Paper on "The Last Temptation of Christ"

He heard the cackling of the partridge, the tickling and creaking inside the bolted chamber, heard the old woman at the door load her grate with live crabs, which then hopped onto the coals. This is Paradise, he meditated… ‘Prince of India, what does your God have to say about all this?’ ‘That everything is a dream’… The son of Mary looked around him, terrified. Could the Indian nobleman really be right? Could all this—yard, pomegranate, grate, partridge, men—be a dream? Perhaps he was still under the cedar, dreaming”— The Last Temptation of Christ

Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ was first translated into English in 1960 and from that time on the book was surrounded with controversy and would be banned from many reading lists for Kazantzakis’ portrayal of the life of Jesus. Those who challenged the book cited various moments in the work where Jesus questions his role of being the savior of mankind, the seeming defense of Judas’ betrayal, and the sexual attraction that Jesus has for Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately, those who criticize the work on those grounds missed the point that Kazantzakis made in his prologue that, after closer examination, seems to anticipate these claims and offers a defense of his work. Kazantzakis begs the reader to remember “in order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through” (Kazantzakis 2). Kazantzakis furthers his argument to include the necessity of his embrace of that which accompanies humanity by saying that “if he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives” (Kazantzakis 3). Thus, part of the essence of being ‘Christ-like’ is to experience the pushes and pulls of being human.

The road for Jesus is not easy— in neither the Gospels or in The Last Temptation of Christ— but the difficulty of the road is different in each. In the Gospels the difficulty of Christ’s path is typically considered in the Passion where Jesus experienced his most physical suffering whereas in The Last Temptation the difficulty of being the Messiah lies in Jesus’ discovery of his role as Messiah and in his ability to remain firmly on that road; in comparison, the passion of The Last Temptation tends to focus on the most spiritual suffering. Jesus in the Gospels his role as Messiah, although cryptic at times, never seems to be in doubt. The Last Temptation however offers a complex portrayal of Jesus’ realization of his role and his understanding of how to follow the road correctly. In the book, dreams assume the role of being the language of the divine and are the catalyst to both lead Jesus toward his place on the cross and also into the depths of temptation.

The novel opens with a dream. Jesus dreams of the Readbeard coming down into to Nazareth with a mob to capture him. He blockades his door with everything he has—saws, hammers, nails, a huge cross—tools of the carpenter who makes crosses for the crucifixions. He wakes with a start and asks, “was this sleep? Or death, immortality, God?” (Kazantzakis 11). While the meaning of this dream is fairly transparent to the modern reader who knows the end of Jesus’ story it is important to consider the dream from the perspective of Kazantzakis’ character—a man who does not know the end to his story and has only glimpses of the future revealed to him. In this vision Jesus’ end is revealed to him at the beginning of his journey echoing those lines opening T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “East Coker”, “In my beginning is my end” (Eliot 23). During this first revelation, this pivotal moment, Jesus begins to move on the path that will undoubtedly lead towards his eventual end.

It should be understood that dreams are more to Jesus than a passive revealing of his eventual fate. When talking to his Uncle Jesus asks “’do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else” (Kazantzakis 147). We see that his belief runs so far beyond the simple understanding of dreams as knowledge to actually prompt Jesus to act. Asked why he came to the monastery in the desert Jesus replies “I’ve come because of the dream” (Kazantzakis 136). We see that the dream actually serves as the reason for Jesus to act and further himself along his road. Jesus understands dreams as more than what will happen—he understands them as what should happen and thus he will make efforts to realize the images of those dreams, set like landmarks, along his path.

