Bart Soethaert, a member of the Cluster from its very inception (Research Area 5) and, since this summer, an Assistant Professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, has recently presented the latest findings of his EXC 2020 project The Global Reception of Nikos Kazantzakis (1946–1988) in two essays that engage with the author's philosophical treatise Ασκητική (Askitikí). Regarded by Kazantzakis as the nucleus of his entire life and the intellectual, spiritual and paratextual key to his oeuvre, the final edition was published in 1945 after more than two decades of work. 

In Ο Ανήφορος (O Aníforos), the novel Kazantzakis wrote while staying as an invited guest of the British Council in the summer of 1946, the protagonist's journey from Crete to England in the aftermath of the Second World War leads to the solitary writing of Askitikí  to give expression to his "vision of liberation". In his contribution to a Cambridge Scholars volume dedicated to re-reading Kazantzakis's "credo", Soethaert argues that this autofictional novel multiplies the spatio-temporal signification of Askitikí, thereby adapting the author's worldview to a fraught new context, the nuclear age. As Soethaert demonstrates, Askitikí constitutes the main vector along which the heterogeneous textual materials of the literary assemblage that is O Aníforos are projected.

Soethaert's chapter in the proceedings of the 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies, meanwhile, focuses on the stand-alone translations of Askitikí. Forming part of the influential investments in Kazantzakis's international reputation, these publications also serve as a gateway for examining the practices of presentation, critical framing and intertextual networking associated with the manifestation of Askitikí abroad. With a special focus on the first two integral foreign-language editions, the 1951 French translation by Octave Merlier and the 1953 German translation by Karl August Horst, this case study sheds light on the strategies of mediation and acculturation through which the editors (re)assembled Askitikí  in their own time and place.


Bart Soethaert. "Preposterous Writing: On the Spatio-Temporal Dislocation of Kazantzakis's Askitikí in O Aníforos." In Re-Reading Kazantzakis's Askitiki. Centenary Reflections, edited by Lewis Owens and Nikos Mathioudakis, 118–32. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025. 

Bart Soethaert. "Η Ασκητική σε μετάφραση (1951–1953). Η συναρμολόγηση ενός έργου [Askitikí in Translation (1951–1953). Assembling a Work]." In Zoom in and Focus on Modern Hellenism: Texts, Images, Objects, Histories, edited by Vassilios Sabatakakis and Alexandra Fiotaki, 167–80. Proceedings of the 7th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies (Vienna, 11–14 September 2023) 4. Athens: European Society of Modern Greek Studies, 2025. (Open Access)