Symposium

The manuscript of this one of the earliest (1922) works of the author of Zorba the Greek and The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, who lost the Nobel Prize to Albert Camus in 1957, was only recently rediscovered and published in Greece with the help of the author's wife. The editors offer various reasons why Kazantzakis may have "forgotten" it, but neglect the most obvious -- that Symposium was never completed to the author's satisfaction, that it is inferior to his later work, that he probably never intended its publication. Modeled somewhat along the lines of the Platonic forebear (Kazantzakis translated Plato), the modern symposium ("drinking party") brings together Arpagos, seeker after God and liberation, and three of his comrades -- the political revolutionary man of action, the poet, and the athlete -- and contrasts their "philosophies." The tension between the contemplative life and action is a major theme of both this and later books . Arpagos' story of his spiritual exploration takes the form of a highly rhetorical confession about his wanderings among the monasteries of Mt. Athos.