Meaning is also coupled with the directions sent through the dreams. After saying that he had come to the monastery because of the dream he mentions “God sent it in order to show me my road, and the Abbot is going to untangle it for me’” (Kazantzakis 136). Not only is the direction he must take communicated there is also something to untangle, some deeper meaning, adding to the richness and wonder. Key to understanding this concept is another line in the book where Jesus thinks, “everything is of God… everything has two meanings, one manifest, one hidden. The common people comprehend only what is manifest. They say, ‘This is a snake,’ and their minds go no further; but the mind which dwells in God sees what lies beyond the visible, sees the hidden meaning” (Kazantzakis 150). This statement is rooted in the understanding that everything has or is an aspect of the divine. For the thing itself to be fully known the one considering it must be able to find this hidden meaning. When that thing is fully known the way in which the essence of the thing was understood could be considered language, and, in the case of dreams, the language of the divine.

While dreams appear as the language of the divine, with immense complexities and troubles to make meaning for the unpracticed, it must be considered that the divine encompasses both godlike figures— omnipotent God and the tempter Satan. After a dream that he experienced Jesus says “’someone came last night in my sleep… someone came. Surely it was God, God… or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle’” (Kazantzakis 15). To the dreamer, the dream is a mixed muddle of images and meaning and, adding the most basic yet important complexity, whose voice, God or Satan, is speaking the divine language? While this creates a complex problem for the dreamer it establishes dreams as a form of communication that is used by both powers and in much of the same way as evident by the dreamers inability to distinguish between the two. Because of the reliance of each to use this form of revelation the power of the dream as a method of persuasion towards action does not go unnoticed. Used effectively this dream-language should be understood as one of the most potent and most convincing methods of revelation. It is fitting then that God used a dream as a catalyst to prompt Jesus to begin his journey and also that Satan used a dream to try and tempt Jesus from his journey.

Finally, as Jesus faints upon the cross, we are transported to the last temptation of Jesus for which the novel is named. After he faints Jesus’ “eyelids fluttered with joy and surprise. This was not a cross; it was a huge tree reaching from earth to heaven” (Kazantzakis 444). Jesus is bewildered and asks his supposed guardian angel “’wasn’t I crucified… was the cross, then, a dream—and the nails, the pain, he sun which became dark’” to which the angel replies “’yes, a dream. You lived your entire Passion in a dream. You mounted the cross and were nailed to it in a dream. The five wounds in your hands, feet and heart were inflicted in a dream, but with such force that, look!, the blood is still flowing’” (Kazantzakis 446). As we later find out the garden Jesus has been transported to is actually the dream. But, as followers of the story, we too suppose that Jesus has lived his Passion in a dream and that the life lying before him, the life he utters about earlier when he says, “I don’t care about the kingdom of heaven. I like the earth. I want to marry”, is the life he will finally be able to live (Kazantzakis 28). Little do we suspect when Kazantzakis claims that “every moment of Christ’s life is a conflict” that he has filled one of the last moments in Christ’s life with the most tortuous test of all—the man’s desired lifestyle, dripping with possibility before him, appearing in it’s whole in a flash quick as lightning. The clue should remind us of Eliot’s Four Quartets in which he claims “the time of death is every moment” and that there is “a lifetime burning in every moment” (Eliot 42, 31). Satan himself even relates this concept when, in the form of Jesus’ guardian angel, he preaches “Here is eternity: each moment, Jesus of Nazareth, each moment that passes” (Kazantzakis 466). For Satan to uncover Jesus’ deepest desires and place him in the center of the illusion is the most potent application, and most potent temptation, of the dream that Jesus has felt.

For the reader, who experiences time most likely in its “normal” flow the concept of the momentary lifetime may be misunderstood. This life that Jesus lives is practically complete spanning from his early 30’s to old age. We learn that Jesus weds both sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Although not Jesus’ ideal woman Mary Magdalene Satan gives Jesus solace by saying “only one woman exists in the world, one woman with countless faces. This one falls; the next rises. Mary Magdalene died, Mary sister of Lazarus lives… she is Magdalene herself, but with another face” (Kazantzakis 457). Ironically, this statement evokes a passage from Cees Nooteboom’s work The Following Story (another momentary lifetime story in which the characters’ story takes place in the two seconds of his death much like Jesus in The Last Temptation) where the main character, Herman Mussert, says, “the world is a never ending cross-reference” (Nooteboom 98). It is as if Jesus has seen these women in another woman at another time… or maybe in another lifetime. What is so confounding to the subject of this experience is the duration of time that passes. Jesus has children and eventually becomes a grandfather. The experience is not the usual experience of a moment— it is experienced over days, months and years creating the most real illusion possible by adhering to the supposed constant, time, that governs our lives.

However, for as realistic as the craft has been, it is not without it’s cracks. Like the moment of déjà vu in the film The Matrix Jesus’ unreality has been infiltrated by truth like light through the chinks. One night a nervous Mary wakes Jesus and tells him of a dream she had where “you {Jesus}, me, Martha, our embraces at night, the children… All, all—all lies! Lies created by the tempter to deceive us! He took sleep, death and air and fashioned them…” (Kazantzakis 468). Jesus is confronted with the knowledge that the life he is living, what seems to be his reality, is actually something otherworldly. However, the most rupturing of this illusion occurs when she refers to his “other” life and says to Jesus “that you, Rabbi… were crucified” (Kazantzakis 469). By alluding to Jesus’ supposed “dream” of long ago, something that we can assume he has not told to Mary, the truthfulness of this statement is overwhelming and brings the tension to a high. Even Satan, weaver of this alternate reality, feels panic and tells Jesus “this is a difficult moment. Your mind might waver” (Kazantzakis 469). Interestingly, this dream of Mary’s occurs within the larger dream created by Satan. With no small stretch of the mind we can assume that the dream of Mary was instigated by God in order to guide Jesus as God has done throughout the novel. So, in this moment of conflict, we can see the two opposing forces using the same language almost identically to communicate each wish Jesus creating a cacophony of truth and lies. By using the dream as a revelation of truth God is attempting to undermine the appearance of Satan. However, Satan ironically appeals to Jesus’ logical understanding of the world and challenges the vision of Mary saying to Jesus “are you a woman? Do you believe in dreams?” (Kazantzakis 469). As we learned earlier Jesus does in fact believe in dreams and sees the power they hold. Jesus belief has become so powerful in fact that there is a switch between the meaning of dream and reality with dream now appearing as actual reality and actual reality appearing as dream. The mind is left to reel.

Eventually Jesus pushes aside the dream of Mary and further assimilates into the dream world. This is not a world of Satan with fire and brimstone. This world appears as sweet as honey—the ideal existence for a man who wants to fully be a man. He exalts much of the same joys that we experience in our lives. At one point he says “to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of Paradise?” (Kazantzakis 458). Perhaps this momentary lifetime is so attractive to Jesus (and to us) because, as we’ve demonstrated earlier, the dream is a language spoken by both God and Satan where the dialects of Satan almost pass imperceptibly as the utterance of God. Satan’s craft takes the appearance of light and goodness especially juxtaposed against God’s reality of the crucifixion; we only wish the best for this man who has suffered so much. Our feelings towards echo in the speech of Caliban from Shakespeare’s’ The Tempest:

“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again” (III.ii 137-145).

However, despite his and our temptation to remain the dream world, Jesus eventually awakes from this allusion to a reality of hanging on the cross. It is in this moment of waking that he realizes his feat and gloriously exclaims, “it is accomplished!” before giving up his spirit (Kazantzakis 496). The temptation of the momentary lifetime was necessary for Jesus to conquer to rise to the highest heavens; as the epigraph states in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “the way up is the way down” (Eliot 10). The glory of Jesus accomplishment thus lies in his ability to go down to experience the most powerful sorcery of Satan— a luscious momentary lifetime— and to reject the temptation and instead provide his followers with the ultimate example of attaining the divine through sacrifice.

Works Cited

Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1943. Print.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Last Temptation of Christ. Trans. P.A. Bien. New York:

Scribner, 1960. Print.

Nooteboom, Cees. The Following Story. Trans. Ina Rilke. New York: Harvest, 1991.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Eds. David Bevington & Scott Kastan. New York:

Bantam Dell, 2004. Print.