“I Hope for Nothing, I Fear Nothing, I Am Free”: The Life of Nikos Kazantzakis

A Life Between Freedom and Fire

Born in Heraklion in 1883, under Ottoman rule, Nikos Kazantzakis emerged from a land under the conditions that would define not only the fate of Crete, but the inner struggle of his most memorable characters.

From his earliest writings to the spiritual confessions of Letter to El Greco (1961), Kazantzakis wrestled with the eternal conflict between flesh and spirit, East and West, action and transcendence.

His novel Captain Michalis, bearing the alternative title Freedom or Death (1953), is perhaps the most distilled expression of his struggle. Set in 19th-century Crete, amid a violent uprising against Ottoman domination, the novel transcends historical fiction. It becomes a mythic meditation on sacrifice, pride, and the insatiable hunger for liberation, national and personal alike.

Nikos Kazantzakis referred to his father, Michalis, as a deeply influential figure in his life, harsh, stoic, proud, and fiercely committed to Cretan independence. In multiple personal letters and memoir-style writings, Kazantzakis says he feared and revered his father, who came to symbolize Cretan resistance and masculine power. Captain Michalis reflects those traits.

Scholars agree that Captain Michalis is a symbolic and emotional representation of Kazantzakis’s father. The novel dramatizes the 1889 Cretan revolt against Ottoman rule and embodies the island’s tragic heroism through a figure modeled after his father’s moral code.

Kazantzakis’s intellectual formation began with a move to Athens in 1902 to study law, a discipline he soon found too constrained to house his growing metaphysical and philosophical ambitions.

In 1907, he departed for Paris to continue his postgraduate studies and encountered the two thinkers who would haunt and inspire his writing throughout his life: Henri Bergson, with his dynamic vision of life and creative evolution, and Friedrich Nietzsche, whose concept of the Übermensch and celebration of the will to power resonated deeply with Kazantzakis’s Cretan temperament and ascetic spirituality.

Upon returning to Greece in 1909, Kazantzakis published his dissertation Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Law and the State, a text that reflects both his legal background and the beginning of his philosophical divergence from the Christian orthodoxy of his upbringing.

His worldview, shaped by Nietzsche’s tragic optimism and Bergson’s metaphysics of becoming, was neither nihilistic nor purely rationalist. It was an existential call to action: life, for Kazantzakis, was a series of heroic efforts to climb beyond the self, to embrace struggle without promise of salvation.

Kazantzakis’s attraction to Friedrich Nietzsche was profoundly shaped by their shared reverence for ancient Greek tragedy. Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy elevated Aeschylus and Sophocles as exemplars of human dignity in the face of chaos, a vision Kazantzakis deeply internalized.

For both thinkers, tragedy was a spiritual ascent through struggle. Kazantzakis, raised on the tumultuous soil of Crete and immersed in classical texts, found in Nietzsche a kindred spirit who viewed suffering as the crucible of freedom. This tragic ethos pulses throughout Kazantzakis’s own works.

In this spirit of restless searching, Kazantzakis led an eclectic life, both materially and intellectually. He translated books to earn a living, living for a time with his compatriot and intellectual companion Galatea Alexiou, whom he later married.

In 1916, he ventured to Mount Athos for timber contracts and later attempted to exploit a lignite mine in the Peloponnese. There, he hired a miner named Georgios Zorba, a figure whose unbounded vitality and instinctual wisdom would later become immortalized in the novel Zorba the Greek (1946).

The novel’s vivid portrayal of Zorba’s life-embracing philosophy later reached a global audience through the 1964 film adaptation directed by Michael Cacoyannis. Anthony Quinn’s iconic performance brought Kazantzakis’s exuberant miner to the screen with unforgettable intensity, while Mikis Theodorakis’s electrifying score, especially the syrtaki dance, etched itself into cultural memory. The film not only amplified the novel’s existential themes but also elevated Zorba into a universal symbol of untamed spirit of the Mediterranean.

Between Revolutions and Resurrections

Kazantzakis’s writings were born in the bitter migrations of war, the blood of revolutions, and the solitude of voluntary exile.

In 1919, at the height of the post–World War I upheavals, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, another Cretan figure, appointed Kazantzakis as general director at the Ministry of Health. His task was to repatriate Greek refugees from the Caucasus, a mission that left a lasting moral scar. This experience, saturated with themes of displacement, injustice, and human endurance, would later resurface in the haunting parable Christ Recrucified (1954), where the Passion of Christ is reimagined in a Greek village under Ottoman occupation. Here, too, Kazantzakis’s spiritual tension is palpable: salvation is not granted from above, but must be constructed, painfully, and often in vain, by the community below.

After Venizelos’s Liberal Party fell from power, Kazantzakis resigned from public service and embarked on a new kind of journey, an odyssey through the ideological and spiritual ferment of interwar Europe.

In Vienna, he encountered the psychoanalytic vision of Freud, which deepened his understanding of the human subconscious, repression, and guilt. At the same time, Buddhist teachings offered him a vision of detachment and transcendence, balancing the volcanic passions of his Nietzschean will.

