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The Relation of Kazantzakis's Kapetan Michalis to Homer's Iliad and

Shakespeare's Othello

Article in Journal of Modern Greek Studies · January 2010

DOI: 10.1353/mgs.0.0086

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The Relation of Kazantzakis's Kapetan Michalis to Homer's Iliad
and Shakespeare's Othello
Michael Paschalis

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Supplement to Volume 28,

Number 1, May 2010, pp. 143-172 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/mgs.0.0086

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mgs/summary/v028/28.1A.paschalis.html

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 The Relation of Kazantzakis’s
Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad
and Shakespeare’s Othello
Michael Paschalis

Abstract

The literary sources of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novels have attracted little schol-
arly attention, most probably because there are usually few surface markers
to direct the reader to any of the sources. Another is the fact that source-texts
do not generally belong to the twentieth century, the period of time on which
studies of Kazantzakis have focused, and, in some cases, they may require
specialized knowledge of classical Greek literature. A third reason is that the
novels have only become the object of purely literary studies in recent years.
Most of the scholarship on them is focused on the thoughts of the novelist and
not the construction of the novelistic text. This study of Καπετάν Μιχάλης
(Kapetan Michalis) complements an earlier one in which I attempted to show
the importance of Homer, Plato, Dante, and Shakespeare as literary background
to Kazantzakis’s first successful novel. Here I argue that Homer’s Iliad and
Shakespeare’s Othello are major source-texts for Kapetan Michalis. To the
former it owes its main plot structure and some individual themes and from
the latter it derived Michalis’s jealousy of Polyxingis and the murder of Emine.
The hero’s complex inner world originates partly in the fusion of these epic and
dramatic features. The fact that in the present study I concentrate on certain
aspects of the novel, however, does not mean that I underestimate others.

Kapetan Michalis and the Iliad

The appeal and influence of Homer’s Odyssey in literature and art has
been far greater than that of the Iliad. The main reasons are the arche-
typal significance of the voyage of Odysseus; the richness of its themes
that encompass almost every aspect of human experience and relations;
and the appeal, complexity, completeness (to use the term of James Joyce
[Budgen 1934:16–17]), and adaptability (to use William B. Stanford’s
term [Stanford 1968]) of its main hero and other characters. In a recent
monograph, Edith Hall identifies 15 key themes in the Odyssey and uses
them to illustrate the extensive and diverse effect that Homer’s work has

Journal of Modern Greek Studies 28 (2010) 143–172 © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

143
144 Michael Paschalis

had on all manner of inquiry, expression, and art (2008). In Western

literature of the twentieth century the dominance of the Odyssey is abso-
lute. In a vivid description of this period, Piero Boitani writes that “we
see Ulysses virtually jettisoning across the planet and beyond, towards
the ‘Space Odyssey of 2001,’” adding that a full list of the sightings of
the hero “would rival Mozart’s catalogue of Don Giovanni’s exploits”
(1994:124).
Modern Greek literature of the early nineteenth century displayed
a distinct preference for the Iliad. That the emerging Greek nation pre-
paring for and later struggling for independence and a literary identity
should have turned to the Iliad rather than the Odyssey is no surprise.
From 1811 to 1820, Adamantios Korais published four volumes of an
annotated edition of the Iliad, accompanied by respective prolegomena
which constitute one of the earliest specimens of modern Greek fictional
prose. In the next decade, Andreas Kalvos and Dionysios Solomos, the
founding poets of the more recent phase of modern Greek literature,
displayed an exclusive preference for the Iliad. Their views of Homer,
interests, and taste were heavily influenced by Italian neoclassicism.
Indicative of this taste is Solomos’s poem “The Shade of Homer,” through
which he claimed for himself the Homeric heritage like his Italian and
Roman predecessors.1
Modern Greek literature of the twentieth century followed the
general European trend in showing its preference for the Odyssey. Works
inspired by the Homeric Iliad are comparatively few. The best known
instance until 1950 of a single prose work adapting Iliadic themes is the
novel, Eroica, by Kosmas Politis, published in 1937. It tells the story of a
few weeks in the lives of a group of boys growing up in Smyrna (Izmir),
who play mock-heroic games reminiscent of the war at Troy. In the course
of these games they pass into adolescence through the experience of
death and love. The title renders the notion of heroism (eroica) and
simultaneously plays on the notion of love (erotica). There are numerous
direct references and allusions to the Iliad and an Iliadic subtext links
together the main heroes of the novel (Mackridge 1979:79–83; Beaton
1985:43–45; Politis 1995:μ΄–μβ΄).
In the prologue to Alexis Zorbas, Kazantzakis ranks Homer first
among the four persons who left the deepest traces on his soul, the
other three being Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alexis
­Zorbas (1946). He displayed a life-long interest in Homer’s Odyssey and
produced his own monumental Odyssey (1938), a modern sequel to the
ancient Odyssey numbering 33,333 lines; the drama Odysseus (1928);
and a translation of the Homeric Odyssey (1965). Homer’s Odyssey had
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 145

also a pervasive influence on the rest of his work, including the novels.
His semi-fictional autobiography, entitled Report to Greco (1961) and
published posthumously, closes with the author figuring as another
Odysseus (Stamatiou 1983:183, 105–139; Bretschneider 2007; Paschalis
2007:1144–1155). Rather late in his life he undertook two Iliadic projects:
the translation of Homer’s Iliad and the novel Kapetan Michalis: Freedom
or Death. The translation was begun in 1942 and was a joint project with
Ioannis Kakridis. Kazantzakis wrote Kapetan Michalis in 1949–1950 and
published it in 1953, at the time he was revising his translation of the
Iliad (1952–1953).2
The first eight chapters of the novel depict characters, relations, and
events in the Greek community of Megalo Kastro (modern Heraklion),
relations of the Cretans with the Turks living in the same town, and the
tension and incidents that escalate to the armed conflict of the second
part. Chapters Nine to Fourteen deal with an uprising of the Cretans
against the Turks. It is that of 1889, but the narrative has incorporated
elements from other Cretan revolts (Bien 2007:463–471). The uprising
is triggered by the actions of Kapetan Michalis and his brother Manou-
sakas who also have a family feud with the Turk Nouri Bey. Nouri kills
Manousakas, but in the fight is himself emasculated and later commits
suicide out of shame. The Turkish community seeks revenge and many
of the Christians of Megalo Kastro are slaughtered while Michalis and
others take to the mountains to fight for freedom. Sexual desire and its
implications are key themes in the novel. Michalis desires the Circassian
Emine, the wife of Nouri, but it is Kapetan Polyxingis who wins her and
takes her with him to the mountains. During the siege of the Monastery
of Christ the Lord by the Turks, Nouri’s relatives abduct Emine and
Michalis abandons his post in order to rescue her. In his absence, the
monastery is burned and later Michalis murders Emine because, in his
mind, she was the cause of his shameful desertion. Michalis dies fighting
the enemy with a small force on Mt. Selena.
It was Michalis Meraklis who first associated Kapetan Michalis with
the Homeric Iliad, but his article is a personal piece with little scholarly
value (1977). The most informative work is a brief article by Elizabeth
Constantinides entitled, “Kazantzakis and the Cretan hero.” In this she
describes Kapetan Michalis as “a reworking of certain themes, incidents,
and characters from ancient Greek heroic myth, particularly the Iliad.”
She believed, wrongly in my view, that Kazantzakis used ancient myth
as an organizing principle of the novel in the manner of T.S. Eliot’s
“mythical method” (1984:36, 38). With the exception of Roderick Beaton,
who has acutely recognized the structural importance of the Iliad for
146 Michael Paschalis

