Culture Watch


Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996), a hundred years since the birth of the Poet of Light


Born Odysseas Alepoudelis in Heraklion, Crete 100 hundred years ago, the winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature came to represent the very essence of Greece. His verses lay bare the soul of the people and the secrets of the land, intertwined in a story presented in two colours; the blue of the sky and the sea, the white of the light, the houses and the purity.


Odysseas Elytis’ work is said to have fused the modernist European poetics and the Greek lit- erary tradition into a unique and distinct lyrical voice. As he said in his address to the Swedish Academy on receiving the Nobel Prize, “apart from the physical side of objects and the ability to perceive them in their every de- tail, there is also the metaphorical ability to grasp their essence and bring them to such clarity that their metaphysical significance will also be revealed.”


Surrealism harboured his creativity early on. An advocate of free verse, he dismissed estab- lished poetic forms and conventions describing them as “vessels for the containment of the most heterogeneous material.” For Elytis, po- etry unfolded its form in a self-inventive manner, with rhyme discarded in his view as pretence of “superficial delight.” But his is a mild and controlled surrealism, the syntax in his poems is not violated and the images breathe pleasure and warmth.


His poems are a celebration of Greek land- scape as an ideal world of sensual enjoyment and moral purity that liberate life. An explosive mixture of all-encompassing light, blue skies, azure seas, white cottages, bald rocks, olive trees, persistent crickets, ancient amphorae and ruins, summer high noon and ever chang- ing winds set the most triumphant and mysti- cal scene of a theatre where verses attest the meaning of life.


In 1940 Elytis was called up as a second lieuten- ant and served on the Albanian front, where the Greek army checked the Italian invasion. His experience of war marks a departure from the sunny atmosphere of his early youth and poetry such as the maiden Orientations (1939), colour- ing his long poem Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of Albania (1943).


Axion Esti (1959) signifies the peak of his later attempt to identify himself with his nation. His central and most ambitious work is a three-part composition of formal structure, aiming to pres- ent modern Greek consciousness through the development of a first-person narrator who is simultaneously the poet himself and the voice of Greece.


Throughout his poetry Elytis established man as the master of his own fortune, devoid of guilt, redeemed by the “Judicious Sun”, the healing


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light. His verse redefines the rules towards an unruly existence, bound only by nature, love, freedom, the re-writing of History according to the poet’s inner instinct, his inability to condone life the way it should not be.


“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 meta- morphoses into greater harmony with my dreams. I am referring to a contemporary kind of magic which leads to the discovery of our true reality


. In the hope of obtaining


a freedom from all constraints and the jus- tice which could be identified with absolute light, I am an idolater who, without wanting to do so, arrives at Christian sainthood.”


• To Axion Esti—It Is Worthy (Το Άξιον Εστί, 1959) • Six Plus One Remorses For The Sky ( Έξη και µια τύψεις για τον ουρανό, 1960)


• Three Poems under a Flag of Convenience (Τρία ποιήµατα µε σηµαία ευκαιρίας 1982)


• Krinagoras (Κριναγόρας, 1987) • The Little Mariner (Ο Μικρός Ναυτίλος, 1988) • The Elegies of Oxopetra (Τα Ελεγεία της Οξώπετρας, 1991) • West of Sadness (∆υτικά της λύπης, 1995) • Eros, Eros, Eros: Selected and Last Poems (1998) (translated by Olga Broumas)


• Diary of an Invisible April (Ηµερολόγιο ενός αθέατου Απριλίου, 1984)


• The Light Tree And The Fourteenth Beauty (Το φωτόδεντρο και η δέκατη τέταρτη οµορφιά, 1972) • The Sovereign Sun (Ο ήλιος ο ηλιάτορας, 1971) • The Trills Of Love (Τα Ρω του Έρωτα, 1973) • The Monogram (Το Μονόγραµµα, 1972) • Step-Poems (Τα Ετεροθαλή, 1974) • Signalbook (Σηµατολόγιον, 1977) • Maria Nefeli (Μαρία Νεφέλη, 1978)


(Άσµα ηρωικό και πένθιµο για τον χαµένο ανθυπολοχαγό της Αλβανίας, 1946)


• Sun The First Together With Variations on A Sunbeam (Ηλιος ο πρώτος, παραλλαγές πάνω σε µιαν αχτίδα, 1943) • An Heroic And Funeral Chant For The Lieutenant Lost In Albania


Poetry by Odysseas Elytis: • Orientations (Προσανατολισµοί, 1939)


PLAN AHEAD IN BRITAIN heatre


After Troy, by Glyn Maxwell - inspired by Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women. Part of Ox- ford University’s Onassis Pro- gramme. In as- sociation with Lifeblood The- atre Company. 1-14 March, in Oxford, Lon- don, Salford and Scarbor- ough. For up


T


to date booking information, visit http://www.aftertroy.com.


ourism Westfield London, Europe’s largest urban shopping desti- nation is hosting an immersive Greek experience. Following the hugely successful event where a Greek beach drew thousands of visitors to the River Thames on a sunny week in June, the U.K. and Ireland Greek Tourism Office launches ‘Visit Greece@ Westfield London’. From 19 to 27 March 2011.


T C oncert


Lavrentis Maheritsas, Dimi- tris Starovas and co live in Bir- mingham and London. A differ- ent night, a different concert. Full of old and new songs, songs that seem to be “classic” in the Greek rock scene. Tues- day 22 March, at The Glee in the Arcadian


Centre, Birmingham at 8:00pm. Wednesday 23 March, at Ding- walls in Camden, London at 8:00pm.


L


ecture Voices from Greece Lecture – “Odysseus Elytis – The Cen- tenary”. Guest speakers: David Connolly, David Holton, Peter Mackridge. Readings from trans- lated works of Odysseus Elytis by Vic Sage. Organiser: Helen An- agnostopoulou-Banakas. Sun- day, 27 March 2011 at 4:00pm. Lecture Theatre 1, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ.


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