Dialogic Openness in Nikos Kazantzakis

In this book, Charitini Christodoulou argues that a certain perception of openness that she calls “dialogic” permeates Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation. Partly based on Umberto Eco’s theory in Opera Aperta and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism, the term “dialogic openness” refers to the idea of antithetical forces clashing and thus revealing different forms of tension that are not resolved at the end of the novel. Thus, it is shown that subjectivity and meaning is always in the process of becoming.

The different aspects of identity formation unfold before the eyes of the reader, who becomes a witness to the leading characters’ process of becoming. Christodoulou demonstrates that there are dialogic elements in tension, which can only be brought forth not as a synthesis, such as the stylistics of a genre implies, but as openness perceived as a process of identity formation.