Kazantzakis’s novel, scholars have shown little interest in comparing the

two works apart from occasionally citing a couple of well-known Iliadic
echoes (Beaton 1988:196).
What has attracted attention in recent years is a broader issue, the
association of Kapetan Michalis with epic. For this association we have
statements by Kazantzakis himself. In a letter dated 14 December 1953,
he calls Kapetan Michalis “the epic novel of Crete” (1977:192).. In another,
dated 6 June 1954 and written at a time when Kapetan Michalis had come
under attack from extreme religious and nationalistic circles, Kazantzakis
writes in defense of his novel that it is not “realistic,” describing words and
actions “with natural fidelity and human measure” («με φυσιολογική ακρί-
βεια και ανθρώπινο μέτρο»), but an “epic” work and therefore “characters
had to be drawn above the natural measure [«υπερφυσικά»] because “the
natural measure of epic is above the natural measure” («το υπερφυσικό
είναι το φυσικό μέτρο του έπους»). He continues: “Many people do not
know these things and are surprised by the exaggeration («υπερβολή»),
but the whole work is epic and the heroes move on the top floor of life
where Essences («Ουσίες») rule” (1958:86).
Peter Bien has repeatedly criticized Kazantzakis’s epic aspirations,
calling Kapetan Michalis “an epic manqué.” He recently summarized
his position as follows: “Kapetán Michalis is aesthetically flawed because
while it aspires to belong to the epic genre and therefore to celebrate
the achievements of heroic personages in a heightened fashion involving
supernatural measure, it admits so many other elements from disparate
modes that it meets neither the expectations established by epic nor those
dictated by the competing modes that are introduced” (2007:450–476).
Roderick Beaton and Dimitris Tziovas have expressed their own views
on the question raised by Bien (Beaton 1998; Tziovas 1998; cf. Roilos
2006). Because this debate is not the immediate concern of this study,
I limit my argument to some brief, general points.
First, Kazantzakis’s judgments on Kapetan Michalis are not compre-
hensive and systematic expositions. The classification of the novel as epic
is found only in the above-mentioned letters.3 Also, the elevated charac-
ter of the novel is sometimes viewed as patriotic (as in the prologue to
Kapetan Michalis) and sometimes as spiritual, as a struggle for the “delivery
of the soul.” In a letter dated 9 May 1950, Kazantzakis summarizes the
meaning of Kapetan Michalis: “I have finished Kapetan Michalis—a tragic
work, the struggle for Freedom, the desire existing since the beginning of
time for the soul to be delivered, for matter to be delivered, to become
spirit, for God to be delivered from all human virtues that weighed on
him and become Spirit too” (Eleni Kazantzaki 1977:567). These views
are representative of the two aspects of the struggle for freedom found
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 147

in the novel itself—the collective struggle for liberation from the Turks
and Michalis’s struggle for freedom of the spirit. In the Western tradi-
tion, as well as in Kazantzakis’s own ranking, epic stood at the top of the
hierarchy of genres (followed by drama).
This brings up my second point. Kazantzakis did not think highly of
his own novels initially, but considered them as a sort of entertainment
break until he could go back to his “serious” work. After the success
of his first novels, however, he tacitly changed his mind (cf. Paschalis
2006b:159–160). The classification of Kapetan Michalis as epic could be
construed as an effort on the part of Kazantzakis to upgrade the generic
status of his novel. My third point is that, within the novel itself, elements
of different origin or mode work successfully together. The organization
of action around Michalis turns out to be a unifying factor. Thus the
author manages to accommodate the comic and the heroic in his plot: two
of the “jesters” who entertain Michalis in his cellar in the early chapters
of the novel, conducting themselves in a manner which would hardly
qualify as “epic,” in the end die fighting at his side on Mt. Selena. The
author’s association of Kapetan Michalis with epic constitutes in principle
adequate reason for conducting an investigation into the novel’s generic
pedigree. Showing the Iliadic origin of the plot structure enriches our
understanding of issues like those raised above.
Since the relation of Kapetan Michalis to the Iliad is a broad subject,
I limit myself here to methodological points and an outline of the novel’s
Iliadic structure. The novel begins exactly like Homer’s Iliad, with the
“wrath” of the Cretan hero:
Ο καπετάν Μιχάλης έτριξε τα δόντια του, όπως το συνηθούσε όταν τον καβαλίκευε
ο θυμός. (Kazantzakis 1981:13)
Kapetan Michalis gnashed his teeth as he used to do when wrath took
hold of him.

Michalis’s bursts of anger are a vital feature of his temperament and are
feared by Turks and Greeks alike, even by God himself as a character
notes (Kazantzakis 1981:145). But the reader will not easily make the
connection of the “wrath” of Michalis with the “wrath” of Achilles and
hence of Kapetan Michalis with the Iliad, unless he/she has more tangible
evidence, like the following, well-known instance: when Nouri kills him-
self, his black stallion mourns his master, as Achilles’s horses weep for
dead Patroclus in the Iliad (17.426–440), and eventually it starves itself
to death on its master’s grave. Here is the most characteristic passage,
followed by the Homeric lines:
148 Michael Paschalis

They gazed at the horse. It had bowed its head over the grave, so that its
bluish mane hung as far down as the earth; you would think that it had
loosened its hair ready to start the lamentation; it stamped on the grave
with its hoof, neighed sorrowfully and called to its buried master. (Kazant-
zakis 1981:283)

They stayed beside their ornate chariot,

immobile, like a stone standing on the tomb
of some dead man or woman, heads bowed down to earth.
Warm tears flowed from their eyes onto the ground,
as they cried, longing for their driver. Their thick manes,
covered in dirt, trailed down below their harnesses
on both sides of the yoke. (Iliad 17.433–439)

Kazantzakis is here re-working the Homeric passage, which he had many

times seen as a reader and translator of the Iliad.4 In addition to the image
of the mourning horses, the novel also adapts the Homeric gravestone
simile by making Nouri’s stallion lament over his master’s grave. By now
the reader may have been convinced that it is worth pursuing a systematic
comparison of Kapetan Michalis with the Iliad, but there is the question
of interpretation. Why is Nouri associated with Patroclus? Constantinides
identified him with Hector: “Nouri Bey is, like Hector, a man of courage
and honor, devoted to his wife and home. Yet he must set aside peace
and comfort because duty to his father and people bid him challenge
his enemy and fight with him to the death” (1984:38).5
It is common knowledge that characters in works revisiting the
Homeric epics do not always relate to Homeric characters on a one-to-one
basis, but display multiple and complex correspondences (as in Virgil’s
Aeneid, where Dido has incorporated aspects of Calypso, Nausikaa, Circe,
etc., and Aeneas first plays Odysseus and then Achilles). In Chapter
One, Nouri plays Menelaus, though here he obviously plays Patroclus,
but why? Vrasidas Karalis has seen traces of feminine sexuality in Nouri
and a “latent homosexual relationship” with his blood-brother Michalis
(1997:90). Whether one agrees or disagrees with Karalis that Kapetan
Michalis is a “disguised homosexual romance,” there is a factual ele-
ment here. Before dying, Manousakas strikes Nouri in the genitals with
his knife and emasculates him. Later Nouri kills himself out of shame
when Michalis refuses to fight him for precisely this reason. Immediately
after the fight with Manousakas, the writer makes Nouri ride his black
stallion sideways, like a woman. The Achilles-Patroclus relationship was
frequently viewed in antiquity as homosexual; a major source is Plato’s
Symposium (Phaedrus’s speech, 179e–180b). Kazantzakis was very famil-
iar with the Platonic work and the Symposium was his preferred reading
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 149

