THE SAVIORS OF GOD (143 pp.)—Nikos Kazantzakis—Simon 6-Schuster ($4.50).
In his still unpublished book of memoirs. Report to El Greco, Greece's late great man of letters, Nikos Kazantzakis wrote: "All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind." Readers of this strange little book of aphorisms, which Kazantzakis finished in 1923 before he wrote such works as Zorba the Greek and The Odyssey: a Modern Sequel, will sense the greatness of the writer's spiritual longing, if not of his thought. They will hear some mental creaks, and they will find the consolation cool but nonetheless bracing.
Man As Bridge. Kazantzakis' basic notion that man creates God in his own evolving image—the theory that God is essentially the search for God—may appeal to humanists and troubled skeptics, will antagonize the religious. Philosophically, the Greek writer's twin deities were Bergson (with whom he studied) and Nietzsche. From Bergson he borrowed the idea of an ever upward-rushing elan vital or life force; from Nietzsche he took the belief that "man is a bridge and not an end," and that his task is to surpass himself. Saviors of God is couched in the form and style of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra—ecstatic, apocalyptic, hortatory, an exclamation-marked salute to man's destiny.
The book is perceptively introduced and translated by Poet Kimon Friar, who captures the rainbow spray of Kazantzakis' thought, sparkling with paradox and poetry, anguish and joy. Sample reflections:
¶ "The soul of man is a flame, a bird of fire that leaps from bough to bough, from head to head, and that shouts: T cannot stand still. I cannot be consumed, no one can quench me!' ':
¶ "What is meant by happiness? To live every unhappiness. What is meant by light? To gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses." ¶"How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom."
¶"The ultimate most holy form of theory is action." ¶"Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom."
¶ "My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the trivial reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I found, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. It is not God who will save us—it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit."