Kazantzakis Story Festival to Be Held on the 13th at Seoul City Hall Citizen Hall

Book 'The Last Temptation'

[Asia Economy Reporter Seomideum] The 11th Kazantzakis Story Festival will be held on the 13th of this month at the ‘Taepyeong Hall’ in the Seoul City Hall Citizen’s Hall. The event is co-hosted by the ‘Korean Kazantzakis Friends’ group (President Shim Ajin, novelist) and the Korea-Greece Association (President Yoo Jaewon, Honorary Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies).

In the first part, four presenters will explore the philosophical, social, religious, and literary implications embedded in the work in various ways. In the second part, there will be an active discussion session with attendees. Anyone interested in Nikos Kazantzakis, the creator of ‘Zorba the Greek,’ and ‘The Last Temptation’ can participate in the event.

The first presenter in part one, Professor Choi Hyeyoung (Department of History, Chonnam National University), mentions desire, fear, and freedom as the three pillars running through the work. She examines Kazantzakis’s ideological background embedded in ‘The Last Temptation’ centered on ‘desire’ for a deeply human, ordinary life, ‘fear’ of having to become a perfect god, and ‘freedom’ from simple realistic freedom to spiritual freedom. She calls upon various philosophies including Gnosticism, pantheism, Buddhism, Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche to analyze how these appear in the work.

Professor Hong Gidon (literary critic, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Catholic University) reviews Kazantzakis who envisioned the beginning of a new world by creating Jesus who does not remain in the already existing truth of Christ but carries his own cross and does not hesitate to walk the path of suffering.

A representative of the group stated, “‘The Last Temptation’ is a work exploring humans, souls, and gods, so it is expected to be a special story festival for all of us who have experienced the global pandemic situation to understand humans, understand gods, and reflect on the current situation in 2021, which may not be unrelated to divine governance.”