Images of man : a comparative study of selected novels by Nikos Kazantzakis and D. H. Lawrence

Ever since the shattering impact of Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God, twentieth-century authors have been concerned in their fiction with examining the attempt made by man to cope with the condition implied by Nietzsche's words. The condition and its characteristics have been given many names but most commentators agree that the primary philosophical concerns of modern man are to deal positively with the condition of freedom that the death of God has created, to avoid the despair which the "experience of nothingness" implies and, more importantly, to create a new image of the self once the traditional God-centred image has been destroyed. -- Nikos Kazantzakis and D.H. Lawrence were two seemingly different authors who, in their fiction, examined in strikingly similar terms the attempt by modern man to create a new self-image. Both authors saw that man reconstructs this new self-image first by redefining his connection with the living world around one. For both authors this living world included one's fellow men and women and the natural living environment. Second, one's self-image is recreated by redefining one's connection with the political milieu. Third, both authors saw the figure of the historical Jesus as prototypic of that individual who was on such a journey of self-redefinition and who had reached a level of transcendence in that journey. -- This discussion examines the strikingly similar fashion in which both authors saw and portrayed in their fiction modern man's journey toward self-redefinition. This is done by a comparison of three Kazantzakis novels with three Lawrence novels in terms of their similar approaches to the problem of coping creatively with the "experience of nothingness." -- The Lawrence novels examined are Women in Love, The Man Who Died and Kangaroo and these are compared respectively with Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ and Freedom or Death