Crete as lyrical vision and setting in the Odyssey of nikos Kazantzakis

Abstract

The island of Crete, birthplace of Kazantzakis, marks the writer in his life and work. In the Odyssey, his major creation summit, the island is portrayed like a poetic vision, with some of most beautiful verses of the poem. Crete is, also, the setting of four rhapsodies. It is the place where Helen finds his final way and where Ulysses takes the side of the opressed and destitutes. There he has an active participation in a revolution to overthrow king Idomeneus and to destroy the established order, a tyrannic and corrupted regime. The Cretan land, which appears in other important works of Kazantzakis (Alexis Zorbas, Freedom or death and Letter to the Greco, is seen like the field in which one of Odysseus most significant actions takes place; where the routes of the poem's two more important characters are defined: Ulysses and Helen.