Peter Bien

John Rassias

Chrysanthi Yiannakou-Bien

Popular text used by beginners worldwide.

Demotic Greek

Peter Bien focuses on Kazantzakis' obsession with the demotic, the language "on the lips of the people," showing how it governed his writing, his ambition, and his involvement in Greek politics and educational reform. Kazantzakis' obsession worked against him in his Odyssey and found its natural vehicle only in his translation of Homer's Iliad and his novels, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Greek Passion. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Kazantzakis and Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature

Nikos Kazantzakis, Novelist

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Yannis Ritsos was, without question, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. This collection of essays by Peter Bien is the first book of literary criticism in English devoted entirely to the work of Yannis Ritsos. A fine and substantial introduction to this great modern Greek poet.

Collected Studies & Translations

Yannis Ritsos

Putting Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's output into the context of his lifelong spiritual quest and the turbulent politics of 20th century Greece, this title argues that he was a deeply flawed genius. It covers his life after 1938, the period in which he wrote 'Zorba the Greek' and 'The Last Temptation of Christ'.

Politics of the Spirit

Kazantzakis

Darren J. N. Middleton

Argues that while Nikos Kazantzakis may have occupied the so-called borderlands between belief and unbelief throughout much of his career, he nonetheless possessed, or was possessed by, an intense awareness of the sacred. These 11 essays analyze in detail Kazantzakis's lifelong struggle to give voic

Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis

God's Struggler

Putting Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's vast output into the context of his lifelong spiritual quest and the turbulent politics of twentieth-century Greece, Peter Bien argues that Kazantzakis was a deeply flawed genius--not always artistically successful, but a remarkable figure by any standard. This is the second and final volume of Bien's definitive and monumental biography of Kazantzakis (1883-1957). It covers his life after 1938, the period in which he wrote Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, the novels that brought him his greatest fame. A demonically productive novelist, poet, playwright, travel writer, autobiographer, and translator, Kazantzakis was one of the most important Greek writers of the twentieth century and the only one to achieve international recognition as a novelist. But Kazantzakis's writings were just one aspect of an obsessive struggle with religious, political, and intellectual problems. In the 1940s and 1950s, a period that included the Greek civil war and its aftermath, Kazantzakis continued this engagement with undiminished energy, despite every obstacle, producing in his final years novels that have become world classics.

Kazantzakis, Volume 2

Nikos Kazantzakis

The life of Nikos Kazantzakis--the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ--was as colorful and eventful as his fiction. And nowhere is his life revealed more fully or surprisingly than in his letters. Edited and translated by Kazantzakis scholar Peter Bien, this is the most comprehensive selection of Kazantzakis's letters in any language. One of the most important Greek writers of the twentieth century, Kazantzakis (1883-1957) participated in or witnessed some of the most extraordinary events of his times, including both world wars and the Spanish and Greek civil wars. As a foreign correspondent, an official in several Greek governments, and a political and artistic exile, he led a relentlessly nomadic existence, living in France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Soviet Union, and England. He visited the Versailles Peace Conference, attended the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, interviewed Mussolini and Franco, and briefly served as a Greek cabinet minister--all the while producing a stream of novels, poems, plays, travel writing, autobiography, and translations. The letters collected here touch on almost every aspect of Kazantzakis's rich and tumultuous life, and show the genius of a man who was deeply attuned to the artistic, intellectual, and political events of his times.

The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

Christos Alexiou

Integrated sequel to DEMOTIC GREEK I for second-year students uses scenarios and readings based on authentic Greek texts drawn from folktales, ballads, and writers such as Herodotus, Kazantzakis, Koraes, Myrivilis, and Seferis.

The Flying Telephone Booth

Workbook for Demotic Greek II

Stratēs Myrivēlēs

Life in the Tomb

Edmund Keeley

Peter Constantine

Karen Van Dyck

This unique bilingual anthology presents the achievements of Greek poetry in the 20th century. Included are 109 poets and 456 poems, with the Greek original and the English translation on opposite pages. Included are the internationally recognized C.P. Cavafy, the Nobel Prize winners George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, as well as all the major Greek poets of the 20th century. Many of the poems in the Greek original and many translations are published for the first time. The four editors, all award winning authors and translators, not only selected the poems but also have translated many of them. In all 63 translators contributed their work to this anthology. Also, included are Kimon Friar's unpublished corrections/modifications to his original translations. -- Cosmos Publishing.

1900-2000

A Century of Greek Poetry

Ho Hiptamenos Thalamos : the Flying Telephone Booth

Demotic Greek II

Demotic Greek I

"No author who lives in Greece," writes Peter Bien, "can avoid politics." This first volume of his major intellectual biography of Nikos Kazantzakis approaches the distinguished--and controversial--writer by describing his struggle with political questions that were in reality aspects of a fervent religious search. Beginning with Kazantzakis's early career in fin-de-siècle Paris and his discovery of William James, Nietzsche, and Bergson, the book continues by describing his experiments with communism in turbulent Greece, his visits to Soviet Russia, and the publication of his epic Odyssey in 1938. Bien demonstrates that politics and religion cannot be separated in Kazantzakis's development. His major concern was personal salvation, but the method he employed to win that salvation was political engagement. Did deliverance lie in nationalism? Communism? Fascism? He eventually rejected each of these possible solutions as morally appalling. Abused by both left and right, he insisted on an "eschatological politics" of spiritual fulfillment. This compelling biography will be essential reading for Kazantzakis scholars and for a wide audience of those who already admire the Greek author's work. In addition, it will provide an introduction to the first three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have yet to enjoy such passionate and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ. This first volume provides an introduction to the initial three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have enjoyed such vibrant and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ.

Kazantzakis, Volume 1

Dimitri Gondicas

Andromache Karanika

A new approach for teaching Modern Greek, using songs, poems, cartoons, and contemporary dialogues

Peter Bien

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