(Paschalis 2007:1156–1164).6 In these terms the intertextual association

of emasculated Nouri with Patroclus would make sense.
I began by discussing the association of Michalis with Homeric
Achilles as the opening lines of Kazantzakis’s novel suggest. There is
a passage where he is directly compared with Achilles, but it raises a
methodological point of a different kind. In Chapter Eleven, a Philhel-
lene named Errikos comes to Michalis’s mountain camp and voices his
enthusiasm for the life of the Cretan fighters: “I like it here. Nowhere
have I eaten tastier bread, drunk immortal water like this, seen better
ancient Greeks than you. I will not call you Kapetan Michalis but Kapetan
Achilles. My name is Errikos” (Kazantzakis 1981:413). Now Errikos,
whom the Cretans nicknamed “Koukourikos” because of a “tuft of hair”
(«κοκοράκι») that always fluttered on top of his head, is a rather comic
character. Later, a Cretan fighter brings him as a present the head of a
Turk that drips blood on his shoes; Errikos faints at the sight and soon
departs from the camp. This quasi-anecdotal episode parodies conven-
tional views of modern Greeks as descendants of the ancient Greeks. It
also has a significant metaliterary function in parodying Greek histori-
cal fiction of the past, where modern and ancient Greece merged as in
foreign travelers’ accounts (Paschalis 2006a:17–18). Kazantzakis is simply
warning his readers that the novel’s relation to the Iliad is complex and
should not be confined to or confused with superficial identifications
like the above.
In the novel, tension between Cretans and Turks that builds up to
an armed conflict provides the frame. What works within it are human
relationships and especially sexual desire and the struggle of the hero’s
novel with his «δαίμονες» (demons), as he calls them.7 In order to orga-
nize the interplay of love and war, of private and public relationships
and conflicts, Kazantzakis chose the archetypal Iliadic model, which had
been adapted a few years earlier in Politis’s Eroica (1995).
The events of the Iliad are organized around two conflicts: an
external one involving Achaeans and Trojans and an internal one—the
clash between Agamemnon and Achilles. The abduction (or elopement)
of Helen, Menelaus’s wife, by the Trojan Paris provokes the war between
the Achaeans and Trojans. When Agamemnon decides to take Briseis,
Achilles’s war prize, to compensate for the loss of Chryseis, Achilles is
angered and withdraws from the battlefield, an action that proves detri-
mental to the Achaean cause. The two conflicts interact in a number of
ways, the most obvious of which is structural. The arrangement of the
first books of the Iliad invites the reader to connect them: Book 1 tells of
the clash between Achilles and Agamemnon over Briseis, which provokes
the “wrath” of the hero, the theme of the Iliad. Book 3 anachronistically
150 Michael Paschalis

takes us back to the origin of the war—with Helen’s weaving of a tapestry

depicting scenes of the Trojan War, her appearance on the wall where
she goes longing to see her former husband and identifies the Achaean
leaders for Priam, the duel between Paris and Menelaus, which re-enacts
the original crime, and Helen’s meeting with a disguised Aphrodite whose
promise of the heroine to Paris in the beauty judgment on Mt. Ida is
the original cause of the war. In the course of the narrative of Book 3,
numerous comments from all sides refer to the origins of the war and
Helen’s role (Stanley 1993:39–50, 60–66; Felson and Slatkin 2006:91–103;
Louden 2006:53–79; Gottschall 2008:57–80; Maguire 2009:10–12).
According to Beaton’s reading of Kapetan Michalis, “the whole
book is built around two triangular sets of relationships” (1998:197). A
close look at these relationships, their origin, and function shows that
they adapt the archetypal Iliadic pattern. In Kapetan Michalis, there is an
external conflict, between Cretans and Turks, and a conflict within the
Cretan community and Cretan camp. Relationships are more complex
than in the Iliad, one reason being that the enslaved Cretans and their
conquerors live side by side and another that, within the novel’s Iliadic
pattern, there are several other factors and strategies at work. Helen
and Briseis have merged into the beautiful Circassian Emine, Nouri’s
wife. The conflict over her involves both communities and camps, but
Kazantzakis gives prominence to what happens within the Cretan com-
munity and Cretan camp in the novel.
Michalis first sees Emine in Chapter One in a Paris-Helen-Menelaus
situation. Just as Paris was once entertained by Menelaus in Sparta,
Michalis comes as a guest to Nouri’s house. His mood has been somber
since the morning and, in order to lighten his heart, Nouri makes an
unprecedented gesture of hospitality allowing his wife Emine to play
and sing for him with her face unveiled. Michalis becomes immediately
obsessed with her and she with him. Later, Emine in the role of Briseis,
becomes the object of desire in a conflict within the Cretan community
and the Cretan camp that adapts the Achilles/Agamemnon clash in the
Iliad and its impact on the common cause. Michalis/Achilles develops
an erotic rivalry with Kapetan Polyxingis who is smitten by Emine in
Chapter Three and soon takes her to bed. This desire and its implica-
tions trigger action of central significance, public and private. The first
incident between Greeks and Turks—Michalis’s riding on his mare
into the Turkish coffee house—brings to a climax the hero’s emotional
reaction to his desire for Emine and jealousy of Kapetan Polyxingis
(1981:155–161).8 Michalis’s jealousy progressively increases, extending
into the time of the Cretan uprising. Emine is about to be baptized in a
Minoan tub, receiving the eloquent and suggestive name “Helen,” and
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 151

marry Polyxingis who is away defending the Monastery of Christ the Lord
with Michalis (1981:351). Emine, in the role of Helen, is abducted by
relatives of her late husband (1981:396) and Michalis deserts his post
in order to rescue her (1981:371–372), just as Achilles abandoned the
common cause because of his feud with Agamemnon over Briseis. In
his absence, and because of it, the monastery is taken and burned; he
blames the temptress for the desertion and so kills her.
The battle for the monastery is the most important military event
in the novel. On a literary level, it reworks the holocaust of the Arkadi
Monastery in the uprising of 1866, a landmark in the history of the Cretan
struggle for freedom. Later Kapetan Elias tells Michalis that his mere
presence would have saved the monastery because the Turks feared him
(1981:382). In the Iliad, Iris, sent by Hera, advises Achilles, who has lost
Patroclus and his armor, to appear at the camp’s trench because the mere
sight of him will demoralize the Trojans, and Achilles does as instructed
(18.198–199). Thus, Michalis’s desertion for the sake of Emine re-writes
the destruction of the monastery from an Iliadic viewpoint, Achilles’s
withdrawal from the battle. In the end, Michalis chooses death over life,
again as Achilles did. Achilles knew that, after killing Hector, he too
was destined to die, and Michalis chose to stay and die fighting instead
of accepting the repeated offers of an honorable withdrawal from his
stronghold. Just before he is killed, he realizes that what matters most
is not the patriotic code of “Freedom or death,” but the struggle itself,
and that the struggle is forever—it is “Freedom and death.”

Kapetan Michalis and Shakespeare’s Othello

The murder of Emine reproduces the Kazantzakian stereotype of females

as temptresses who suffer violent deaths, but it can be argued that the
literary inspiration for Michalis’s feelings and motive for the killing came
from Shakespeare’s Othello.
According to information provided by Pandelis Prevelakis and
Eleni Kazantzaki, Kazantzakis’s interest in Shakespeare went back many
years before he wrote Kapetan Michalis. In April of 1930, he asked Pre-
velakis for a copy of the Greek translation of The Tempest by Konstan-
tinos Theotokis, which he seems to have received in February of 1933
(Kazantzakis 1984:193, 366). In the same year he wrote of Shakespeare:
“. . . I think there is no greater writer than he” and wished he could
write like him (Kazantzakis 1984:403). In June of 1936, he wrote the
canto “Shakespeare” (1960:107–113). From July to November of 1939,
Kazantzakis traveled to England at the invitation of the British Council.
During his stay, he visited Stratford, where he was the guest of Miss Joe
152 Michael Paschalis

