Talk:Nikos Kazantzakis

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Greek text formerly encoded in ISO-8859-7 has now been turned into Unicode entities. This sucks for editing Greek, but rocks for viewing it in browsers that are not preset to ISO-8859-7 -- Anon.

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I may be wrong about this, but I understood that the really revolutionary thing about the book Osyssey: A Sequel is that it is written in demotic Greek. Until this book, Greek literature was written in Athenian Greek from the time of Theseus, even as this language became more and more separated from the way the Greek people spoke.

Perhaps I am wrong about this. I will investigate further. RayKiddy 05:30, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

by Athenian Greek you probably mean Katharevousa. Optim 05:58, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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The really revolutionary things about Kazantzakis were the things he wrote and not how he wrote them. He did too writte in demotic being one of the first to do so but it was not that the reason he is remembered today. It was the power of his spirit which he succesfully communicated to his readers. Because of this he was aphorized by the Greek church. The latter has not been mentioned in the article.

If you mention Church's aphorism, make sure to have facts, I wouldn't be surprised if the case can not be investigated clearly today. I recall from a couple biographies of Kazantzakis that the aphorism came as a result of destain some church leaders felt specifically for the book "Captain Michael" (the one written based on his father, secondary title "Freedom or Death"). It could also be mentioned that not all greek priests see him as a negative influence today. I know personally of a priest in Crete, Greece, that openly admits he likes reading Kazantzakis' books. (In Crete he had always more acceptance and was normally burried by the orthodox christian church (which is independed from the church of greece), Kazantzakis was born in crete's current capital). --Fs 09:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, he gave a response to the church of the type "Παπάδες με καταραστήκατε, εγώ σας δίνω την ευλογία μου" (priests, you cursed me, I give you my benediction), or sth like that. There are a couple of biographies in english that should include that, the kazantakis museum in crete (in his birth place, a village), should have lots of information around those details. --Fs 17:39, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually the fact about his excommunication is a bit ironic. Although many christian clergymen did condemn him, according to the research of a Greek journalist, typically, his aphorism was never officially applied, because the Ecumenical Patriarch never signed it. The Last Temptation was also included in Index Librorum Prohibitorum. --Dada 18:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I included his response to the greek orthodox church and the Vatican in the article. --Dada 18:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

"movie banned from greek theaters" this sounds like a total ban. I know personally of people that watched it in a theater there. I'll changed it to 'some theaters' and btw, some references on the matter would be better. --161.76.99.106 08:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Gerasimos

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When using English to name Kazantzakis's novels, we should use the titles as they are published in Britain, Canada, and the United States, for instance Zorba the Greek instead of The Life of Alexis Zorbas. Wikipedia probably has a standard to use when the British and American titles differ. Acjelen 22:44, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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I think there may need to be some clairification on the last paragraph of the Literary Work section:

In Kazantzakis's day, the market for material published in modern Greek was quite small. Kazantzakis also wrote in modern (demotic) Greek, which made his writings all the more controversial.

These sentences suggest a difference between modern Greek and demotic Greek. I do not know if there is one or not. If there is no difference, perhaps the parens should go in the first sentence. The "also" is troublesome. Suggest striking it. Finally, there is no explanation given for why writing in demotic Greek is controversial. I feel that I do not know enough about the subject to edit without destroying meaning, but I believe that someone with a bit more knowledge should attend to this. Cavebutter 18:21, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

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Cavebutter is right, there is no difference between modern and demotic Greek, the "also" should not be there. Writing in demotic was controversial (but not too much so) in the beginning of the 20th century, where writing in Katharevousa was the norm. I will also leave editing to someone else though. (Zizikos 00:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC))