Andrea Dworkin - The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

the claims that would be made for it later by feminists: the

bull was the sacred animal of Goddess religions and cults, the

symbol of the Great Goddess. One of the great icons of

modern feminism originates in Crete - the labyris, the double

ax. Both the bull and the labyris signified the Goddess religion,

and Knossos was a holy site. From 3, 700 years before Christ

to 2, 000 years before Christ, Crete was the zenith of civilization, a Goddess-worshiping civilization.

Originally I saw it from the opposite side of the road. A

friend and I went to have a picnic in the country north of

Heraklion; we had wine and a Greek soft cheese that I particularly favored; we were in love and trouble and so talked in our own pidgin tongue made up of Greek, English, and French.

I found myself going out there alone and finding refuge in the

intriguing building across the road, Knossos. I found the

72

Knossos

throne room especially lovely and intimate. I would take a

book, sit on the throne, and read, every now and then thinking about what it must have been like to live in this small and intimate room. The rest of the palace that had been restored

was closed, and as soon as I heard the first busload of tourists

sometime in late April I never went back. But for a while it

was mine. I felt at home there, something I rarely feel anywhere. Once I was inside, it was as familiar as my own skin. I loved the stone from which everything, including the throne,

was made. I loved the shape of the room and the throne itself.

I loved the colors, as I remember them now mostly red and

blue but very pure, the true colors painted on stone. I don’t

think it is possible to go back to a place that has such a grip

on one’s heart; or I can’t. When I die, though, I’m going back,

as ash, dust unto dust - not to the stone walls or throne of

Knossos but to a high hill overlooking Heraklion. I belong to

the place even if the place does not belong to me.

73

Kazantzakis

In the early morning I would walk from my balcony near the

water to the market. I’d buy olives. There had to be dozens

of different kinds. Of al the food for sale, olives were the

cheapest, and I’d buy the cheapest of those - about an eighth

of an ounce - and then I’d find a cafe and order a cof ee. I’d

keep fil ing the cup with milk, each time changing the ratio of

cof ee to milk. I’d have the waiter bring more and more milk.

As long as there was stil some cof ee in the cup I couldn’t be

refused. This was a rule I made up in my mind, but it seemed

to hold true. Early on I stole a salt shaker so that I could clean

my teeth. Salt is abrasive, but it works.

I had read about the square where I took my coffee in

Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Freedom or Death, a book I carried

with me almost everywhere once I discovered it (and I stil

have that paperback copy, brown and brittle). A novelist who

captures the soul of a country or a people writes fiction and

history and mythology, and Freedom or Death is such a work.

It is the story of the 1889 revolt of the Cretans against the

Turks. It is epic and at the same time it is the story of

Heraklion, Crete’s largest city and where I was living. Inside

74

Kazantzakis

the epic there are love stories, stories of fraternal affection and

conflict, sickening details of war and occupation. In the square

- the square where I was sitting - the Turks would hang rebels,

the solitary body often more terrifying than any baker’s

dozen. Only a writer can show that precise thing, bring the

disfigured humanity of the dead individual into one’s own

viscera. One forgets the eloquence of the single person who

wanted freedom and got death. I could always see the body

hanging.

In those days political women did a kind of inner translating so that al the heroes, almost always men except for the occasional valiant female prostitute, were persons, ungendered, and one could aspire to be such a person. The point for the writer and other readers might well be masculinity itself,

but the political female read in a different pitch - the body

shaking the trees with its weight, obstructing both wind and

light, would be more lyrical, with the timbre in Bil ie Holiday’s

voice. Freedom or Death set the terms for fighting oppression;

later, feminism brought those terms to a new maturity with

the idea that one had to be willing to die for freedom, yes, but

also willing to live for it. Each day over my prolonged cup of

coffee I would watch the body hanging in the square and

think about it, why the body was displayed in torment as if

the torture, the killing continued after death. I would feel the

fear it created in those who saw it. I would feel the necessity

of another incursion against the oppressor - to show that he

75

Heartbreak

had not won, nor had he created a paralyzing fear, nor had he

stopped one from risking one’s life for freedom.

I haven’t read Kazantzakis since I lived on Crete in 1965. I

have never read Zorba the Greek , his most famous novel

because of the movie made from the book, a movie I saw

maybe a decade or two later on television. Freedom or death

was how I felt about segregation back home, the Vietnam

War, stopping the bomb, writing, making love, going where

I wanted when I wanted. Freedom or death was how I felt

about the Nazis, the fascists, the tyrants, the sadists, the cold

kil ers. Freedom or death was how I felt about the world

created by the compromisers, the mediocrities, the apathetic.

Freedom or death encapsulated my philosophy. So I wrote a

series of poems cal ed (Vietnam) Variations ; poems and prose

poems I collected in a book printed on Crete called Child; a

novel in a style resembling magical realism called Notes on

Burning Boyfriend ; and poems and dialogues I later handprinted

using movable type in a book cal ed Morning Hair . The burning boyfriend was Norman Morrison, the pacifist who had set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War.