The Last Temptation of Christ
Other books by Nikos Kazantzakis
ZORBA THE GREEK
THE GREEK PASSION
FREEDOM OR DEATH
THE ODYSSEY: A MODERN SEQUEL
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST
THE SAVIORS OF GOD—SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
SAINT FRANCIS
THE ROCK GARDEN
JAPAN—CHINA
SPAIN
TODA RABA
THE FRATRICIDES
JOURNEY TO THE MOREA
REPORT TO GRECO
ENGLAND
The Last Temptation
of Christ
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
Translated from the Greek
By P. A. BIEN
A Touchstone Book
Published by Simon and Schuster
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION
IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM
COPYBIGHT © 1960 BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER
A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10020
SBN 671-21170-6
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 60-10985
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FIFTH PAPERBACK PRINTING
The Last Temptation
of Christ
Contents 3
Prologue 3
Chapter One 3
Chapter Two 3
Chapter Three 3
Chapter Four 3
Chapter Five 3
Chapter Six 3
Chapter Seven 3
Chapter Eight 3
Chapter Nine 3
Chapter Ten 3
Chapter Eleven 3
Chapter Twelve 3
Chapter Thirteen 3
Chapter Fourteen 3
Chapter Fifteen 3
Chapter Sixteen 3
Chapter Seventeen 3
Chapter Eighteen 3
Chapter Nineteen 3
Chapter Twenty 3
Chapter Twenty-One 3
Chapter Twenty-Two 3
Chapter Twenty-Three 3
Chapter Twenty-Four 3
Chapter Twenty-Five 3
Chapter Twenty-Six 3
Chapter Twenty-Seven 3
Chapter Twenty-Eight 3
Chapter Twenty-Nine 3
Chapter Thirty 3
Chapter Thirty-One 3
Chapter Thirty-Two 3
Chapter Thirty-Three 3
A Note on the Author and His Use of Language 3
Acknowledgments 3
THE DUAL SUBSTANCE of Christ—the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain to God or, more exactly, to return to God and identify himself with him—has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. This nostalgia for God, at once so mysterious and so real, has opened in me large wounds and also large flowing springs.
My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.
Within me are the dark immemorial forces of the Evil One, human and pre-human; within me too are the luminous forces, human and pre-human, of God—and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
The anguish has been intense. I loved my body and did not want it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces which are so contrary to each other, to make them realize that they are not enemies but, rather, fellow workers, so that they might rejoice in their harmony—and so that I might rejoice with them.
Every man partakes of the divine nature in both his spirit and his flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: it is universal. The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
The stronger the soul and the flesh, the more fruitful the struggle and the richer the final harmony. God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The Spirit wants to have to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.
Struggle between the flesh and the spirit, rebellion and resistance, reconciliation and submission, and finally—the supreme purpose of the struggle—union with God: this was the ascent taken by Christ, the ascent which he invites us to take as well, following in his bloody tracks.
This is the Supreme Duty of the man who struggles—to set out for the lofty peak which Christ, the first-born son of salvation, attained. How can we begin?
If we are to be able to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares of the earth, his sacrifice of the great and small joys of men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom’s summit, the Cross.
I never followed Christ’s bloody journey to Golgotha with such terror, I never relived his Life and Passion with such intensity, such understanding and love, as during the days and nights when I wrote The Last Temptation of Christ. While setting down this confession of the anguish and the great hope of mankind I was so moved that my eyes filled with tears. I had never felt the blood of Christ fall drop by drop into my heart with so much sweetness, so much pain.
In order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through. That is why his suffering is so familiar to us; that is why we share it, and why his final victory seems to us so much our own future victory. That part of Christ’s nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives. We struggle, we see him struggle also, and we find strength. We see that we are not all alone in the world: he is fighting at our side.
Every moment of Christ’s life is a conflict and a victory. He conquered the invincible enchantment of simple human pleasures; he conquered temptations, continually transubstantiated flesh into spirit, and ascended. Reaching the summit of Golgotha, he mounted the Cross.
But even there his struggle did not end. Temptation—the Last Temptation—was waiting for him upon the Cross. Before the fainted eyes of the Crucified the spirit of the Evil One, in an instantaneous flash, unfolded the deceptive vision of a calm and happy life. It seemed to Christ that he had taken the smooth, easy road of men. He had married and fathered children. People loved and respected him. Now, an old man, he sat on the threshold of his house and smiled with satisfaction as he recalled the longings of his youth. How splendidly, how sensibly he had acted in choosing the road of men! What insanity to have wanted to save the world! What joy to have escaped the privations, the tortures, and the Cross!