MacLeod in the house which used to belong to Shakespeare’s daughter

Susanna (Kazantzakis 1984:386). “After Stratford a new tiger mounted
him, Shakespeare,” writes Eleni Kazantzaki (1977:458). The travel revived
his interest in The Tempest, the play which two years later will provide
inspiration for elements of Alexis Zorbas (Kazantzakis 1984:483, 489–490;
Paschalis 2007:1184–1191). He was also thinking of translating one of
Shakespeare’s plays and eventually translated Othello. In 1941, he made
efforts for its performance at the Kotopouli Theater, but no trace of
the translation has so far been found (Kazantzaki 1977:458, 468, 476;
Kazantzakis 1984:499–500).9
In the first months of 1940, he wrote Ταξιδεύοντας, Αγγλία (Eng-
land: A Travel Journal) with a prologue dated “Summer 1940”; it was
first published in 1941 (Kazantzakis 1984:386–387). Chapters 11 and 12
deal with Shakespeare and Kazantzakis discusses his development as a
dramatist, which he sees culminate in The Tempest: it is the moment when
Shakespeare “frees” himself from the “crisis” of the years 1601–1610 and
identifies with Prospero. In the spring of 1940, Kazantzakis toured Crete
from west to east and the only books he took with him were Dante’s Divine
Comedy and Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Kazantzakis 1984:386).10
Elsewhere I have discussed the incorporation in Alexis Zorbas,
Kazantzakis’s first successful novel, of material from Shakespeare’s The
Tempest (Paschalis 2007). I pointed out similarities between the narrator
and Prospero and how Kazantzakis constructed a comic scenario inspired
by the Shakespearean play for the first meeting of Zorba with Madame
Hortense. In the scenario, the narrator and Zorba are shipwrecked on an
imaginary island; Hortense plays the Queen of the island, Zorba a prince
in disguise, and the people play Caliban (an anagram of cannibal). When
the narrator later asks Hortense, “What Shakespeare was it that sent you
here among the cannibals?” («ανθρωποφάγους»), Hortense remembers “a
fearful, big black man” («έναν φοβερό αράπακα»), whom she had seen in
a theater in Alexandria, and proudly exclaims: “What Shakespeare? The
one they also call Othello?” (Paschalis 2007:1187–1191).11 These refer-
ences may not be unrelated to a famous line in Othello: “the Cannibals
that each other eat, the Anthropophagi” (1.3.143–144).12
It is, therefore, in Alexis Zorbas that Kazantzakis the novelist first
alludes to Othello. The re-writing of The Tempest and Othello in this novel
brings to mind Kazantzakis’s comic version of Othello in his play Ο Οθέλ-
λος ξαναγυρίζει (Othello returns). It is a three-act comedy written in 1937,
published posthumously in 1962, and first staged at the National Theater
in 1988. Kapetan Michalis offers two further versions of Shakespeare’s
play—a “comic” one narrated by Bertodoulos to Michalis in Chapters
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 153

Three and Four and a “serious” one absorbed into the plot and in which
the main hero plays Othello.
There are specific reasons for Kazantzakis’s interest in these two
plays of Shakespeare. The literary and ideological connections of Crete
with Africa are prominent in his work and the identity he constructed for
himself. He used to talk of his «αραβίτικη καταγωγή» (“Arabian origins”)
and call Crete an «αφρικανικό νησί» (“African island”). His interest in
Africa found narrative expression especially in the plot of his Odyssey
and in his novel Toda Raba. In Alexis Zorbas, it assumed an internal form.
One area in which it is revealed is intertextual relations and, specifically,
the incorporation of elements from The Tempest. It should furthermore
be noted that the action of Shakespeare’s play unfolds on an exotic
Mediterranean island that has strong connections with Africa, and one
of its intertexts is the meeting in African Carthage of two famous Vir-
gilian characters—the Trojan Aeneas and Queen Dido.13 Similarly, the
hero of Othello is a Moor who exhibits Arabian as well as Negro features
and, except for Act One, the action unfolds on another Mediterranean
island—Cyprus (Hall 2003).
Historically Cyprus and Crete share many common fortunes—they
were first occupied by the Venetians and later by the Ottomans, with a
time difference of 100 years: Cyprus in 1571 and Crete in its entirety
in 1669, after a 21-year long siege of Chandakas (modern Heraklion).
Shakespeare’s Othello was first performed in 1603–1604, a few months
after the publication of Richard Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turks
which appeared in the autumn of 1603.14 The hero of the play is sent
to Cyprus to defend the island against an approaching Ottoman fleet.
For reasons associated with the requirements of dramatic action, the
Ottoman fleet is destroyed by storms before reaching Cyprus, but the
movements of the Turkish navy in the play are informed by Knolles’s
account of the capture of the island. Shakespeare’s audience would have
associated the play with historical events (Bullough 1978:211–214; Had-
field 2003:10–11; McJannet 2006:119–140). Kazantzakis most certainly did
and, in addition, in his literary projects the fortunes of Cyprus and Crete
were closely linked. According to the outline of his planned epic, Akritas,
which seems to have achieved a more concrete form during the writer’s
travel to England in 1939,15 in Books Eight and Nine the hero appears
first in Famagusta (at the castle of Othello on the date of Shakespeare’s
death) and then leaves for Crete to take part in the defense of Megalo
Kastro besieged by the Ottomans:
He remembers his ancestors, creates the epic Akritas. Cyprus, Famagusta,
Castle of Othello (23/4/1614, the date of Shakespeare’s death).16 Sweetness
154 Michael Paschalis

of the island, Rodaphnousa, Akritas a song-maker, sings his epic. He leaves

for Crete, Siege of [Megalo] Kastro . . . (Kazantzakis 1984:488)

In terms of historical memory Kapetan Michalis begins precisely at this

point, with the hero of the novel recollecting the fall of Megalo Kastro
to the Turks (Kazantzakis 1981:14–15).
The presence of Othello in Kapetan Michalis is of two kinds: explicit
and “comic,” in the form of a brief version of the play narrated by Ber-
todoulos to Michalis and implicit and “serious,” absorbed into the plot
of the play. The story of Bertodoulos is given in two parts located in two
successive chapters—Three and Four.
When Michalis was in a bad mood (something hardly infrequent),
he used to invite to his cellar four Greeks (and occasionally a Turk) to
entertain him. They were his «τζουτζέδες,» or «καραγκιόζηδες» (“jesters”).
They would eat and drink at will, vomit, and start afresh, but were not
permitted to leave the cellar until he had given them permission. One
would play the lyre, another would dance, and others would do whatever
Michalis commanded, sometimes with the use of his whip, to lighten his
heavy heart. He would usually keep them in the cellar for a week.17 One
particular Sunday of oppressive heat, Michalis descended to his cellar
before dawn and sent for his τζουτζέδες. This time was different because
a new «δαίμονας» (“she-demon”) had entered his soul since the time he
saw Emine at Nouri’s house. Unlike the «δαίμονες» of his stock, “this one
laughed, was shameless, smelled of musk and—what a shame!—had a
woman’s face” (1981:76). Michalis wondered what was wrong with him.
He had everything, but could not laugh, tell a joke, or say a friendly
word, and could not find pleasure in anything (1981:100).
One of his jesters was a little old man, an impoverished count from
the island of Zakynthos, nicknamed “Bertodoulos” because he would wrap
himself in a green «μπέρτα» (“cloak”) for protection against the cold. He
had come to teach the wild Cretans the guitar and the melodies of his
native place, but had not had any success. He ended up telling stories of
his real or fictitious past glories in coffee houses. Michalis heard him one
day talking of Zakynthos and saying that no Turk had ever conquered it
and that it was there that Solomos had written his “Hymn to Liberty”18
(1981:105). He thought he would do for his cellar and hired him on a
monthly salary. In order to entertain Michalis on that particular Sunday,
Bertodoulos told him the following story. It is given in two parts because
Michalis interrupts him and then an earthquake follows. He resumes
later when asked to by Michalis.
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 155

