Editorial Issues and Principles
The Archive of the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum today constitutes the most comprehensive repository of Kazantzakis-related materials, comprising over 50,000 items organized into ten collections: Correspondence, Manuscripts and Autographs, Publications – Articles – Studies, Press Clippings, Photographs, Audio Recordings, Moving Image Material, Theatrical Material, Works of Art, and Personal Objects. These rare documents illuminate significant aspects not only of the life and work of Nikos Kazantzakis but also of modern Greek and European culture. Among the Museum’s richest collections is the Correspondence Archive, which numbers more than 6,000 letters. The authors of these letters include not only Kazantzakis himself but also dozens of figures from his close circle (Eleni Kazantzaki, Pantelis Prevelakis, Thea Anemoyanni, Agni Rousopoulou) and from his wider network of acquaintances. A substantial portion of the material consists of letters written by Kazantzakis himself.
The digital collection “Nikos Kazantzakis Correspondence” is the outcome of a research project aiming to collect, document, and make publicly available the entirety of Nikos Kazantzakis’s correspondence. The project includes 1,000 letters authored by Kazantzakis, representing the largest portion of his surviving correspondence preserved at the Museum. The collection offers digital reproductions of the letters, along with their transcription, translation, and scholarly documentation. The Museum’s objective is to provide the public with access not only to the documents themselves but also to scientifically curated information.
More than half of the letters are addressed to Eleni Kazantzaki—an important archival set donated to the Museum in 2015 by Niki Stavrou. Many of these letters—mainly excerpts—were published by Eleni Kazantzaki in her book Nikos Kazantzakis: The Uncompromising Spirit. The collection, however, also includes letters addressed to numerous other individuals, such as Ioannis Angelakis, Antonis Anemoyannis, Giorgos Anemoyannis, Thea Anemoyanni, Galatea Kazantzaki, Ioannis Kakridis, Elli Lambridi, Lia Levin, Giannis Maglis, Alexis Minotis, Emmanouil Papastefanou, Nikos Saklambanis, Giannis Stavridakis, Charilaos Stefanidis, Agni Rousopoulou, Kimon Friar, Börje Knös, and others. Bibliographic references are provided wherever possible for letters that have already been published. As has often been noted, Kazantzakis’s extensive correspondence sheds light on his biography and oeuvre. Although selected letters have been published in various volumes over time, the need for the publication of the entire corpus remains pressing—a task that can now be realized through digital means and a digital platform such as the one presented here.
Editorial Principles
A fundamental principle of this edition has been to present the text unabridged, with only the minimum necessary interventions. Editorial interventions in the manuscripts are indicated by the following critical symbols:
- [ ] square brackets: editorial additions or expansions of abbreviations
- < > angle brackets: deletions by the author (NK)
- { } brace brackets: insertions by the author (NK)
- † † crosses: illegible or uncertain text
- — — dashes: where one or more letters are unclear
All other symbols found in the manuscripts—such as parentheses, exclamation marks, question marks (Greek and Latin), and the equality sign (=)—as well as underlinings and capitalization are retained as in the original. Book titles are italicized, though in some cases this formatting is not transferred to the online text (as this would require additional coding), except where the author himself uses quotation marks (low for Greek, high for Latin characters). Ordinal numbers (α΄, β΄, γ΄) are expanded to first, second, third, etc.
Certain replacements have been applied systematically, without explicit notation each time: the inverted exclamation mark (¡), which Kazantzakis generally used in his manuscripts, is replaced by the conjunction και (“and”); the abbreviated form σ’ is expanded to στο(ν), στη(ν), σε, as appropriate; and κ’ is rendered as κι.
In general, the guiding principle has been to preserve the sound and style of the text. For example:
- The final -ν is maintained as used by NK (e.g., μη ξεχάσεις / μην ξεχνάς, τη μπόμπα).
- Double forms are preserved (πνεύμα / πνέμα, λέφτερος / λεύθερος).
- Morphological and phonological variations from Modern Greek are retained (κίντυνος, λέξες, δυνάμες, ρίχνουνται).
With regard to spelling, the text has been modernized according to the conventions of Standard Modern Greek and contemporary orthography. Kazantzakis’s highly simplified orthographic system has not been retained. The online dictionary of the Academy of Athens was used as the reference for orthographic modernization.
