409
left searing memories that last to this day; those German occupying forces during
World War II bombarded Crete for over 800 hours continuously, perhaps the bloodiest battles per capita and per size of territory in all of the war.
2
And post-World War
II, there have been excited hordes of flocking tourists, some explicitly to return
home with Cretan contraband: rare floral specimens. Fortunately, there are still 223
endemic remaining Cretan plants
3
across the gorgeous, biologically dazzling island.
45.2 The Artistic Divining Rods
For literary pilgrims, Crete is dominated spiritually and ethically, it seems, by Nikos
Kazantzakis, who lies controversially buried in the Martinengo Tower outside the
capital of Heraklion’s walls. High above the city, his spirit looks out over the Ida
mountains to the west, the Asterousia Mountains bearing south, and the rich farm
valleys and wine-dark waters, as Homer called them, of the Mediterranean to the
north and east. He is up in the air, liberated, protecting his homeland with his famed
“Cretan Glance.” On his tomb is famously written, “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
4
At a time in the heart of the Anthropocene, no other artist has so encapsulated, by
his death, words to distinguish Cretan biodiversity with such pellucid, embracing
verisimilitude. Of course, Kazantzakis had profound, local predecessors. Vincenzo
Kornaros, a contemporary of Shakespeare, who authored the Cretan epic romance,
the Erotokritos, written in the Cretan/Sitian dialect, first published in Venice in
1713; and Kornaros’ contemporary, the indomitable painter, Domenikos
Theotokopoulos, or El Greco (1541–1614), who grew up in a remote mountainous
gorge along the eastern portion of Crete and was, in turn, greatly influenced by the
Cretan renaissance of icon painting, most indelibly, one of Crete’s foremost icon
visionaries, Angelos Akotantos (1425–1450), a gentle sapience enshrined and selfilluminated, not unlike Russia’s Andrei Rublev (c.1360–1430).
2 By at least one estimate, 6,593 men, 1,113 women, and 869 children were killed on Crete by the
Nazis, who parachuted on to the island beginning the morning of May 20, 1941. See Callum
MacDonald, The Lost Battle – Crete 1941, Free Press, New York, 1995, p. 303.
3 See Menteli, V., Krigas, N., Avramakis, M. et al. “Endemic plants of Crete in electronic trade and
wildlife tourism: current patterns and implications for conservation,” J of Biol ResThessaloniki 26, 10 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, Published 30 October
2019, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, https://jbiolres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, Accessed April 26, 2020.
4 See “Kazantzakis,” a Documentary by M. C. Tobias, KRMA/PBS, 1984, https://www.imdb.com/
title/tt0816548/ in which Kimon Friar recites the three Greek sentences on Kazantzakis’ gravestone; See also, Chapter 9, “Fantastic Journeys,” in A Vision of Nature – Traces of the Original
World, by M. C. Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, pp. 252–261.
45.2 The Artistic Divining Rods
left searing memories that last to this day; those German occupying forces during
World War II bombarded Crete for over 800 hours continuously, perhaps the bloodiest battles per capita and per size of territory in all of the war.
2
And post-World War
II, there have been excited hordes of flocking tourists, some explicitly to return
home with Cretan contraband: rare floral specimens. Fortunately, there are still 223
endemic remaining Cretan plants
3
across the gorgeous, biologically dazzling island.
45.2 The Artistic Divining Rods
For literary pilgrims, Crete is dominated spiritually and ethically, it seems, by Nikos
Kazantzakis, who lies controversially buried in the Martinengo Tower outside the
capital of Heraklion’s walls. High above the city, his spirit looks out over the Ida
mountains to the west, the Asterousia Mountains bearing south, and the rich farm
valleys and wine-dark waters, as Homer called them, of the Mediterranean to the
north and east. He is up in the air, liberated, protecting his homeland with his famed
“Cretan Glance.” On his tomb is famously written, “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
4
At a time in the heart of the Anthropocene, no other artist has so encapsulated, by
his death, words to distinguish Cretan biodiversity with such pellucid, embracing
verisimilitude. Of course, Kazantzakis had profound, local predecessors. Vincenzo
Kornaros, a contemporary of Shakespeare, who authored the Cretan epic romance,
the Erotokritos, written in the Cretan/Sitian dialect, first published in Venice in
1713; and Kornaros’ contemporary, the indomitable painter, Domenikos
Theotokopoulos, or El Greco (1541–1614), who grew up in a remote mountainous
gorge along the eastern portion of Crete and was, in turn, greatly influenced by the
Cretan renaissance of icon painting, most indelibly, one of Crete’s foremost icon
visionaries, Angelos Akotantos (1425–1450), a gentle sapience enshrined and selfilluminated, not unlike Russia’s Andrei Rublev (c.1360–1430).
2 By at least one estimate, 6,593 men, 1,113 women, and 869 children were killed on Crete by the
Nazis, who parachuted on to the island beginning the morning of May 20, 1941. See Callum
MacDonald, The Lost Battle – Crete 1941, Free Press, New York, 1995, p. 303.
3 See Menteli, V., Krigas, N., Avramakis, M. et al. “Endemic plants of Crete in electronic trade and
wildlife tourism: current patterns and implications for conservation,” J of Biol ResThessaloniki 26, 10 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, Published 30 October
2019, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, https://jbiolres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40709-019-0104-z, Accessed April 26, 2020.
4 See “Kazantzakis,” a Documentary by M. C. Tobias, KRMA/PBS, 1984, https://www.imdb.com/
title/tt0816548/ in which Kimon Friar recites the three Greek sentences on Kazantzakis’ gravestone; See also, Chapter 9, “Fantastic Journeys,” in A Vision of Nature – Traces of the Original
World, by M. C. Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, pp. 252–261.
45.2 The Artistic Divining Rods