Bertodoulos’s version of Shakespeare’s Othello

“Most glorious Kapetan Michalis,” he started in his drawling, singing voice,
“may I tell you, to pass the time, a famous old tale from Venice? I saw it
with my own eyes on the stage, and since then my heart has not been able
to find rest. How often have I forgotten the bitter moments in my life,
because I brought to my mind Disdemona, that nobleman’s daughter so
unjustly killed!”
“Who?” asked Kapetan Michalis, frowning. “Disdemona, my good
Kapetan Michalis, the noblewoman from Venice—haven’t you heard of
her?—whom a black man loved. A famous stout-hearted man he was, but
he was jealous and killed her from the heat of love. He took a handker-
chief . . .”
Kapetan Michalis stretched the palm of his hand to stop the shameless
mouth. “In my presence, Bertodoulos,” he said,” “there will be no talk of
women.” Bertodoulos shriveled up, and the Venetian tale remained stuck
in his throat. (Kazantzakis 1981:113)
He turned to Bertodoulos: “What was that she-demon (δαιμόνα)—what did
you say her name was?” he asked suddenly.
“Disdemona, my dear Kapetan Michalis, a noble maid from Venice.
Her hair was honey gold and wound in plaits three times around her head,
like a royal crown. She had a beauty spot, too, on her cheek . . .”
He was not sure about the hair style or the beauty mark of Disde-
mona; but he liked beauty spots on the cheek and hair braided and wound
around the head.
“Go on!”
“Well, to make a long story short, my dear Kapetan Michalis, this
delicately-bred noble maid—what a things it is, human soul!—fell in love
with a big black man, old, tall and clumsy, with large feet. But, to give the
Devil his due, he was a good man. And why do you think she fell in love
with him? Because one night the old wreck decided to tell her his whole
life in every detail. And the girl was so stirred and felt such strong sympathy
for what he had seen and suffered, that she burst into tears and fell into
his arms. . . .’ My dear big black man,’ she told him, ‘don’t be sad. I will
comfort you. I will bring a smile to your lips.’”
Bertodoulos stopped, filled his cup to the brim and sighed.
“Go on!” commanded Kapetan Michalis again.
“Please forgive me, my dear Kapetan Michalis, I made a mess,” said
Bertodoulos, scratching his pointed skull to remember. “Weird things hap-
pened,” he said eventually. “They are no longer in Venice, they traveled
to Cyprus. They got married, I think, and a white officer with gold stripes
came between them. And then . . . have forgotten again . . . there was this
handkerchief . . .”
“A handkerchief? Now you have started to stammer, Bertodoulos.”
“No, No, I am not stammering, most glorious one: a handkerchief,
156 Michael Paschalis

a real handkerchief. But it must have been poisoned, bewitched—how

should I know? And the black man became furious with jealousy and one
night—ah, this night keeps gnawing me—he stuffed the handkerchief into
Disdemona’s mouth and . . .”
He broke into tears, took out his little handkerchief, wiped his eyes
and forehead and gave a loud cry: “. . . and smothered her!”
The four drunken men, who had stretched their necks from all sides
to listen, burst out laughing.
But Kapetan Michalis became angry.
“Shut up!” he shouted.
Then he turned to Bertodoulos:
“It’s not your fault,” he said, “it was my fault for asking.”
He leaned his head heavily against the wall and closed his eyes:
“The black man was right,” he thought, “he did the right thing.”
(Kazantzakis 1981:136–138)

The sensitive heart of the narrator was moved to tears as he was telling
the story, but Kapetan Michalis thought about it differently.
In Chapter One, Kazantzakis introduces Michalis’s memory of the
Cretan past, as the hero glances at the Venetian fortress named Koules
and the winged marble lion of Venice and next recollects the siege and
capture of Megalo Kastro by the Turks (1981:14–15). The «περίφημη παλιά
ιστορία της Βενετιάς» (“famous old story from Venice”) must have struck
a familiar chord in him. He may have expected something historical,
based on what Bertodoulos was saying about Zakynthos on the day he
heard him and recruited him for his cellar. What first startled Michalis in
Bertodoulos’s tale and caused him to frown was the name “Disdemona.”
All other names of Shakespeare’s play are left out, apparently because they
were not significant for the narrative. The tale turned out to be about
a woman and a love-affair, topics quite unacceptable to Michalis as the
reader already knows from Chapter One (1981:22). Consequently, he
angrily stopped the speaker, but his mind remained fixed on this name
which sounded vaguely familiar to him. He had instinctively made the
connection of «Δισδεμόνα» with his own «δαίμονας»—Emine. So later,
after the interruption, he asked Bertodoulos with notable curiosity: «Τι
’ταν αυτή η δαιμόνα;» (“What was that she-demon?”) “What did you say
her name was?”
Regarding “Disdemona,”19 as a proper name it was first used by
Giovan Battista Giraldi (1504–1573) in the seventh novella of the third
decade of his Hecatommiti (Giraldi 1853:69–75), which is the principal
source of Shakespeare’s Othello (Bullough 1978:194–202).20 It has been
noted that Giraldi provides the etymology of “Disdemona” (as he spells
the name) at the beginning of the next novella (Shakespeare 2003:64;
Shakespeare 2006:194):
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 157

Everyone wondered that such evilness could be found in a human heart

and pitied the fate of the poor woman, blaming the father for giving her a
nome d’infelice augurio (name of unlucky augury). And the company judged
that, since the name is the first gift that a father gives his child, it should
be glorious and fortunato (well-omened) to suggest both greatness and bene
(good [fortune]). And the Moor was no less blamed, for having been so
madly credulous. But they all praised God because the evil-doers had been
punished as they deserved. (Giraldi 1853:75)

Giraldi’s etymology of Disdemona clearly points to ancient Greek

«δυσδαίμων»—an epithet which means “ill-starred.” But was Shakespeare
aware of the meaning? Ben Jonson famously said of Shakespeare that he
knew “Small Latine and Lese Greeke.” Thomas W. Baldwin’s systematic
work has shown that he had read a considerable amount of Latin poetry
(especially Ovid) and that he may have read some New Testament Greek
(1944; also Nuttal 2004). But when it comes to the meaning of a single
word, it does not call for particular linguistic skills, and so some scholars
believe that Shakespeare knew. For instance, after the murder, Othello
calls Desdemona “ill-starred wench” which renders the original meaning
of the name and is also the first recorded use of the epithet “ill-starred”
in English (5.2.271).21
Kazantzakis first mentions the proper name in England: A Travel
Journal and in the canto “Shakespeare.” In the former he spells «Δυσ-
δαιμόνα,» as the etymology required. The typescript of the latter, dated
to 1941 and bearing corrections in Kazantzakis’s own hand, spells it
«Δυσδεμόνα»22 and the text posthumously published has it as «Δισδε-
μόνα.» Most interesting is the context in which these early mentions are
found. The sympathetic light in which the heroine is viewed and the
gloss «μοίρα» (“fate”) in the second passage clearly suggest the Greek
«δυσδαίμων» (“ill-starred”).
The same bosom was simultaneously giving birth to other spirits, delicate,
innocent, incorruptible: Juliet, Disdemona [Δυσδαιμόνα], Ophelia, Imogen,
Cordelia, Virginia, Miranda. These figures enriched the upper floor of the
spirit, Paradise. Thanks to Shakespeare, woman acquired new emblems of
nobility, and since then we are no longer able to love without sensing behind
our beloved’s shoulders Ophelia’s loosened hair sway on the water, or with-
out catching a sudden glimpse of «το αιματωμένο αρωματισμένο μαντηλάκι
της Δυσδαιμόνας» (“Disdemona’s bloodstained, perfumed handkerchief”).
(Kazantzakis 1945:236)

The soul gleams at sundown amid the willows

and now fearless and naked challenges fate
waving Disdemona’s handkerchief. (Kazantzakis 1960:108)
158 Michael Paschalis

Things are, however, different in Kazantzakis’s novels. Already, in

Alexis Zorbas, the female appears as the Evil One: the male narrator tries
to exorcise the demon inside him, which is sexual desire, by first reading
Dante’s Divine Comedy (Chapter Three) and then copying a Buddhist
song (Chapter Ten) (Paschalis 2007:1178–1181). Michalis’s question
to Bertodoulos, «Τι ’ταν αυτή η δαιμόνα;» (“What was this she-demon?”),
implicitly associates the name of Shakespeare’s heroine with the «δαί-
μονας» of sexual desire. In his subconscious perception the woman of
Bertodoulos’s story becomes associated with Emine, the female demon
that has been haunting him.
The transformation of Disdemona from a “delicate, innocent,
incorruptible spirit,” as Kazantzakis characterized her in England: A
Travel Journal, to a “she-demon” in Kapetan Michalis, is a very significant
change (1945:236). It is worthy of note that Shakespeare’s play numbers
among the “devils” of the play both Othello himself (a “blacker devil” in
Emilia’s eyes, 5.2.131) and Desdemona (a “fair devil” in Othello’s eyes,
3.3.478).23 It has even been suggested that in the case of “Desdemona,”
Shakespeare may have heard in the name “a punning reference to the
demonic” (Shakespeare 2006:194). Did this have something to do with
the play on “Disdemona” and “demon” in the novel?
Beaton has discussed the rich pattern of relationships involving
Michalis, Emine, Nouri, and Polyxingis, which he calls a “fearful sym-
metry” (1998:197–209). It is important, however, to keep in mind that
“symmetry” is a formal category, that not all relationships carry the same
weight, and that some “asymmetrical” relationships can play a more
important role in shaping the plot. When Michalis conceives his desire
for Emine at Nouri’s house, he completely ignores her husband. The
only rival Michalis feels he has is Kapetan Polyxingis and it is this rivalry
that matters most. Polyxingis himself does not know and will find out
about Michalis’s jealousy only after the murder (1981:431; cf. Beaton
1998:200).24 The full story of his jealousy as the motive for the murder of
Emine is told by Ventouzos to Kapetan Sifakas (1981:395–398). From a
structural viewpoint, Kazantzakis picks a significant moment to introduce
Polyxingis’s meeting with Emine, so that the reader may associate him
with the (revised) Othello script. The moment is between the two parts of
Bertodoulos’s version of Shakespeare’s play. The interruption Michalis
imposes on Bertodoulos is made to coincide with an earthquake that
shakes the cellar and the whole town. The camera has shifted to Kapetan
Polyxingis taking a walk in the Turkish quarter, a few moments before
the earthquake. The earthquake causes Emine to rush screaming into the
street. Polyxingis sees her as she is lying on the ground, her face unveiled,
her hair disheveled, her feet naked. He is instantly taken with her, bends
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 159