This was the Last Temptation which came in the space of a lightning flash to trouble the Saviour’s final moments.
But all at once Christ shook his head violently, opened his eyes, and saw. No, he was not a traitor, glory be to God! He was not a deserter. He had accomplished the mission which the Lord had entrusted to him. He had not married, had
not lived a happy life. He had reached the summit of sacrifice: he was nailed upon the Cross.
Content, he closed his eyes. And then there was a great triumphant cry: It is accomplished!
In other words: I have accomplished my duty, I am being crucified, I did not fall into temptation. ...
This book was written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death—because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever.
Every obstacle in his journey became a milestone, an occasion for further triumph. We have a model in front of us now, a model who blazes our trail and gives us strength.
This book is not a biography; it is the confession of every man who struggles. In publishing it I have fulfilled my duty, the duty of a person who struggled much, was much embittered in his life, and had many hopes. I am certain that every free man who reads this book, so filled as it is with love, will more than ever before, better than ever before, love Christ.
N. KAZANTZAKIS
A COOL HEAVENLY BREEZE took possession of him.
Above, the blossoming skies had opened into a thick tangle of stars; below, on the ground, the stones were steaming, still afire from the great heat of the day. Heaven and earth were peaceful and sweet, filled with the deep silence of ageless night-voices, more silent than silence itself. It was dark, probably midnight. God’s eyes, the sun and the moon, were closed and sleeping, and the young man, his mind carried away by the gentle breeze, meditated happily. But as he thought, What solitude! what Paradise! suddenly the wind changed and thickened; it was no longer a heavenly breeze but the reek of heavy greasy breaths, as though in some overgrown thicket or damp luxuriant orchard below him a gasping animal, or a village, was struggling in vain to sleep. The air had become dense, restless. The tepid breaths of men, animals and elves rose and mixed with a sharp odor from sour human sweat, bread freshly removed from the oven, and the laurel oil used by the women to anoint their hair.
You sniffed, you sensed, you divined—but saw nothing. Little by little your eyes became accustomed to the darkness and you were able to distinguish a stern straight-trunked cypress darker than night itself, a clump of date palms grouped like a fountain and, rustling in the wind, sparsely leafed olive trees which shone silver in the blackness. And there on a green spot of land you saw wretched cottages thrown down now in groups, now singly, constructed of night, mud and brick, and smeared all over with whitewash. You realized from the smell and filth that human forms, some covered with white sheets, others uncovered, were sleeping on the rooftops.
The silence had fled. The blissful uninhabited night filled with anguish. Human hands and feet twisted and turned, unable to find repose. Human hearts sighed. Despairing, obstinate cries from hundreds of mouths fought in this mute God-trodden chaos to unite, toiled to find expression for what they longed to say. But they could not, and the cries scattered and were lost in disjointed ravings.
Suddenly there was a shrill, heart-rending scream from the highest rooftop, in the center of the village. A human breast was tearing itself in two: “God of Israel, God of Israel, Adonai, how long?” It was not a man; it was the whole village dreaming and shouting together, the whole soil of Israel with the bones of its dead and the roots of its trees, the soil of Israel in labor, unable to give birth, and screaming.
After a long silence the cry suddenly tore the air again from earth to heaven, but now with even more anger and grievance: “How long? How long?” The village dogs awoke and began to bark, and on the flat mud roofs the frightened women thrust their heads under the armpits of their husbands.
The youth was dreaming. He heard the shout in his sleep and stirred; the dream took fright, began to flee. The mountain rarefied, and its insides appeared. It was not made of rock, but of sleep and dizziness. The group of huge wild men who were stamping furiously up it with giant strides—all mustaches, beards, eyebrows and great long hands—they rarefied also, lengthened, widened, were completely transformed and then plucked into tiny threads, like clouds scattered by a strong wind. A little more and they would have disappeared from the sleeper’s mind.
