RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Seasick Passengers

“Our four passengers were dreadfully sick, so that we saw little or nothing of them for five days. On the sixth day it cleared off, and the sun came out bright, but the wind and sea were still very high. It was quite like being at sea again: no land for hundreds of miles, andContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Seasick Passengers”

RKS Literature: “Two Years Before the Mast”: The Captain Speaks!

“Now my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together, we shall have a comfortable time; if we don’t, we shall have hell afloat. All you’ve got to do is obey your orders and do your duty like men-then you’ll fare well enough;-if you don’t, you’ll fare hard enough,-I canContinue reading “RKS Literature: “Two Years Before the Mast”: The Captain Speaks!”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: God as the Big Wolf

“The trap-door is open, the evil spirits are coming out. You wanted to see and hear them! ‘Where do we come from?’ you asked. Up and out of the earth, Captain Séfakas. ’Where are we going to?’ you asked. Under the earth Captain Séfakas. What is your duty? To eat if you are a wolf;Continue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: God as the Big Wolf”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: A Reluctant Cretan Bride to Be! (Nikos Kazantzakis)

“A piece of bread-damn it, that seems to you a trifle, does it, my princess? Very clever it sounds! And what, by God, should a bridegroom find to desire in you? Youth? Beauty? Riches? You’re thirty-five, and shrunk to a dried currant, to an old maid with a moustache! And that greyhound brother of yoursContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: A Reluctant Cretan Bride to Be! (Nikos Kazantzakis)”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Eternal Youth? (Nikos Kazantzakis)

“He murmured to himself, ‘It’s really a shame, that youth in human beings doesn’t last a thousand years! Is God perhaps afraid that we’ll take His throne away from Him? Is that why he craftily dismantles us, piece by piece? He pulls out our teeth, screws our knees up stiff, wears out our kidneys, dimsContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Eternal Youth? (Nikos Kazantzakis)”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Pontus Pilate’s View of Jesus

“Pilate had awakened, washed, anointed himself with aromatic oil, and was pacing nervously back and forth on the high solarium of his tower. He had never liked this Passover Day. The Jews drunk with their God, would work themselves into a frenzy, come to blows again with the Roman soldiers-and this year another massacre mightContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Pontus Pilate’s View of Jesus”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: The Rabbi Wonders is it Jesus or Satan?

“During all these days and weeks that he had been running behind Jesus, battling to understand who he was, his ramshackle body had completely melted away. Nothing was left now but a sunbaked hide wrapped around bones to which the soul clung and waited. Was this man the Messiah whom God had promised him, orContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: The Rabbi Wonders is it Jesus or Satan?”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: ,

“I have not come to bring peace to the world, but a sword. I shall throw discord into the home, the son shall lift his hand against the father, the daughter against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-for my sake. Whoever follows me abandons all. He that seeks on this earth to save hisContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: ,”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Charity and the Day of Reckoning at the Gates of Heaven

“And you whose immortal soul opened a money changing shop: you sit on the threshold, plunge your hand into the sack, give alms to the poor, lend to God. You keep a ledger and write: I gave so many florins for charity so and so on such and such a day, and at such anContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Charity and the Day of Reckoning at the Gates of Heaven”

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: The Death of a Child

“When a child dies, there is no land to be handed down, hardly any possessions to be divided up, no job or role unfulfilled, no debts that need be paid off. A child is a small sun that shines in the shadow of its parents, and when the sun goes out there is darkness onlyContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: The Death of a Child”