down, and gives her rosewater to revive her. Emine reacts angrily, but
Polyxingis replies he will have her no matter what (1981:116–119).
Prompted by Michalis’s question about the “she-demon,” Bertodou-
los resumes his story (1981:136–137). He remembers that the black man
and the girl left Venice and traveled to Cyprus where they got married,
that “a white officer with golden stripes came between them,” and that
the “black man became furious with jealousy.” He also talks of a handker-
chief which the black man stuffed into the girl’s mouth and smothered
her. Bertodoulos is moved to tears, but Michalis approves: «Είχε δίκιο
ο αράπακας . . . καλά έκαμε» (“The black man was right . . . he did the
right thing”). When later Kapetan Sifakas, Michalis’s father, hears from
Ventouzos that his son had killed Emine out of jealousy, he uses these
very same words of approval: «καλά έκαμε» (1981:398).
The story Michalis hears from Bertodoulos is meaningful to him;
he can identify with the “black man” and also accommodate a rival. In
the story, action has now moved to a familiar Mediterranean island—
Cyprus; the black man who has forgotten to smile reminds him of
himself; marriage and murder satisfy his conflicting impulses towards
Emine, since one side of him desires her and another rejects her; and
the rival—a white, well-dressed officer with a flashing appearance, as Ber-
todoulos depicts Cassio—represents the exact opposite of his own dark
outer appearance and gloomy inner world. In his mind he has already
identified the rival with Polyxingis: one of his jesters had slipped out of
the cellar to get a breath of air, heard about the meeting of Polyxingis
with Emine, and, when he tells Michalis, the latter felt as if “a knife had
pierced his heart” (1981:146).
The black/white opposition is pervasive in Othello, covering a wide
and complex spectrum of literary and ideological themes. It has been
written that this opposition “is built into the play at every level: factu-
ally, physically, visually, poetically, psychologically, symbolically, morally,
and religiously” (Shakespeare 2003:14, 29, 2006:113–120 and passim;
Bovilsky 2008:37–65). In Kazantzakis’s novel, it is introduced through
Bertodoulos’s tale of Othello, with the “black” man and the “white” officer,
his rival. Michalis sides with the former against the latter.
Michalis is the dominant dark pole of the novel. His dressing
and accoutrements, which are gradually introduced from the very first
paragraph of the book, are thoroughly black: moustache, eyes, head-
band, boots, raven-black beard, black-hilted knife (μαυρομάνικο), and,
finally, after his brother’s death, a black-shirt. He has a great passion
for Nouri’s black stallion (1981:20–21), which he dreams of riding the
first time he sees Emine and is smittten (1981:39). His outer appear-
ance reflects his inner world as projected on his eyes, countenance, and
160 Michael Paschalis

mood: «σκοτεινός» (“dark”), «κατασκότεινος» (“thoroughly dark”), and

«σκοτεινιάζω» (“darken”) are recurring key words that characterize them.
His inner darkness inspires fear and harbors sexual desire, an irascible
and morose temperament, dissatisfaction, grief for Cretan slavery, and
other things. It is appropriately inhabited by «δαίμονες,» two of which
are at war with each other in the greatest part of the novel: on one side
sexual desire that combines attraction, repulsion, and jealousy and on the
other side hostility to the Turks and desire for Cretan freedom. Michalis
never laughs and promises to do so only when Crete becomes free—only
to confess a little later that he is deceiving himself (1981:100–101). In
Bertodoulos’s version of Othello, Disdemona is moved by the black man’s
life story and promises “to bring a smile to his lips” (1981:137). This is
yet another detail that must have appealed to Michalis.
The “bright” poles in the novel are represented by Michalis’s rival
Polyxingis, Emine, and Nouri. Michalis and Polyxingis are exact opposites
in every sense of the word. An appropriate description of Polyxingis as
the “white officer with gold stripes” in Bertodoulos’s tale is given before
he accidentally encounters Emine:
Clean-shaven, with plenty of lavender water in his hair and his fez cocked
to one side, he walked out. His boots creaked as they touched the ground
and he felt a deep happiness throughout his body. He was like a horse at
the height of his vigor, like a glittering bull strolling about the fields in
springtime. (Kazantzakis 1981:116)

Polyxingis is a happy, cheerful man, perfectly content with life and him-
self, and at the height of his manly vigor.25 He is compared to a «γυαλιστε-
ρός» (“glittering”) bull and associated with springtime, a season of bright
colors. On another occasion, we are told that he is blond (1981:344).26
Michalis’s feelings towards Polyxingis are divided: in peacetime he avoids
him because he is a happy, laughing, and content person who takes life
easy; in wartime they join forces and fight the Turks together (1981:145).
But the death of Emine will cause Polyxingis to dress all in black and
will deprive his face of flesh and color, to the point of rousing Michalis’s
pity. Michalis thought that, by killing his future bride, he was doing a
favor both to himself and to Polyxingis (1981:429–432).
The issues associated with skin color, so prominent in Othello, do not
surface in Kapetan Michalis. What matters in the novel is the relationship
of an Orthodox Cretan with a Moslem Circassian woman which raises
ethnic, patriotic, and religious issues. Polyxingis is perfectly comfortable
and happy with his relationship, looks forward to a son who will combine
Cretan and Circassian features (Emine has become pregnant by him),
and feels that the religious issue can be easily resolved by baptizing Emine
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 161

(1981:214–215, 302), but Michalis’s patriotic demon rebels against this

relationship. In his first meeting with Polyxingis after the cellar orgy, he
has found out what happened in the Turkish quarter and shows his hos-
tility to him: he angrily tells Polyxingis to go seduce Turkish women and
insultingly calls him «καπετάν χανούμη» (“kapetan khanoum”), for having
an affair with a “khanoum” (wife or lady in Turkish) (1981:146–147).27
When later he finds out that Polyxingis has slept with Emine, he tells
him: «μυρίζεις τουρκίλα» (“you smell of a Turk”). In reply, Polyxingis
promises Emine will become a Christian, but Michalis retorts: “why don’t
you rather become a Turk yourself ?” (1981:214–215).
Michalis will carry out this line of defense to its extreme conse-
quences and will murder Emine, but his inner world is complex and
confused. He raises ethnic, patriotic, and religious issues in order to
conceal his own desire for Emine and his unsettling jealousy towards
Polyxingis. This becomes apparent very early in the novel when Michalis
dreams of a liberated Crete, but his heart is not relieved (1981:100–101).
Later he will confess the truth to himself in a direct fashion:
“You contend that you are fighting for freedom, you who are a slave? . . .
My lips say one thing, my hands do another, and my heart desires another!
Why do you moan, you liar Kapetan Michalis, and beat your breast because
of Crete? Another demon has fixed its claws in you and is your master, you
man without honor! Even if you fall in battle, even if you capture Megalo
Kastro and set Crete free, you are still without honor. Your heart is after
something else, your purpose dwells elsewhere.” (1981:349)

