Greece Yesterday and Today Modern Greek Literature

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Greece Yesterday and TodayModern Greek Literature

• Nick Kontaridis

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Modern Greek Literature Review

• Prose
• The Short Story
• Novelette
• Novel
• Poetry
• Epic Poem
• Lyric Poetry
• The Sonette
• The Elegy
• The Language Question
• The demotic
• The Katharevousa

• Modern Greek Literature
• The Romantic School
• The School of the Ionian Islands
• The New School of Athens
• Poets
• Rhigas Pherraios, Dionysios Solomos, Kostis
  Palamas, Myrtiotissa, Melissanthi, Zoe Kareli,
  Angelos Sikelianos, C. Kavafis, N. Kazantzakis,
  George Seferis, Odysseus Elitis, Yannis Ritsos.

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Poets Rhigas Pherraios

• The War Hymn
• How long, my heroes, shall we live in bondage,
• alone like lions on ridges, on peaks?
• Living in caves, seeing our children
• Turned from the world to bitter enslavement?
• Losing our land, brothers, and parents
• Our friends, our children and all our relations?
• Better an hour of life that is free
• Than forty years of slavery!

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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• Hymn to Liberty
• I can see thee by the lightning
• of the sword-blade flashing high
• I can see thee by the brightening
• Of the swiftly glancing eye.
•  
• From the hallowed bones arising
• Of Hellenic heroes free,
• Now as ever valor prizing,
• Hail, all hail sweet liberty!
•  

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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• Epigram to Psara
• On Psaras blackened, charred stone
• Glory silently walks all alone
• mediating her sons noble deeds,
• and wears a wreath on her hair
• made of such few scattered weeds
• on the desolate earth left to spare.

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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• The Little Blonde Girl (Xanthoula)
• At eventide I saw her,
• The little girl golden-tressed,
• When she took a boat
• To go far to the West.
• Its snow-white sail,
• Swollen by the winds,
• Was like a dove frail
• With outspread wings.
• The friends were standing by,
• In joy, or in grief,
• And she waved good-bye
• With her white kerchief.
• I stopped to see her greeting,
• Her warm farewell,
• Till in the distance fleeting
• She was hidden by the swell.

After a little while I could not really tell, Wh
ether it was a sail Or the seas foamy swell. A
fter kerchief and canvas On the sea were lost, H
er friends shed a few tears And I shed the most.
I dont lament the boat, The sail I dont
lament, But I lament Xanthula That far from us s
he went. I dontlament the boat, The sail I don
t lament, But I lament Xanthula With hair golden
-pale.
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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• To Mr. George De Rossi
• When you come back to your fathers,
• Youll see only his tombstone,
• Before which I write you, alone,
• On this first day of May.
• Our May flowers we will scatter
• On his kind, innocent breast,
• For tonight he went to rest
• In Christs warm embrace.
• He was clam, still, and quiet
• Till the last hour, and peaceful,
• Just as now he looks gleeful,
• His soul having flown from him.
• Yet, a moment before flying
• Toward heavens realms up high,
• He waved gently with a sigh
• As if for a final blessing.

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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• The Dream
• My soul, goddess of beauty,
• Listen to what Ive dreamed
• With you I was one night,
• All to me so slendid seemed.
• We two walked together
• In a garden of small size,
• All the stars shone brightly
• And on them you kept your eyes.
• I was asking them, Stars say
• If there among you lies
• One that shines from above
• Like my lovely ladys eyes?
• Say whether you ever saw
• On others such pretty hair?
• Such an arm, such a limb,
• An angelic vision fair?

