows fast once the fighting starts and is a good read. Just that most of the book is a foregone conclusion.

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