When I finished The Last Temptation of Christ (1952), I knew it would not be my last Nikos Kazantzakis novel. While The Last Temptation was introspective; Christ Recrucified is extrospective. Both are equally compelling.
SUSANNA CORREYA
Individual identity is manufactured without consent by the powerful and is forced on the powerless. The notables confer after Easter to discuss the next year’s passion play. They deliberate on the flaws and the merits of the commoners and assign them roles which cannot be declined, exchanged or disputed. The actors are advised to step into their characters and this engenders moral dilemmas and conflicts between
personal identity and assigned identity. The bottom line: just as sinners were essential to emphasize the perfectness of Christ, just as the persecutor was essential to emphasize the virtues of the martyr, lesser people are needed to emphasize greater people.
Privileged castes and races use the same modus operandi. To preserve their superiority, they ensure the inferiority of the “other”. Consider how white colonizers cherry-picked verses from the Bible to vindicate the slavery of blacks and how elite castes appeal to ancient texts to rationalize the socio-cultural hierarchy.
We also see how people latch on to fatalistic and deterministic creeds to justify the misery of their fellow humans. When a band of starving foreigners begs for alms in Lycovrissi, they are treated with contempt and ridicule by Pope Grigoris, a miser and hoarder of wealth. Manolios, the shepherd chosen for the role of Christ, moves people to charity. Money and wealth are not inherently evil and poverty does not predispose people to charity. What the Buddha called “attachment” or “desire” and what St. Paul called “the love of money” are shown to be the roots of all evil.
If not identity, the overarching theme of the novel is the misuse and abuse of power. Pope Grigrois thinks he owns God and can dispense Him to people at a price. The commercialization
of religion is a pressing concern which did not end with the Reformation. The grace of God is still peddled and cheapened, but this is a subject for another article.
The word “passion” is derived from the Latin “pati”, which means “to suffer”. Christ Recrucified urges us to not passively spectate at the passion, Christ’s or anyone’s, but actively engage in “compassion”. (“Compassion” means “to suffer with”.) Maybe then, we will not lament at the end of our journey like the author at the end of his book, “In vain, my Christ, in vain.”∎
