About Me
Author, Philosopher, Statesman.I was born in Megalokastro, Ottoman Empire, now Irklion, Crete. I was raised among peasants and although I left Crete as a young man, I returned to my homeland constantly in my art.
My homeland's subjugation created in me a yearning for freedom, from the Turk first but ultimately "from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved." But my soul also hungered for salvation, in search of which I studied the lives of saints and formed a lifelong attachment, of a kind, to the person of Jesus. I attended the Franciscan School of the Holy Cross, Naxos, and the Gymnasium at Herakleion (1899-1902). I then studied four years at the University of Athens, becoming Doctor of Laws in 1906.From 1907 to 1909 I studied philosophy in Paris at the Collge de France under Henri Bergson. Between the 1910s and 1930s I wrote dramas, verse and travel books, and travelled widely in China, Japan, Russia, England, Spain, and other countries. These trips all over the world inspired me to start the series "Travelling," which became known as masterpieces of Greek travel literature.Since my youth, I was spiritually restless. Tortured by metaphysical and existential concerns, I sought relief in knowledge, in travelling, in contact with a diverse set of people, in every kind of experience. The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on my work is evident, especially by my atheism and the presence of the superman (bermensch) concept. However, religious concerns also haunted me. To attain a union with God, I entered a monastary for a brief stay of six months.
Though never a member of the Communist party, I sympathized leftist movements in the early phase of my life and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize later. In 1957 I lost the Nobel Prize by a single vote to the French writer Albert Camus. Camus claimed that I deserved the honour "a hundred times more" than himself.Many conservative religious figures in Greece tend to condemn my work.
After writing The Last Temptation of Christ, I was excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. My written response to the church was "You gave me a curse, I give you a blessing: may your concience be as clear as mine and may you be as moral and religious as I." The Last Temptation was included in Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The movie based on the novel, was also banned from Greek theatres.I considered The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel 1924-1938 to be my most important work. I wrote it seven times before publishing it in 1938. According to another important Greek author, Pantelis Prevelakis, "it has been a superhuman effort to record his immense spiritual experience". Following the structure of Homer's Odyssey, it is divided in 24 rhapsodies and consists of 33,333 verses.I died of leukemia on October 26, 1957, in Freiburg im Breisgau, in Germany.