In Berlin, Kazantzakis came into contact with the revolutionary atmosphere of post-Weimar politics and immersed himself in Marxist and Leninist thought. Though he never joined the Communist Party, he admired Lenin as a tragic figure of historical will, a modern Prometheus who sought to reshape the world through fire and sacrifice.

By 1927, Kazantzakis withdrew to the island of Aegina, entering a period of intense creative labor. There, he began work on his most ambitious literary project: The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. This massive epic poem, finally completed in 1938 with 33,333 verses in 24 rhapsodies, is a radical reimagining of Homer’s Odysseus as a postmodern wanderer who refuses closure, homecoming, or peace.

His years of travel and writing were never entirely detached from political engagement. In 1945, amid the fragile peace that followed Nazi occupation and civil war, Kazantzakis briefly entered politics. As a minister without portfolio in Themistoklis Sofoulis’s coalition government, he led the Socialist Workers’ Movement, seeking a synthesis of democratic socialism and spiritual renewal. Yet, disillusionment quickly followed. In 1948, he broke with the party, left Greece once more, and settled in Antibes, France.

The Greek Orthodox Church, deeply disturbed by the iconoclastic and heretical undertones of his work, sought to excommunicate him. Passages from Captain Michalis were singled out, particularly those that challenged doctrinal authority and blurred the lines between sacred and profane, martyrdom and madness. The novel, autobiographical in its depiction of a childhood Heraklion steeped in blood and myth, became the Church’s proof of blasphemy.

Crete

To understand Nikos Kazantzakis, one must first understand Crete. The island’s history is of civilizations layered over ash, conquest, and revolt. It is in this land that Kazantzakis was born and formed his unique spiritual language.

Crete was once the heart of the Minoan Civilization (2600–1150 B.C.), one of the earliest advanced societies in Europe. From the palaces of Knossos, Phaestos, and Zakros, a maritime and artistic culture flourished, leaving behind frescoes, labyrinths, and myths.

Around 1450 B.C., the eruption of the Santorini volcano unleashed massive tidal waves and volcanic ash, devastating Crete’s northern shores. The Minoans never recovered. The Achaean and Dorian invasions that followed sealed their decline.

Thereafter, the island passed through the hands of empires: Roman rule (69–330 A.D.), the Byzantines, then the Arabs (824–961), who founded Heraklion, originally Handek. After the Byzantines recaptured the island, Crete was sold to the Venetians in 1204 following the Fourth Crusade.

Under Venetian dominion, Crete became a bastion of Renaissance culture in the East. The painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, later known as El Greco, began his career here. Greek Orthodox traditions fused with Western aesthetics. Kazantzakis would later see El Greco as a spiritual ancestor, titling his final autobiographical work Report to Greco.

The Battle of Preveza in 1538, where Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha triumphed over the Holy League, shattered Venetian naval dominance. The loss of Cyprus in 1571 further diminished their presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Crete became their last major possession, besieged and finally surrendered to the Ottoman Empire after the 21-year Siege of Candia, the longest in European history.

In September 1669, after 21 years of relentless siege, Venice surrendered the city of Candia (modern-day Heraklion) to the Ottomans through a negotiated capitulation between Venetian commander Francesco Morosini and Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha. This marked the end of Venetian rule on the island and the beginning of Ottoman domination that would last until 1898.

The Ottoman period was marked by repeated Cretan uprisings, driven by both nationalist and religious grievances. The most searing of these occurred in November 1866: the Holocaust of Arkadi Monastery. With the Ottoman army besieging the monastery, then the rebel headquarters, 259 defenders, along with over 700 women and children, refused to surrender. When the Ottomans breached the walls, the defenders detonated the gunpowder stores. The explosion killed nearly all inside.

The desire of the Cretan villagers to die as free Greeks and the actions of the Turks shocked the world’s public opinion and brought focus on the Cretan struggle for independence. Victor Hugo responded to the event in public letters, calling the act "a heroic sacrifice" and urging European support for Crete. Victor Hugo’s comments contributed to the worldwide reaction.

This act of collective martyrdom became a symbol of Cretan resistance, and would echo in the self-sacrificial ethos of Kazantzakis’s characters, especially in Captain Michalis.

Despite continued revolts in 1821, 1833, 1841, 1858, 1889, 1895, and 1897, the Ottomans held the island—until the international order shifted. In 1897, following the last uprising, the Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia, and Italy) landed troops to restore order. Germany and Austria-Hungary withdrew early in 1898. For a time, the island was governed by a committee of admirals from the remaining powers.

The tipping point came in December 1898 with the Candia Massacre, when Muslim irregulars killed 500 Cretan Christians and 14 British servicemen. The resulting outrage led the occupying powers to expel Ottoman troops and officials, paving the way for Cretan autonomy. The Cretan State was declared that same month, under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, symbolized by the white star on the new flag, a visual reminder of sovereignty suspended.

Source: The New York Times, September 13, 1898. (https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1898/09/13/102567307.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0) 

The path to union with Greece (Enosis) was not smooth. In 1905, the Theriso Revolt, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, challenged the autocratic rule of Prince George, then High Commissioner.

