Navigating the labyrinth: Communist engagement with Theseus and the Minotaur in 1940s literature

This article focuses on the use of the Theseus and the Minotaur myth by metacommunist author Nikos Kazantzakis and brief Communist (and subsequent anti-Communist) author André Gide, in the former's "At the Palaces of Knossos" and "Kouros", and the latter's "Theseus". Drawing heavily upon the details of the men's lives, as well as the texts themselves and adjoining texts, it provides a detailed and nuanced reading of the differences and similarities between the myth's treatments, consistently interwoven with exploration of linguistics, politics, and the mingling of the two in literature. Kazantzakis uses the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur to present the necessity for metacommunist revolution, displaying Theseus as a revolutionary, and the Cretan upper-classes as corrupt, violent, and contemptible, and the Minotaur as representative (arguably) of the evils of capitalism, in his "At the Palaces". In his "Kouros", intended for a more mature audience, we see far more nuance, with the Minotaur now able to be changed into a more workable system, not necessarily through violence. Gide, however, uses the myth in both a similar way, with the demonisation of the upper classes in his text, and in a different way, with an emphasis on the Minotaur as representative of Communism, which, while at first intriguing, can quickly be discovered to be 'stupid'. These uses are heavily intertwined with the men's politics, and, in their work, they use Classics for new political avenues that we perhaps wouldn't expect from the discipline so well-known for its far right exploitation.