The conflict that goes on in his heart is reminiscent of Kazantzakis’s

portrayal of the Shakespearean hero of the mature period in England:
A Travel Journal:
Shakespeare adds a second floor to tragedy. In the Shakespearean tragedies
conflict breaks out not only between the Spirit and Fate but also inside the
very heart of the hero. The hero now has to fight on two fronts: against
the dark external forces and against that part of his own spirit which
treacherously collaborates with the besieging forces and is trying to open
the gates of the castle for them. It is not only blind Necessity killing the
pure, guiltless hero. The hero himself is to blame, disaster is not altogether
unjust, the misfortune that befalls him has its roots in the weaknesses, and
egoisms, and uncontrollable passions of the hero. . . . The mingling and
alliance of outside and inside forces makes them undefeatable, we cannot
resist. A dark, irresistible current sweeps us along. We want one thing but
do another. (Kazantzakis 1945:222–223)

Michalis conceives jealousy of a rival in his desire for Emine while

yet listening to Bertodoulos’s Othello story. One of his jesters informs
162 Michael Paschalis

him of what happened in the Turkish quarter between Polyxingis and

Emine after the earthquake and Michalis feels as if “a knife had pierced
his heart” (1981:146). Erotic jealousy not only plays a central role in
the novel, but it surfaces very soon after the birth of sexual desire in
Michalis’s heart. Though Kapetan Michalis encompasses a plurality of
voices, it is nonetheless a novel shaped around a central hero and the
central plot-line portrays his struggle with inner and outer forces from
the beginning to the end of the narrative. The reader can trace the
progress of Michalis’s ambivalent feelings towards Emine and Polyxingis
from the moment they arise to the murder scene and even later when
he confesses to Polyxingis that “he had to choose between killing her
or him” (1981:431).

Disdemona’s handkerchief
Kapetan Polyxingis came too. He was good-humored, cheerful, with his silver
pistols, and with a silk handkerchief on his breast that smelled of musk and
was a present of Emine’s. He sat down opposite Kapetan Michalis. Their
gazes met, but they did not exchange a word. (Kazantzakis 1981:340)

Before the armed conflict begins, the Cretan leaders gather at Petroke-
falo to deliberate on a course of action (1981:338–345). Among them
are the Kapetans Michalis and Polyxingis, the latter appearing happy
and content, wearing a perfumed silk handkerchief on his breast, a gift
from Emine. In Shakespeare’s play, Desdemona’s magical silk handker-
chief is a gift from Othello who got it from his mother and she from
an Egyptian charmer (3.4.54–67). It is emblematic of Othello’s jealousy
and its role in the play is so prominent that it became a synecdoche for
it (Shakespeare 2006:3–5). In England: A Travel Journal, Disdemona’s
“blood-stained, perfumed handkerchief” epitomizes Kazantzakis’s read-
ing of Othello. The handkerchief and how Othello used it to smother
Disdemona is also the climax of Bertodoulos’s tale. There is a crucial
detail here: Kazantzakis makes the handkerchief the instrument of the
murder, whereas Othello most probably smothered Desdemona with a
pillow or pillows (Shakespeare 1886:301–305, 2006:378–379).28
Emine’s silk handkerchief placed on Polyxingis’s breast is not dyed
in “mummy,” a magical concoction prepared from maidens’ hearts, as
Desdemona’s was (3.4.73) (Shakespeare 2006:466–467). It picks up
Disdemona’s “perfumed” handkerchief in Kazantzakis’s earlier reading
of Shakespeare’s play, but the smell is now that of musk, the odor of
Michalis’s female “demon.” Happy and content, Polyxingis is displaying
his conquest before Michalis’s very eyes. His jealousy will increase when
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 163

next Polyxingis rises to speak and on his naked, plump throat he sees a
second token of Polyxingis’s sexual activity—a red mark made by Emine’s
teeth (1981:344).29 Later, Michalis will confess to himself the jealousy rag-
ing in his heart: “He had seen Polyxingis again, had smelled the accursed
Turkish musk on him, had spied the red bite on his throat, and his blood
shuddered. ‘Curse her,’ he whispered, ‘curse, the bitch! As long as she is
alive, I will have no honor’” (1981:349). This emotional outburst in which
Michalis’s mind goes from the perfumed handkerchief to the thought
of murder reveals the Shakespearean model in a most eloquent manner.
The fact that the reading of Othello contained in Bertodoulos’s tale makes
of the handkerchief the instrument of the murder and that this was also
Kazantzakis’s own belief may not be entirely irrelevant here.

It is the cause, it is the cause

As the last scene of Othello opens, the hero enters Desdemona’s bed-
chamber. Desdemona is asleep and Othello delivers the following
monologue:
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul —
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars:
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
And smooth as monumental alabaster —
   Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light —
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thine,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again,
It must needs wither: I’ll smell it on the tree —
     [He kisses her]
O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword—one more, one more!
     [He kisses her]
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after—one more, and that’s the last.
     [He kisses her]
So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: this sorrow’s heavenly,
It strikes where it doth love. She wakes. (Othello 5.2.1–22)
164 Michael Paschalis

The three opening lines of Othello’s monologue are among the most
cryptic in the play. According to Michael Neill, “there is a strong sugges-
tion that it is something he cannot bring himself to name, either because
he fears to confront it, or because the true ‘cause’ of his actions remains
in some deep sense obscure to him” (Shakespeare 2006:372).30
In the section immediately preceding the murder of Emine, the
narrator constructs a psychological portrait of Michalis that reminds the
reader of this description. Michalis abandons his post at the monastery
and saves Emine from her abductors, but sends her with an escort to
his aunt in the village of Korakies, to take care of her “until we see what
happens.” He definitely does not want her to go back to Polyxingis in
Kasteli (1981:378), but, with regard to himself, his motives and intentions
remain obscure. Upon returning to the monastery, he sees it burning.
Then he picks up a handful of warm ashes and lets them scatter in the
air pronouncing the curse: “Let the one who is to blame [ο αίτιος] burn
and perish like this” (1981:378). The inquiry into the αίτιος of the disas-
ter continues later, as Michalis is subjected to persistent questioning by
Kapetan Elias who tells him that he has shamed his name and wants to
know why he left and where he went. Michalis denies that he is to blame,
but refuses to say who is to blame. He says he wants to retire in order to
arrive at a judgment as to the αίτιος and so departs (1981:380–382).
Instinctively, he takes the road towards the village where he had
earlier sent Emine. Suddenly he murmurs to himself, “She is to blame . . .
she is to blame . . . the shameful woman,” and the narrator comments:
“Suddenly everything was clear to him and he understood why he had
taken that road.” Just before entering the village, an old man, without
recognizing him, cries out: «Ανάθεμα τον αίτιο» (“Curse the man who’s to
blame”), and Michalis echoes him in the darkness: “curse him.” It is the
final go-ahead. Michalis will next go into Emine’s bedroom and stab her
in the dark, convinced, or pretending, that he has found the αίτιος—“it
is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.”

