Report to Greeco

Book title: Report to Ghriko Author: Nikos Kazantzakis Publisher: Kalimat Publications Number of pages: 670 Summary: "My report to Ghriko" is not an autobiography. My personal life has some value, and quite relatively, to me and not to anyone else. The only value I know in it was in the efforts to rise from one level to another to reach the highest point that her strength and stubbornness could take her; the summit I casually named "Cretan Outlook." There were four decisive levels in my ascent. Each bears a sacred name: Christ, Buddha, Lenin, Ulysses. My bloody journey between each of these great spirits and other spirits is what I will try hard to clarify in these "diaries," after the sun has nearly set. It is a journey of a human carrying his heart in his mouth as he climbs the rugged and harsh mountain of his destiny. All my spirits are cries. All my actions are responses to these cries. Throughout my life, there was a word that tormented me and renewed me, and that is the word "ascension." And I will present this ascent. I blend here reality with imagination, with the traces of the red footsteps I left behind while climbing. And I am eager to finish quickly before I wear my "black helmet," and return to dust. Because this bloody trace is the only mark that will remain of my crossing to the earth. Everything I wrote or did was written or achieved on water, and has vanished.