The Poetics of Biodiversity: Kazantzakis and Crete

There are precious pictures of Nikos Kazantzakis and Albert Schweitzer enjoying a forest picnic together somewhere in Europe, long ago. Both men seem to be grinning. They know something. Neither the author of Zorba the Greek nor the Doctor who spent much of his life in West Africa helping people and other animals was a nihilist, not at all. They believed in the ability of our species to act with compassion, intellect, and heart. Schweitzer was convinced that Homo sapiens had what it takes to make things right. Kazantzakis, for his part, at least by some interpretations, seems to have been unsure. But he was intent upon the very optimism that is life itself. Kazantzakis’ unprecedented literary oeuvre, schooled by one of the most remarkable biological hotspots within a hotspot, Crete, is—in every sentence and impulse—a paean to ecological integrity and endurance; and to the human spirit which figures in that great Cosmic drama of earth.