Such a figure full of beauty At once a question b
rings If this creature is an angel, Why is she
lacking wings? I had spoken this way When befo
re my very sight, Other girls appeared clad In t
he moons silvery light. Holding hands they dance
d together, All of them pretty and smart, Each o
ne trying with fervor To win my poor heart. Then
I heard your lips say, As you were addressing me
Do you like them? Tell me pray! And I said,
How ugly to see!
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Poets Dionysios Solomos

• The Dream (con.)
• Then a truly angelic smile
• Shone on your fair face,
• That methought I espied
• The sky open in embrace.
• And then I took you aside
• By a rosebush in bloom,
• Slowly I let my head hide
• Into your snow-white arms.
• Every kiss you gave me,
• Dear soul, with sweetness,
• Made a new rose appear
• On the bush, with swiftness.
• They were aborning all night,
• Till the early light of dawn
• Which found us looking pale

With faces tired and drawn. My soul, this
was my vision. It is now up to you To remembr m
e and make
This sweet dream come true.
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Poets Kostis Palamas

• Athens
• Here the sky is everywhere, on all sides shines
  the sun, and something like the
  
• honey of Hymettus is all around out of the
  marble grow lilies unwithering
  
• divine Mount Pentelicon flashes, begetter of an
  Olympus.
  
• The digging axe stumbles on beauty in her boson
  Clybele holds gods, not
  
• mortals when the shafts of twilight strike her,
  Athens gushes violet blood.
  
• Here are the temples and the groves of the sacred
  olive, and in the slowly
  
• shifting crowd, like a caterpillar on a white
  flower,
  
• a host of deathless relics live and reign with
  myriad souls the spirit flashes
  
• even in the earth I feel it wrestling with the
  darkness in me.

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Poets Kostis Palamas

• The Grave
• On the grave on which the Black Horseman takes
  you, be careful not toaccept anything from his
  handAnd, if you feel thirsty, do not drink the
  water of oblivion in the world below, my poor
  plucked spearmint!Do not drink, lest you forgot
  us fully, forever leave marks so as not to lose
  the way,And being light and small like a
  swallow, with no warriors weapons clashing round
  your waist,See how you can trick the Sultan of
  the Night slip away gently, secretly, and fly to
  us up to hereCome back to this empty house, O
  our precious boy turn into a breath of wind, and
  give us a sweet kiss.

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Poets Kostis Palamas

• Olympic Hymn
• Ancient immortal spirit, pure father of beauty,
  of greatness and
  
• of truth, descend, be revealed as lightning here
  within the glory
  
• of your own earth and sky at running and
  wrestling and at
  
• throwing illuminate in the noble Agons' momentum
  and crown
  
• with the unfading branch and make the body
  worthy and ironlike.
  
• Planes, sees and mountains shine with you like a
  white-and-purple
  
• great temple, and hurries at the temple here,
  your pilgrim every nation,
  
• o ancient, immortal Spirit.

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Poets Myrtiotissa (1883-1967)

• I love you. I can say nothing deeper, more simple
  or greater.
  
• Here, before your feet, I scatter, full of
  longing, the rich-petalled
  
• blossom of my life.
• O, my swarm of bees! Suck from it sweet, the pure
  perfume of my hart!
  
• See, I offer you my two hands, clasped for you to
  lean your head softly upon.
  
• And my hart is dancing, is all envy, and begs to
  be, like them, a pillow for your head.
  
• And for a bed, my love, take the whole of me,
  extinguish upon me the flame of your fire.
  
• While I, close to you, hear life flowing away to
  the beat of your heart
  
• I love you. What more, my precious love, can I
  tell you that is deeper, more simple, or greater?

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Poets Melissanthi (1910-          )

• Melissanthi, pseudonym of Hebe Skandhalakis, was
  born in in 1910. She received her diplomas from
  various institutes in Athens for the study of
  English, French, and German, and has since
  translated much from these languages, in
  particular from Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.
  Author of nine books of poetry and a play for
  children, she received the award of the Athens
  Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1936 for Return
  to the Prodigal, and the Palamas Award in 1946
  for Lyrical Confession. An essentially lyrical
  poet, she suffered a religious crisis and turned
  to an expression of metaphysical agony which
  nonetheless emphasizes her belief in man and his
  ability to realize his basic goodness and love.

