Among the foremost figures of Greece’s poetic renaissance in the 1930s, three gained international renown. Both George Seferis (1900-1971) and Odysseas Elytis (1911-1979) received the Nobel Prize in Literature, while the works of Yannis Ritsos (1900-1990) were widely translated. Nikiforos Vrettakos (1912-1991), though recognized within Greece and translated abroad, remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world.
“I like to begin where winds shake the first branch.”
Odysseas Elytis, Open Papers
Odysseas Elytis, born on November 2, 1911, in Heraklion, Crete, was relatively obscure outside Greece when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. Although the Swedish Academy had previously honored lesser-known writers such as Eugenio Montale, Vicente Aleixandre, and Harry Martison, its selection of Elytis was nonetheless surprising. In its presentation, the Academy commended his poetry as one that “depicts with sensual strength and intellectual clearsightedness, modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativity.” Elytis’s verse, distinctively personal and deeply reflective of Greek traditions, embraces themes that resonate with a broader humanism.
Elytis applied elements of surrealism selectively, adapting them to fit the Greek landscape and sensibility. His frequent use of free association allowed him to reveal the essence of objects in both their “reality” and their “surreality.” This stylistic choice is evident in his works, where, for instance, a young girl becomes a fruit, a landscape takes on the shape of a human body, and the ambiance of a morning morphs into the form of a tree.
As Elytis himself stated, “I have always been preoccupied with finding the analogies between nature and language in the realm of imagination, a realm to which the surrealists also gave much importance, and rightly so… Everything depends on imagination, that is, on the way a poet sees the same phenomenon as you do, yet differently from you.”
One of Elytis’s best-known verses captures the essence of his poetic vision: “If you disintegrate Greece, in the end you will see that you are left with an olive tree, a vineyard and a boat. Which means: with so much more you can rebuild it.”
“But you must know that only he who fights the darkness within will the day after tomorrow have his own share in the sun.”
Odysseas Elytis, The Axion Esti
Elytis’s vision of an individual “paradise” speaks volumes about his worldview: “If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must be irreparably planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of the truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying eros, eros, eros.”
Simple yet profound, Elytis’s words often reflect an appreciation for the beauty in the everyday:
“I can become happy with the simplest things the most insignificant even the every day ones of every day. It is sufficient for me that weeks have Sundays and I am satisfied that years keep their Christmas for the very end, that winters have stone houses dipped in snow, that I know how to discover the hidden bitter herbs in their hiding places. It is enough for me that four people love me a lot… It is enough for me that I love four people a lot that I spend my breath on them alone; that I am not afraid to remember; that I do not care if they remember me; that I can still cry and that I even sing sometimes… that there is music which fascinates me and fragrances that enchant me…”
Through his poetry, Elytis sought to instill hope and optimism, encouraging his compatriots with his vision of renewal, both personal and spiritual. His perspective—a blend of poetic reverence and moral clarity—drew inspiration from Greek cultural roots, referencing figures such as Sappho and Heraclitus. This approach set him apart from the prevailing mood of pessimism that pervaded much of his era.
As a leading voice of Greece’s “generation of the thirties,” Elytis’s work straddles the tension between Greek tradition and European modernism. His first collection, Prosanatolizmi (Orientations), published in 1936, won him recognition as the “sun-drinking poet” for its vivid imagery of light and purity.
Elytis paused his literary work to serve in World War II, fighting in the Albanian Campaign against Mussolini’s forces with the First Army Corps. The harrowing experiences of this period left their mark on him, later inspiring the poem A Heroic and Elegiac Song of the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign.
In 1959, after a decade-long silence, Elytis published The Axion Esti, a major work structured as a poetic cycle interweaving prose and verse, modeled after the Byzantine liturgy. This work, like much of his poetry, presents the Greek experience through a lens that is intensely personal yet deeply rooted in cultural heritage.
“Your mouth speaks with four hundred roses, beats the trees, overwhelms the entire earth, pours the first shiver into the body.”
Reflecting on his literary mission in Books Abroad, Elytis remarked: “I consider poetry a source of innocence full of revolutionary forces. It is my mission to direct these forces against a world my conscience cannot accept, precisely so as to bring that world through continual metamorphoses more in harmony with my dreams. I am referring here to a contemporary kind of magic whose mechanism leads to the discovery of our true reality.”
Dr. Sofia Skleida
REFERENCES
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