Kazantzakis: Trouwe lezer van de 'Franse' Nietzsche

The dissertation on Nietzsche’s philosophy, which Kazantzakis wrote in 1909, is shown to be based mainly on studies by French scholars, which provided him not only with most of its content, but also with its very structure. The knowledge of these sources allows us to follow the way Kazantzakis selects and combines them, in function of his own interests and of his identification with Nietzsche. Likewise, the passages where he differs from all of his sources may be understood as ele- ments of Kazantzakis’ self-portrait. Even more importantly, some of the concepts that Kazantzakis attributes to Nietzsche, and which play an essential role in his own thinking, up to the period of his great post-World War II novels, appear to be based on a mistaken interpretation of Nietzsche by Lichtenberger.