Word: lycovrissi
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...Greek Orthodox priest and elders of the Turkish town of Lycovrissi found it easy, a year ahead of time, to fill most of the parts in their Passion play. A coarse-faced wife-beater was picked to play Judas. The role of Mary Magdalen fell to the village prostitute. Plain men of good will were chosen for the Apostles, and it was finally agreed that a fresh-faced young peasant named Manolios was best fitted to play the part of Christ...
...chosen actors never gave their Passion play. Instead, along with their fellow townsfolk of Lycovrissi, they lived it. In The Greek Passion, Novelist Nikos Kazantzakis shows how the suffering and crucifixion of Christ in Roman Judea might be re-enacted in a modern setting -a Greek-inhabited Turkish town, circa 1920. Second of his novels to be published in the U.S. within a year, it is a striking demonstration of literary virtuosity for Kazantzakis. The hero of his Zorba the Greek was a neo-Hellenic Pan who seemed to have goat-footed his way straight out of pagan mythology...
Dreams on the Mountain. Each of the chosen actors of the Lycovrissi Passion is instructed by the priest to fix his mind on his coming role. Manolios, the Christus, is the first to find his mind divided. He lifts his thoughts to sacred things, but his fiancee, panting for marriage, keeps bringing him back to the earthy. Manolios retreats to a mountain and meditates, only to find the Lycovrissi Magdalen dancing through his dreams...
While Manolios is wrestling with himself on the mountain and winning, the townspeople wrestle with their collective conscience and lose. A starving band of refugees, uprooted by the Turks from another village, appear at the gates of Lycovrissi and plead for bread and a chance to start new lives in the town. But, led by their priest himself, the people of Lycovrissi hoot the newcomers off to a barren neighboring hill, where they settle miserably in caves...
...Lycovrissi soon has its own troubles. The town is ruled by a Turkish governor called the Agha, and the Agha is ruled by pleasure, good food, good drink, his waterpipe, and above all, his young boy paramour. When the boy is found murdered, the Agha threatens to hang every Greek in the village. The town trembles, tries to pin the crime on the Judas actor...
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