In 1908, exploiting political chaos in the Ottoman Empire, Cretan deputies unilaterally declared union with Greece. Though Greece accepted this claim, international recognition only came on December 1, 1913, following the First Balkan War.

While Crete endured successive revolts under Ottoman rule throughout the 19th century, the newly independent Greek mainland was itself undergoing a complex and foreign-mediated nation-building process. Following the London Protocol of 1830, which officially recognized Greece’s independence after the War of Independence, the Great Powers selected Prince Otto of Bavaria as Greece’s first king.

Otto arrived in 1833, initially governed through a Bavarian regency, and continued to rule as an absolute monarch until a constitutional uprising in 1843 forced reforms. His rule, lasting until 1862, was marked by efforts to centralize authority and “modernize” Greek institutions in the image of Bavarian absolutism, often alienating the Greek populace.

Though Greece was nominally sovereign, its monarchy remained foreign, underscoring the contradiction between political independence and cultural autonomy. In this context, Crete’s delayed unification with the Greek state was not simply a geographic lag but a deeper reflection of the fragmented, externally influenced nature of Greek nationhood itself.

Scandal, Salvation, and the Tribunal of Conscience

If Zorba the Greek (1946) represented the wild, untamed life force—what Kazantzakis called the Bergsonian “animal impulse”—then The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) unveiled the most vulnerable and subversive corners of the spirit. Zorba dances on the edge of the abyss, joyously ignorant of metaphysics.

Source: The New York Times, August 7, 1960 (https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/08/07/99773788.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0) 

Christ, in Kazantzakis’s rendering, weeps on the cross not only from pain, but from the unbearable weight of freedom, doubt, and desire. In these two characters, Zorba and Christ, the Cretan writer laid bare the two poles of human existence: the Dionysian instinct to live and the ascetic compulsion to transcend.

The world was not ready.

Few books in the twentieth century have provoked such unified theological outrage. The Last Temptation of Christ, a novel that dares to imagine Jesus grappling with the allure of an ordinary life, of marriage, of escape from sacrifice, was placed in 1954 on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by Pope Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church’s list of forbidden books.

The Greek Orthodox Church, long wary of Kazantzakis’s iconoclastic spirituality, followed suit. His reply to the condemnation was characteristically defiant and steeped in classical gravity:

“Ad tuum, Domine, tribunal appello” — “I appeal to Your tribunal, O Lord.”

It was a theological rebuke issued in Latin to remind the Church that no institution is higher than conscience. A contemporary quipped, not without irony, that this was the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches agreed on anything.

The controversy revived decades later, this time on the screen. Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ became a lightning rod for protest, censorship, and bans. The film was prohibited in at least 12 countries, including Turkey, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and the Philippines. Death threats followed. So did riots.

Kazantzakis's own answer was never dogmatic. It was tragic. And in 1955, perhaps sensing that his earthly journey was nearing its close, he began to write Report to Greco, a vast, unfinished intellectual autobiography. In it, he retraced his footsteps not to offer resolution, but to preserve the tremor of the eternal question: How can a human being live nobly in a world without guarantees?

That same question might have echoed in the halls of the Nobel Committee, which denied Kazantzakis the Nobel Prize in Literature despite his nine nominations. In 1957, the year of his death, the award went to Albert Camus, by a margin of a single vote.

It is tempting to think that Kazantzakis was punished not for his literature, but for his independent spirit, his refusal to align with either institutional religion or ideological orthodoxy, even when he embraced the passions of both. His proximity to communism, his challenge to both Christian dogma and bourgeois morality, and his radical reimaginings of spiritual icons likely placed him outside the boundaries of “acceptable” laureateship.

Kazantzakis never wrote to be accepted.

The Grave Without a Cross: Kazantzakis’s Final Freedom

Nikos Kazantzakis died on October 26, 1957, in Freiburg, Germany, after a long battle with leukemia. His death, like his life, became a matter of resistance. When his body was brought back to Athens, the Church of Greece refused him the honor of a funeral with liturgy. There would be no cross over the casket, no chant of resurrection. In the eyes of the Church, the man who had dared to humanize Christ had forfeited the hope of divine grace.

The Metropolitan Church of Heraklion, the city of his birth, opened its doors. There, with an open casket but no liturgical rite, friends, fellow writers, and ordinary Cretans gathered for a final farewell. No institution spoke for him. The silence that accompanied his body back to the soil of Crete was the final act of defiance, and dignity.

His grave lies atop the Venetian Walls of Heraklion, far from the official cemeteries of the faithful. No cross marks the stone. Only the words:

"I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."

Kazantzakis authored his final manifesto. He died as he had lived, not as a heretic, but as a man who refused to let fear or reward dictate the course of his soul. Fear was the last enemy of courage, freedom was not a gift, it was the lifelong struggle.

In a century defined by totalitarian faiths, blind obedience, and sacred prohibitions, Kazantzakis wrote in exile. In that exile, he forged something rare: a literature of fire that does not consume, but purifies. A spiritual rebellion that seeks not heaven, but depth.