But before this could happen his head grew heavy and he fell once more into a deep sleep. The mountain thickened again into rock, the clouds solidified into flesh and bone. He heard someone panting, then hurried steps, and the redbeard reappeared at the mountain’s peak. His shirt was open, he was barefooted, red-faced, sweating. His numerous gasping followers were behind him, still hidden among the rough stones of the mountain. Above, the dome of heaven once again formed a well-built roof, but now there was only a single star, large, like a mouthful of fire, hanging in the east. Day was breaking.
The young man lay stretched on his bed of wood shavings, breathing deeply, resting after the hard work of the day. His eyelids flew up for an instant as though struck by the Morning Star, but he did not awake: the dream had again skillfully wrapped itself around him. He dreamed that the redbeard stopped. Sweat streamed from his armpits, legs and narrow, deeply wrinkled forehead. Steaming at the mouth from exertion and anger, he started to swear, but restrained himself, swallowed the curse and merely grumbled dejectedly, “How long, Adonai, how long?” But his rage did not abate. He turned around. Fast as lightning, the long march unrolled itself within him.
Mountains sank away, men vanished, the dream was wrenched into a new locale and the sleeper saw the Land of Canaan unfold above him on the low cane-lathed ceiling of his house—the Land of Canaan, like embroidered air, many-colored, richly ornamented, and trembling. To the south, the quivering desert of Idumea shifted like the back of a leopard. Farther on, the Dead Sea, thick and poisonous, drowned and drank the light. Beyond this stood inhuman Jerusalem, moated on every side by the commandments of Jehovah. Blood from God’s victims, from lambs and prophets, ran down its cobbled streets. Next came Samaria, dirty, trodden by idolators, with a well in the center and a rouged and powdered woman drawing water; and finally, at the extreme north, Galilee—sunny, modest, verdant. And flowing from one end of the dream to the other was the river Jordan, God’s royal artery, which passes by sandy wastes and rich orchards, John the Baptist and Samaritan heretics, prostitutes and the fishermen of Gennesaret, watering them all, indifferently.
The young man exulted in his sleep to see the holy water and soil. He stretched forth his hand to touch them, but the Promised Land, made up of dew, wind and age-old human desires, and illuminated like a rose by the dawn, suddenly flickered in the fluffy darkness and was snuffed out. And as it vanished he heard curses and bellowing voices and saw the numerous band of men reappear from behind the sharp rocks and the prickly pears, but completely changed now and unrecognizable. How crumpled and shriveled the giants had become, how stunted! They were panting dwarfs, imps gasping for breath, and their beards dragged along the ground. Each carried a strange implement of torture. Some held bloody leather belts studded with iron, some clasp knives and ox goads, some thick, wide-headed nails. Three midgets whose behinds nearly scraped the ground carried a massive, unwieldy cross; and last of all came the vilest of the lot, a cross-eyed pygmy holding a crown of thorns.
The redbeard leaned over, gazed at them and shook his large-boned head with disdain. The sleeper heard his thoughts: They don’t believe. That’s why they degenerated, that’s why I am being tormented: they don’t believe.
He extended his immense hairy hand. “Look!” he said, pointing to the plain below, which was drowned in morning hoar frost.
“We don’t see anything, Captain. It’s dark.”
“You don’t see anything? Why, then, don’t you believe?”
“We do, Captain, we do. That’s why we follow you. But we don’t see anything.”
“Look again!”
Lowering his hand like a sword, he pierced the hoar frost and uncovered the plain beneath. A blue lake was awakening. It smiled and glittered as it pushed aside its blanket of frost. Great nestfuls of eggs—villages and hamlets—gleamed brilliantly white under the date palms, all around its pebbly shores and in the middle of the fields of grain.
“He’s there,” said the leader, pointing to a large village surrounded by green meadows. The three windmills which overlooked it had opened their wings in the early dawn and were turning.
Terror suddenly poured over the sleeper’s dark, wheat-complexioned face. The dream had settled on his eyelids and was brooding there. Brushing his hand over his eyes to be rid of it, he tried as hard as he could to wake up. It’s a dream, he thought, I must awake and save myself. But the tiny men revolved about him obstinately and did not wish to leave. The savage-faced redbeard was now speaking to them, shaking his finger menacingly at the large village in the plain below.
“He’s there! He lives there in hiding, barefooted, dressed in rags, playing the carpenter, pretending he is not the One. He wants to save himself, but how can he escape us: God’s eyes have seen him! After him, lads!”
He raised his foot and got on his mark, but the dwarfs clung to his arms and legs. He lowered his foot again.