Toda-Raba

[Translated by Amy Mims.] Toda Raba was written in 1929, after Kazantzakis’ return from his journeys through the Soviet Union. It is a novel — strange, surging, mystical and, in the final analysis, terrifyingly prophetic. The characters are — with one exception — reflections of Kazantzakis himself, and represent his own deeply conflicting views of the Revolution. They are all wanderers, searchers, drawn by the force of Lenin (who has already died) to the Soviet Union, at a time when Russia is still living in the aftermath of the Civil War. There is Rahel, a Polish-Jewish girl, drawn to Communism and working for the secret police; there is Azad, the ex-Cheka murderer, who believes in the necessity for a new and purer revolution, and thinks Communism must come from a change of man’s soul, not from the machines and the materialism of Europe and America; there is Geranos, a Cretan like Kazantzakis, by far the most rational and comprehensible of the characters, who admires the Revolution but is too old to join in its works, too set in his mental habits to abandon himself to it; there is Sou-ki, a Chinese from California; and Amita, a Japanese writer; and Ananda, an Indian monk — all these meet, talk, think, analyze the Revolution and the Soviet Union. Towering over them all, in a mysterious way, is Toda Raba, an African Negro who abandons his tribe and his savage god to make a pilgrimage to Russia.