The mystery of origins
Crete is at the crossroads of the Mediterranean routes, which is undoubtedly the reason why it was very early a regular stopover for adventurous peoples, and even a place of residence for some of them. At the very beginning of the 20th century, Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) unearthed the temple of Knossos, and his discoveries unravelled the thread of a civilization whose origins are still uncertain. The Minoans - the name given to them, inspired by the legend of King Minos - would have reached their apogee around 1600 B.C., an earthquake, dated -1450, would have marked the beginning of their decline and then the emergence of the Mycenaeans. Of these peoples we still have hieroglyphics that are revealed on the Phaistos Disc unearthed in 1908 and exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. Its reading, just as much as its provenance, still lends itself to many interpretations, but one of the hypotheses presumes that these drawings are the basis of two other writings certainly invented on the island, and just as indecipherable, Linear A and Linear B. While everyone agrees that these characters have in no way inspired the Greek alphabet, all agree that they are largely prior to it.
Land that keeps its secrets, perhaps because its coastline is nibbled by the waves and that the remains of the past are gradually submerged, which also suggests to some that the Minoans were no less than the enigmatic inhabitants of Atlantis, Crete is also a mythological land. Homer, the real or invented poet who is said to have lived in the eighth century BC, makes repeated references to the "hospitable, beautiful and fertile" island in The Iliad and The Odyssey Here would have lived the sad Minotaur, condemned to wander in the labyrinth that Daedalus had built, and the frightening Cyclops that Ulysses, almost by a miracle, would have defeated. From Crete, Icarus would have flown away in the direction of a too intense sun, and an expedition would have set sail for Troy where a war was brewing... This taste for timeless and almost philosophical stories, not to mention epics, can be found in two great texts that have strongly marked the history of the country, although for this it is necessary to allow a temporal leap of a few millennia that saw the Venetian occupation (1204-1669) succeed the Roman and then Byzantine empires that had fought over the territory. The first work is that of a playwright born around 1545 in Rethymnon, Georges Chortatzis, about whom nothing is known except that he was certainly inspired by L'Orbecche
, perhaps the first great Italian tragedy, written by Giovanni Battista Giraldi (1504-1574).Published posthumously in 1637, Erophile
is set in five acts, four interludes and 3,025 to the story of Panaretos, an orphan who is unaware that he is the son of a disappeared king, and his unhappy love affair with the young girl with whom he was raised. The latter's father, Philogonos, ruler of Egypt, who had taken in the orphan, unaware of his royal ancestry, condemned their engagement and had him murdered. Erophile, unable to bear the loss of his beloved, put an end to his life.Equally dramatic, and again a perfect romantic example, Erotókritos was written by the Cretan of Venetian origin Vicenzos Kornaros (1553-1613). Once again it tells the story of the impossible love between the daughter of a king and a young man of modest origin, and several thousand verses detail the trials the hero has to overcome to obtain the hand of his beloved, a poetry that is easy to listen to because it takes the form of a "mantinade", i.e. a rhythmic song, improvised or not, such as it is still hummed today because this lyrical art has remained popular in Crete since its distant origins at the end of the 14th century. Other songs, even older, have a more revolutionary nuance due to their very origin. Indeed, the first transcriptions by monks date back to the 12th century, a time when they were forbidden to keep a written record of the "rizitika" that praised the heroism of the Cretans. During the long Ottoman occupation that began in 1669 and ended with a war between the Empire and Greece (1897-1898), these songs ceased to resonate, as did the literature, which was dangerously weakened
The revival
Níkos Kazantzákis, born in 1883 in Heraklion, experienced this transition first hand, as he went into exile with his parents and then participated in the Balkan Wars, which ended with the annexation of Crete to Greece in 1913. His first novel, The Lily and the Serpent, published at the age of 20 under a pseudonym, already evoked his ambitious themes of predilection: life, death and love. A disciple of Henri Bergson, a close friend of poets, curious about Buddhism and turning away from the God of his origins, very politically committed, Kazantzákis lived an existence that has all the makings of a novel and which takes meaning from the epitaph that has crowned his tomb since 1957: "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free". Perhaps underestimated in the French-speaking world, he is nevertheless a monument of Cretan literature, yet the general public knows him through three films adapted from his writings: He Who Must Die, Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. Thanks to the work of the beautiful Cambourakis publishing house, it is nevertheless a rare pleasure to be able to measure the extent of his talent. His freedom of thought is said to have cost him the Nobel Prize for Literature nine times, a distinction that was, however, awarded to one of his fellow citizens in 1979. The work of Odysséas Elytis is certainly even more difficult to find in French, although Cheyne offers a nice bilingual edition of the anthology Le Soleil sait. The poet was born in 1911 in what is now the capital, but it is in Athens that he was brought up and from his many trips to the seaside that he draws his nourishment. An insatiable reader, he plunges into poetry by chance, succumbing to the charm of Constantin Cavafy and Paul Éluard, who opens the doors of surrealism to him. The premonition of the coming Second World War takes him out of literary circles, where he blossoms and takes on the military uniform. Yet it is in the heart of the war, miraculously, that he helps to promote the avant-garde and begins his prolific poetic career.
