Ignatian Influences on Nikos Kazantzakis's Askitiki

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), a highly influential Greek novelist and poet, spent a long apprenticeship to Christian spirituality, and he admired Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). Examining Kazantzakis's Askitiki (English translation, The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises), this essay discloses how the moves in Kazantzakis's lyrical essay, like those in Ignatius's masterwork, are drills that constitute an "always more" (semper maior) training for the arduous ascent to a knowledge of the God-world alliance. Three themes unite Kazantzakis and Ignatius: active mindfulness; soul-freedom through detachment from disordered affections; and pansacramentalism, finding God in all things and all things in the divine.