(2 of 3)
Already Odysseus has begun to question, to doubt. To his surprise, he begins to find newborn sympathies with slaves and common folk. The old Greek gods have become objects of scorn, and what started as a mindless search for adventure has now become a journey of selfdiscovery. In Egypt he and his pals thieve and loot, fight against the depraved rulers and finally lead a ragged army to the headwaters of the Nile. There Odysseus builds a Utopian city-state in which marriage is outlawed, children are held in common, and the old and weak are left to die. At first all goes well under Odysseus' rule; then the city is destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Odysseus becomes an ascetic who wanders over Africa, famed as a holy man but farther from God than ever. He sets off in a skiff and sails into the Antarctic, recapitulates his life and dies full of wisdom, humility and doubt, not having found his soul but having gained nobility in the search.
Then flesh dissolved, glances congealed,
the heart's pulse stopped,
and the great mind leapt to the peak
of its holy freedom,
fluttered with empty wings, then upright
through the air
soared high and freed itself from its
last cage, its freedom.
All things like frail mist scattered till
but one brave cry
for a brief moment hung in the calm
benighted waters:
''Forward, my lads, sail on, for Death's
breeze blows in a fair wind!"
Beyond the Pagan World. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel is a huge repository of bloody adventure, eroticism, brutal sights and sounds, magnificent descriptions of the earth, sea and sky and all their wonders. Man's coarsest appetites and his noblest aspirations exist side by side in Odysseus, and he is as ready to seduce a simple girl by pretending to be a god as he is to admit his doubts about himself and the human condition:
I'm not pure, I'm not strong, I cannot
love, I'm afraid!
I'm choked with mud and shame, I
fight but fight in vain
with cries and gaudy wings, with voyages
and wiles
to choke that quivering mouth within
me that cries 'Help!'
A thin, thin crust of laughter, mockery,
voices, tears,
a lying false façade—all this is called
Odysseus!"
Kazantzakis takes his hero far beyond the pagan world that Homer's knew. He confronts him with characters reminiscent of Buddha, Christ, Faust and Don Quixote so that Odysseus can try his own view of God and man against theirs. He agrees with none of them, thus underscoring Kazantzakis' belief that each man must make his own spiritual odyssey; no one else can make it for him, no ready-made belief can serve for each individual. The search is one for freedom—freedom from the demands of Odysseus' heart and mind. Kazantzakis seems to say: not until Odysseus is delivered from doubt, fear and even hope can he reach anything close to serenity. That he is never delivered does not matter; God may even be the search for God.