Wagner in the early narrative work of Nikos Kazantzakis
Abstract
Broken Souls (Spasmenes Psyches) by Nikos Kazantzakis is one of his early works of fiction, written in the atmosphere of Decadence, whose structure is dominated by the heteroglossic coexistence of elements of the libretto and the prose narrative. The author, with the use of leitmotiv, seeks to create a suggestive language to convey, as Wagner did in music, the relation between Idea and Rhythm. The work constitutes a milestone bordering on Kazantzakis' subsequent artistic and ideological development. This paper focuses on the style and ideology of the novel, which incorporates / absorbs several elements of the poetic in Wagnerian melodrama (tendency to investigate and record the primitive state of the soul, the direct data of conscience, unity of the arts in a harmonic whole, co-operation between music and Logos, dance and painting, interlinking of symphonic and repeated motifs - leitmotiv, syncretism of paganism and the myth of Christianity, nationalistic ideology etc.). Even from his early prose, Κazantzakis is creatively preoccupied with Wagner - as a gifted composer and also as a thinker-philosopher. Reception of the German composer occurs· mainly through the work of Nietzsche, the prose of aesthetics (D’ Annunzio etc.), the experience of performances of Wagnerian melodrama, and less through French or German philology.
Article Details
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Κατσιγιάννη Ά. (2017). Wagner in the early narrative work of Nikos Kazantzakis. Comparison, 20, 138–150. https://doi.org/10.12681/comparison.78
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- Vol. 20 (2009)
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