407
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_45
Chapter 45
The Poetics of Biodiversity: Kazantzakis
and Crete
45.1 Timeless Cretan Lyricism
Two years before his death, Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), in a radio interview in
Paris, declared, “The writer of today, if he is truly alive, is someone who suffers and
worries at the sight of reality.”
1
His homeland of Crete had, for at least 4000 years,
been at the crossroads of both rusticated simplicity and compelling cosmopolitan
disruption. The Bronze Age Minoan (Aegean) Civilization, which prospered across
Crete from roughly 2700 to 1100 BC, invested in three-story palaces, two-story villas, often with refined plumbing and indoor toilets, complex polyculture and complex cuisine, a robust trading network from Egypt to Cyprus to the Near East, and a
rich zoomorphic artistic culture of murals (celebrated dolphins and bulls), jewelry,
and clothing. There were at least two, now untranslatable, scripts: Linear A (precursor to Linear B and the first Greek) and the quasi-inscrutable “Phaistos Disc,” an
enigmatic undamaged piece of fired clay, less than six inches in diameter—a microcosm of the planet—discovered within the walls of one of Crete’s four principal
palaces in 1908. Knossos’ ruins had been discovered just 15 years before Kazantzakis
was born. And with the fanfare surrounding the massive digs of English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans came the worldwide news that the ancient Cretan epicenter
had been inhabited for nearly 9000 years and bespoke of blissful epiphanies
(Fig. 45.1).
With the unearthing of the celebrated Disc, everyone who has ever looked at its
241 “tokens” (in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum) feels they have nearly got
its translation half-correct. A veritable poetics of biodiversity that spells out the
1 See the essay “Kazantzakis, Crete, and Biodiversity,” by M. C. Tobias, in The Terrestrial Gospel
of Nikos Kazantzakis, Translated and Edited by Thanasis Maskaleris, Bilingual Edition in English
and Greek, Zorba Press, Ithaca, New York, 2016, p. 71. Cited from: “Excerpt from Pierre Sipriot’s
Interview with Nikos Kazantzakis,” French Radio (Paris), 6th May 1955, from the Nikos
Kazantzakis Files, Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, www.historial-museum.gr/Kazantzakis/en/index.
html.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_45
Chapter 45
The Poetics of Biodiversity: Kazantzakis
and Crete
45.1 Timeless Cretan Lyricism
Two years before his death, Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), in a radio interview in
Paris, declared, “The writer of today, if he is truly alive, is someone who suffers and
worries at the sight of reality.”
1
His homeland of Crete had, for at least 4000 years,
been at the crossroads of both rusticated simplicity and compelling cosmopolitan
disruption. The Bronze Age Minoan (Aegean) Civilization, which prospered across
Crete from roughly 2700 to 1100 BC, invested in three-story palaces, two-story villas, often with refined plumbing and indoor toilets, complex polyculture and complex cuisine, a robust trading network from Egypt to Cyprus to the Near East, and a
rich zoomorphic artistic culture of murals (celebrated dolphins and bulls), jewelry,
and clothing. There were at least two, now untranslatable, scripts: Linear A (precursor to Linear B and the first Greek) and the quasi-inscrutable “Phaistos Disc,” an
enigmatic undamaged piece of fired clay, less than six inches in diameter—a microcosm of the planet—discovered within the walls of one of Crete’s four principal
palaces in 1908. Knossos’ ruins had been discovered just 15 years before Kazantzakis
was born. And with the fanfare surrounding the massive digs of English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans came the worldwide news that the ancient Cretan epicenter
had been inhabited for nearly 9000 years and bespoke of blissful epiphanies
(Fig. 45.1).
With the unearthing of the celebrated Disc, everyone who has ever looked at its
241 “tokens” (in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum) feels they have nearly got
its translation half-correct. A veritable poetics of biodiversity that spells out the
1 See the essay “Kazantzakis, Crete, and Biodiversity,” by M. C. Tobias, in The Terrestrial Gospel
of Nikos Kazantzakis, Translated and Edited by Thanasis Maskaleris, Bilingual Edition in English
and Greek, Zorba Press, Ithaca, New York, 2016, p. 71. Cited from: “Excerpt from Pierre Sipriot’s
Interview with Nikos Kazantzakis,” French Radio (Paris), 6th May 1955, from the Nikos
Kazantzakis Files, Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, www.historial-museum.gr/Kazantzakis/en/index.
html.