Ulisse tragico ed epico in Nikos Kazantzakis
abstract
Ulysses is a mythic character much loved by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis: in 1922 he published the ‘tragedy’ Ὀδυσσέας and in 1938, after years of work and many versions, the poem Ὀδύσεια, his opus magnum. In this article I deal with their fundamental features and the difficulty of fixing them in a specific literary model. The first is a theatrical poem, which exploits the dramatic elements of the ancient epos in an original way; the immense Ὀδύσεια is a fascinating example of ‘modern epic’, outside and beyond traditional conventions.
Keywords: Drama • Odyssey • Ulysses • Nikos Kazantzakis • Modern epic