The murder of Emine

He stretched out his hand and pushed open the small door. The middle
room was faintly lit by a small oil-lamp which stood in front of an ancient
icon of the Mother of God. Two other icons were dimly visible on either
side of it: the Archangel Michael and the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine.
He leaned against the doorpost. Opposite, on his aunt’s old iron
bed, he distinguished a body lying under the sheets. He saw raven-black
hair spread out over the pillow. The air smelled of musk.
His vision had blurred. He breathed deep, panting. He could not
control his heart. He leapt forward to the middle of the room and clutched
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 165

his black-hilted knife. He held his breath, poised on tip-toe and approached
the bed walking lightly, insidiously. He stretched out his left hand and pulled
away the sheet. Her bosom gleamed. Right away his eyes flashed, but his
brain remained pitch-black and full of blood.
The sleeping woman sighed and changed position. She must have
been seeing a pleasant dream, because her lips whispered some secret
word and she smiled as Kapetan Michalis bent over. The knife gave a wild
reflection of the oil-lamp light, pierced the air and in one movement was
plunged to the hilt into the white bosom.
Emine gave a cry and blinked her eyes like a flash; they had time
to see and recognize Kapetan Michalis. Surprise, joy, pain, complaint—all
these feelings were turned over and flashed in this last blinking.
“Oh!” groaned the man and his body was shaken with pain. He rapidly
pulled the knife out to avert death. But it was too late. Emine’s eyes were
already empty of life. (Kazantzakis 1981:385)

The murder of Emine is clearly modeled after the murder of Des-

demona. It is night when Michalis enters the bedroom and Emine, like
Desdemona, is asleep. The candlelight of which Othello speaks has been
replaced by the dim light of an oil-lamp and the smell of balm (“balmy
breath,” 5.2.16) by that of musk. Unlike Othello, Michalis does not
pause to reflect on the meaning of his action or talk to Emine. Shake-
speare dwells on the sinister whiteness and smoothness of the female
body (cold snow, and alabaster used in tombs), which the spectator is
invited to compare with Othello’s dark skin (Shakespeare 2006:372).
Othello’s famous words, “put out the light and then put out the light,”
identify candlelight and life and the extinguishing of the former with
the extinction of life. In the novel, black and white, light and darkness
interact differently. When Michalis pulls the sheets away uncovering
Emine’s “shining-white breasts,” sexual desire “flashes in his eyes,” but
murderous darkness has the upper hand. Driven by a «μαύρο, μαύρο, κι
όλο αίματα» (“a pitch-dark, blood-dripping”) mind, he plunges his «μαυ-
ρομάνικο» (“black-hilted knife”) that flashes back the candlelight onto
Emine’s «άσπρο κόρφο» (“white breast”). The novel plays with dim light,
darkness, gleams and flashes of light. They are emblematic of Michalis’s
ambivalent feelings, the division between heart and mind. He does not
want to see or be seen; he wants to kill in the dark and kill quickly lest
the «δαίμονας» (demon) lurking inside him should wake up and cause
him to yield to the desire for “Disdemona.” The opening of Emine’s eyes
would have sufficed to stop Michalis and draw him into her bed, but this
happens too late to have any effect.31
Of the various issues associated with a potential relationship between
an Orthodox Cretan man and a Moslem Circassian woman, prominence
is given to the religious one in the murder scene. Emine dies just before
166 Michael Paschalis

becoming a Christian and marrying Polyxingis. But the icons in the room
are not there to represent the desire for conversion, a desire she did not
feel anyway. Their function and significance is ironic: the sword-bearing
Archangel Michael, who is frequently portrayed defeating the devil or
trampling him under foot, stands for Michalis, Emine’s killer, stabbing
and trampling his own demons under his foot; the martyrdom of the
virgin Saint Catherine stands for Emine’s suffering and the marriage that
will never come; and the Panagia (Virgin Mary), holding infant Jesus in
her arms, reminds the reader of Emine’s pregnancy and the son who
will never be born.
I have argued that the main plot of Kapetan Michalis reworks the two
Iliadic conflicts over Helen (external) and Briseis (internal). Depending
on the context, Emine, the wife of the Turk Nouri, plays first Helen and
then Briseis, and Michalis plays first Paris and then Achilles. Michalis’s
desire for Emine and his erotic rivalry with Polyxingis are instrumental
in triggering the Cretan uprising against the Turks (external conflict)
and have a serious impact on the course of war within the Cretan camp
(internal conflict). Thus, though the murder of Emine reproduces the
Kazantzakian stereotype of females as temptresses who suffer violent
deaths, the literary inspiration for Michalis’s feelings and motive came
from Shakespeare’s Othello. In this context Michalis and Emine play
respectively Othello and Desdemona. Michalis’s thoroughly black appear-
ance and dark inner world, the silk handkerchief on Polyxingis’s breast,
Michalis’s psychological condition before the murder, and the murder
scene itself all rework key elements of Shakespeare’s play. The epic and
dramatic features, however, have been thoroughly fused into a novelistic
plot organized around a central hero with a complex psychology.

UNIVERSITY OF CRETE

NOTES

1
In general on Homer and modern Greek poetry, see Ricks (1989; 1993).
2
See Bien on earlier “versions” of the novel (2007:457–458).
3
The relation of the novel to epic is a vast subject with a history that goes back to
the birth of the ancient novel; for a lucid and informative introduction to the topic, see
Fusillo (2006).
 The Relation of Kapetan Michalis to Homer’s Iliad 167

4
On how Cavafy reworked the same Homeric scene in “The Horses of Achilles,” see
Paschalis (2010).
5
Meraklis also compares him with Hector (1977:86–87).
6
For an annotated translation of the Platonic passage, see Hubbard (2003:182–183).
7
On Michalis’s δαίμονες, see Beaton (1998:203–209).
8
For the context, see the discussion below of Kapetan Michalis and Othello.
9
This was probably a revision of an earlier translation done in 1937 (see Kazantzakis
1984:468). On the fortunes of the translation, see also Petrakou (2005:82–83).
10
On the importance of his readings for the writing of Alexis Zorbas, see Paschalis
(2007).
11
In the article, I also suggested an intertextual connection of this «αράπακας» with
another (“big black man”) «αράπακας» (2007:1190) mentioned in the story of Hortense
as narrated by Prevelakis (1990:94–96).
12
On its sources, see Shakespeare (2006:20–21, 463).
13
See Paschalis (2007:1129, 1178–1181, 1190–1191) and, more generally, on Kazant-
zakis and Africa, see Philippides (2005:171–176). For a survey of literature on The Tempest
and Virgil’s Aeneid, see Martindale and Taylor (2004:99–100).
14
On the importance of Knolles’s work, see McJannet (2006:119–140).
15
Prevelakis attaches the outline to a letter by Kazantzakis dated 23 July 1939.
16
He actually died on 23 April 1616.
17
On Michalis’s jesters as carnavalistic characters in Bakhtinian terms, see Panagiotis
Roilos (2006:277–278).
18
It was written in 1823 and published in 1824. Its first two stanzas were later set to
music by Nikolaos Mantzaros and became the national anthem of Greece.
19
For Kazantzakis’s novel, I follow the spelling of the novel throughout (with the
clarifications made below) and I reserve the spelling “Desdemona” for Shakespeare’s
character.
20
For an English translation, see Shakespeare (2006:Appendix C).
21
On the meaning of the name, see also John Hales (1892:111–113) and J. Madison
Davis and Daniel Frankforter (1995:248). The view expressed by Henry and Renée Kahane
that Giraldi intended the name to mean “god-fearing” or “religious” («δεισιδαίμων») has
no basis (Kahane and Kahane 1987).
22
It is now kept in the library of the Historical Museum of Crete in Heraklion.
23
See also Shakespeare (2006:203)
24
It is worthy of note that neither Michalis nor his rival ever “possesses” Emine. She
desires Michalis to the very end, one part of him rejects her and so she settles for ­Polyxingis,
thus triggering incontrollable jealousy in Michalis’s heart.
25
Beaton draws attention to the fact that Polyxingis’s name suggests ξύγκι (fat) and
notes that “he is at home in the envelope of the flesh” (1998:198).
26
On the antithesis between Michalis and Polyxingis from a different viewpoint, see
Roilos (2006:278–280).
27
Khanoum is doubly derogatory in that it combines the meanings of “woman” (an
attack on his maniliness) and “Turk” (identification with the enemy).
28
There was also a stage tradition to stab Desdemona a second time when she briefly
regains consciousness.
29
There is a remarkable contrast in this episode between the bright colors of Polyxingis
(blond and red) and Michalis’s somber countenance. Polyxingis speaks bravely, and when
he shouts “Freedom or death,” his blond hair shining in the sun, Michalis gives him his
hand as a gesture of reconciliation in the name of the common cause. He explains that “a
168 Michael Paschalis

demon has come between them” and Polyxingis replies “let the demon go to the demon.”
But Michalis immediately regrets the action (Kazantzakis 1981:344–345).
30
Furness notes that we do not know which is the emphatic word in the phrase “it is
the cause” and what is the cause and of what it is the cause (Shakespeare 1886:293).
31
Beaton is, of course, right in noting that in figurative terms the killing is evoked
as a sexual act (1998:202).

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