Kazantzakis Nikos: Askeza/Salvatores Dei

Nikos Kazantzakis: Askeza/Salvatores Dei

This book is a programmatic literary-philosophical text by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), author of the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, Zorba the Greek and Christ Crucified Again in a new Croatian translation by Irene Gavranović Lukšić. Askeza opens the Selected Works of Nikos Kazantzakis edition.

The work, which is entirely focused on wringing the divine core from man, later labeled as the Gospel according to Kazantzakis by foreign critics, almost led the author to be accused of atheism — after many years of investigation, no indictment was brought, but the author himself was permanently stamped with the seal of "godless", as an obstacle to "pious" readers to look for and he finds and discovers within himself traces of the divine man.
ASKESIA
In Ascesis, a series of images, both dark and bright, serve the reader
instead of signposts, but one should keep in mind and not lose sight
of the complexity of the entire journey that Kazantzakis is actually talking about.
The work is divided into five chapters, five steps of the ascent as exercises of the spirit.

PREPARATION
Preparation consists of three duties. The first duty is to understand and
accept the limits of the mind, which is omnipotent within phenomena and powerless outside them. But the heart wants to tear apart the web of necessity, discerning the essence that hides within the appearances, and which itself fights not to unite with the heart. The second duty, then, is the duty of the heart: to reject the body and the mind, lest it hear the call of the Invisible and hasten. In this way, the heart, which is a nugget teeming with all the forces of the Universe, must give human meaning to the superhuman struggle. This brings us to the third duty: to master and overcome the great temptation, which is hope. Man's
purpose is a shipwreck; we must therefore direct ourselves towards the abyss and succeed,
at least once before we disappear, to look around the entire vast sea of ​​battle, without trusting in anything, without fear of anything, satisfied with the unspeakable freedom we seek. There is someone inside us who is suffocating in every cell of matter, in our body, in every state of our spirit. That someone is calling for help and we have to free him. He who hears that Cry sets out on a mysterious Journey; he chooses to rise without motivations based on reason and explainable by reason, but aware that his battle is also the battle of the entire Universe.
He is fighting to release the spark of God that is suffocating in us, in our race, in all of humanity, that smolders imprisoned in every molecule of the Earth.

VISION
We already feel that everything - our own race, all of humanity, the whole world - is clinging to us because it is part of us. We are aware of the universality of battle. And the essence is only one red bloody line that ascends from matter to plants, then to animals and finally to man. For the one who already enjoys this clear view, it is his duty to reshape and establish in words what he experienced in ecstasy. It is impossible to succeed in this, but we must try constantly, just as God as the Great Ecstatic tries to speak through the seas, winds and fires.

ACTION
We must approach the work of Action which ripens everything, never
being satisfied with what has already been done. In this way — fighting, creating, transforming matter into spirit — we conquer time and space in our own tiny spot of time and space. Thanks to that merciless fight, which is driven by something higher than ourselves, our death will not be in vain, but we will also give our last breath to the new forces that come after us.

SILENCE
We are left with the basic essential questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Man, after the struggle, reaches the peak of the attempt. He no longer fights or shouts: he matures in silence, eternally, together with the Universe. How can one man achieve complete union with the Abyss? It cannot be expressed in words. In deep silence, one ascends knowing that there is no end to the ascent.