Brilliant. Challenging. Probably contributed to the unraveling of my childhood piety. ( )

La novela angustiosa, salvaje y tierna de las ultimas horas del Redentor, en que se basara Scorsese para su polemico filme que sacudio al mundo entero. Desbordante en plastica belleza poetica, Kazantzakis invoca todas las fuerzas de la naturaleza humana del Hombre-Dios, haciendonos vibrar con el hondo grito, casi un aullido, que sacudio al Golgota en la manana de la crucifixion. Esa tentacion de ser un hombre mas, uno de tantos, de escaparle al caliz del madero. El cuadro apacible de la sensatez humana y la opcion final, desgarradora redentora por la locura de la cruz.

Es un hecho incuestionable que Nicos Kazantzakis es un escritor universal, el primer novelista de la Grecia moderna cuyo nombre es conocido en el mundo entero. Sus obras se encuentran traducidas a más de cincuenta lenguas o dialectos. Su éxito internacional como narrador sigue siendo un caso único en las letras griegas. Pero, además, puede decirse que es un clásico porque en pleno siglo XXI su obra no ha perdido actualidad. Y es que, en una época como la nuestra, el pensamiento de este escritor inquieto e inconformista, sus preguntas existenciales y sus ansias de libertad permanecen llenas de sentido. "La última tentación" es una novela poliédrica y ambigua, cuya naturaleza resulta difícil delimitar. Se trata, sin duda, de una ficción simbólica, pero no queda claro si además es una ficción teológica, una alegoría política, una recreación evangélica, una confesión personal, un manifiesto espiritual e ideológico contra la Iglesia oficial, una búsqueda metafísica o un drama humano. Esta atrevidísima y personalísima interpretación de la andadura y del mensaje de Cristo levantó una tremenda polémica tanto en Grecia como en el extranjero, al presentar un Jesús demasiado humano para el gusto de los elementos más conservadores de los diferentes dogmas cristianos.

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Strongly recall, never saw the movie (which Mel Gibson produced amidst significant uproar). Felt it was sympathetic to both Judas and Jesus, and the role they each played to deliver God's message of salvation. I suppose I should have viewed Christ's hallucinations of life with Mary as more heretical. Marked as re-readable based on it's complexity, and to absorb more of its messages." 2022 note - viewed as heretical for more reasons than his life with Mary, portrays Jesus with a full range of human frailities. ( )

This book outraged religious sensibilities when it appeared more than a half-century ago, as did the Martin Scorsese film based on it. One of the most sensational aspects was its portrayal of Judas as the only disciple who knew in advance what the carpenter's son planned. Indeed, Jesus encouraged him to perform the crucial role in carrying it out. Yet this possibility was implicit in the gospel narratives, as borne out by the publication a few years ago of the second-century Gospel of Judas.
More shocking was depicting Jesus coming down from the cross and enjoying the delights of conjugal love with the sisters Mary and Martha, numerous offspring, and a long life of satisfying labor in Bethany. Dan Brown has done his bit to diminish the shock factor of that supposition.
But even without these writings, ancient and modern, the outrage was misplaced, based as it was on mistaking this book's genre. In the first place, it's a novel, not a work of history or theology. Further, it doesn't fit the genre of historical fiction. If that were its intention, one would toss it aside, not out of shock at its allegations, but for its careless disregard of geography and history.
Instead, this book reconfigures names, places, and events known from the New Testament to weave a story that bears resemblance in its rough contours to the gospel accounts but differs from it in significant ways. This difference is not limited to the details that offended the pious. More tellingly, it presents a Jesus who assumes a strict opposition between body and soul, making him more ancient Greek than ancient Jew. And his assumptions about heart and mind are those of our time, not his.
Jesus struggles with these dichotomies, torn by his yearning for an ascetic life crowned by crucifixion and his love of the earth—not so much its people, but its soil, its elemental, vegetative power. He is wracked by uncertainty; which of these two absolute extremes is the path to God?
I'm referring to this figure for simplicity as Jesus, but I enjoyed the skill with which Kazantzakis avoided this name until the climactic final chapters, referring to him instead by a series of appellations: son of Mary, the carpenter's son, the son of man, the son of God. It seemed to me a tacit hint that this figure was the author's invention (much as Paul of Tarsus, when he finally meets the man who didn't really die on the cross, insists he'll tell the story his way nonetheless).
Because of this, rather than toss the book aside for its "inaccuracies," I settled down to enjoy it, much as I enjoyed Python's Brian. And it is an enjoyable tale, well-told. The opening paragraphs of each chapter could stand alone as prose poems. The prose, luminous even in translation, is full of striking observations and a love of the sinews and odors of life.
And yet … The novel closes with a Jesus dying on the cross, content because he has overcome the last temptation. Yet, did he really? After swooning as he's affixed to the cross, he fails to recognize the tempter and willingly, joyfully succumbs to the delights against which he's been struggling throughout his life. A long, satisfying lifetime passes in a few hours, then he regains consciousness to find himself on the cross after all. So in a sense, he has it both ways. ( )