Translation and Documentation
The original letters are written in Greek, French, German, and English. All letters have been translated into both Greek and English to broaden access for the international scholarly community. The translation does not seek a literal reproduction of Kazantzakis’s style but rather an interpretive approach that conveys the tone and spirit of his writing.
For the archival and philological documentation of the material and the enrichment of metadata, we followed the International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD(G)) as well as the Basic Interoperability Specifications for Cultural Collections of the National Documentation Centre (EKT), in combination with the descriptive standards traditionally used by the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum. The aim is for this project to serve as a model of archival description for the Museum’s collections. Documentation is an ongoing process, and corrections or additions to individual records may be incorporated in the future.
Metadata standardization was pursued wherever possible; for instance, in documenting persons (sender, recipient, or others mentioned), we used as reference sources the Vocabulary of Greek Historical and Artistic Figures of the EKT Semantics Infrastructure (link: here), VIAF (link: here), and Wikipedia. The same sources were used to establish standardized transliterations of non-Greek names. Certain details of the archival documentation (such as physical description or storage location) and of the philological documentation (such as transcription notes or thematic keywords) are stored in the Museum’s database and not displayed on the website. Although commentary on the letters was also attempted, it was not included online, as the commentary did not yet follow a standardized framework. This work could form the basis of a future dedicated project or printed edition of the correspondence.
The Digital Platform
The website https://archive.kazantzaki.gr/ hosts the Digital Collection of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Correspondence, offering open access to both researchers and the general public. It includes the original letters and their translations into Greek and English, accompanied by core documentation. The platform features an advanced search system that enables users to locate letters based on multiple criteria—such as sender, recipient, referenced persons, or place of origin and destination. Significantly, it also supports full-text searches across description, transcription, and translation fields, thereby facilitating targeted research and enhancing international scholarly access to Kazantzakis’s work.
This digital collection is intended as the foundation for the comprehensive gathering and presentation of Kazantzakis’s entire correspondence. The project is dynamic and may be expanded or improved over time; revisions to transcriptions, documentation, and translations may be incorporated into subsequent versions of the website. For this reason, any reference to the collection should indicate the year of the specific edition used. In the future, the collection may be enriched with letters addressed to Kazantzakis, as well as material preserved in other archives and collections, contributing to the creation of a complete digital corpus of Nikos Kazantzakis’s correspondence.
Paraskevi Vassiliadi
Selected Bibliography
Dimakis, Minas. “Η επιστολογραφία του Καζαντζάκη.” Tetradia “Efthynis” – Review of Nikos Kazantzakis, no. 3, Athens 1977¹, 1993², pp. 56–60.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Unpublished Letters from His Youth to His Mature Years. With two comments by Minas Dimakis. Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, Athens, 1979.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis. Edited and Translated by Peter Bien. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2012.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis to the Angelakis Family. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by Thanasis Agathos. Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, Myrtia, 2013.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Mount Athos. November–December 1914. Diary. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by Christina Ntounia and Paraskevi Vassiliadi. Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, Heraklion, 2022.
Mathioudakis, Nikos. “Transcription, Documentation and Editorial Perspectives in Letters, Notes and Manuscripts.” In Zoe Gavriilidou, Pinelopi Kampaki-Vougiouli, and Nikos Mathioudakis (eds.), Nikos Kazantzakis: From Manuscript to Text. A Festschrift for Christoforos G. Charalampakis. Paratiritis of Thrace, Komotini, 2022, pp. 129–153.
Mastrodimitris, Panagiotis D. “Assessments and Philological Issues in the Correspondence of Nikos Kazantzakis.” Symposium on Nikos Kazantzakis, Academy of Athens, 27 November 2007. Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation, Athens, 2010, pp. 51–58.
Tagopoulou, Constance (ed.). The Correspondence of Nikos Kazantzakis: Proceedings of the Round Table organized by the International Society of Friends of Nikos Kazantzakis (ISFNK) at the Gennadius Library, Athens, October 2012, on the occasion of the publication of Peter Bien’s The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis (Princeton University Press, 2012). ISFNK, Athens, 2013.
Filippidis, Stamatis N. “The Correspondence of Kazantzakis and Its Literary Value.” In Constance Tagopoulou (ed.), The Correspondence of Nikos Kazantzakis. Proceedings of the Round Table organized by ISFNK, Gennadius Library, 15/10/2012, pp. 30–44.