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Poets Melissanthi (1910-          )

• Atonement
• Every time I sinned a door half opened, and the
  angels
  
• who in my virtue had never found me beautiful,
• tipped over the full amphora of their flower
  souls
  
• every time I sinned, it was as though a door had
  opened,
  
• and tears of sweet compassion dripped among the
  grasses.
  
• But if the sword of my remorse chased me from
  heaven,
  
• every time I sinned a door half opened, and
  though men
  
• thought me most ugly, the angels thought me
  beautiful.
  

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Poets Melissanthi (1910-          ) Ancient
Shipwrecked Cities

• All the weighed on her bronze shield,our
  words, our footsteps,and our most deeply hidden
  thoughts.Nothing can be lost,not a secret tear,
  not a leaf of a tree,not a single raindrop on
  the grass.
• Her holy Night fills up with sacrilegious
  ears and eyes.The slaughter of the innocence
  steams in the meadows- where the mirror of the
  moon has been misted over-ransom for the profane
  guiltof knowing and existing.

• Ancient shipwrecked citiestell us of the
  omnipotence of Silence,of her sudden
  overwhelming floods within their wallsthe snows
  of time are heaped on her breastin a slow
  movement voyaging,the icebergs of millenniums
  proceedAll set out from the primordial space of
  Silenceand return to her once more

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Poets-Zoe Kareli

• Zoe Kareli the sister of Nikos Pendzikis, was
  born on July 22 (August 4), 1901 in
  
• Thessaloniki, and received the education of a
  girl of good family according to her class
  
• and period by being tutored in English, German,
  French and Italian, in singing and
  
• drawing. Widiwed in 1953, she spent a year and a
  half with one of her two sons in
  
• Australia. She has translated Eliots Familly
  Reunion and The Coctail Party, and has
  
• herself written poetic drama.
• She shared the Second State Prize in Poetry in
  1955, was awarded the Palmes
  
• Academique by frances Ministry of Education in
  1959, won the First State Prize in
  
• Poetry in 1978. Karelli has been remarkably
  consistent in her existentialist attitude.
  
• Whatever she has written has been a quest for a
  way out of mans modern impasse, for
  
• redemption from the feeling that the soul has
  been ravaged and devastated, that a
  
• promise for justice has been broken. The fate of
  modern man, she believes, is to live in
  
• a constant but creative doubt-not a passive and
  enervating doubt, but one that, by
  
• indicating the duality of mans struggle, takes
  on existentialist value. Her themes
  
• become concernedwith the split personality of the
  person of sensibility tormented to
  
• filnd his integrity and to create centers of
  continuity. The tone of her poetry, in
  
• consequence, has neither the resilience of
  feminity nor the inflexibility of masculinity
  
• but conbines the passionate turmoil of feminine
  sensilbility with the tough abstraction
  
• of masculine thought.

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PoetsZoe Kareli

• From Diary
• To begin life anew?
•  
• It isnt a matter of most beauteous
• And ecstatic youth, not even one
• Of mans significant wisdom.
• ..
•  
• Spitit and essense, the complete presence,
• Reality and fantasy side by side.

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Poets-Zoe KareliWorker in the Workshops of Time

• The shape, receptacle of time,enclosed it
  erotically,an offering to time,expectation and
  acceptance both,that form which is an embrace of
  time,the singular shape he wrought
• Out of his own essence,his own
  imagination.
  
• But as his material handcaressed the
  final shape afterward,he understood the
  materiality of timeas his own handtogether with
  the shapeand the precious, erotic materialwere
  transformed into the diaphanous meaning of
  time.All together,but particularly he.

• As we brought the shape,a worker, a blower
  of glass,felt his love profoundlyfor the
  materialinto which he blew his breath.
  
• At times crystal or like pearl,mother-of-pe
  arl, precious ivoryor opal with misty
  colorsdrifting toward azure.All these were
  materials that become shapes,erotic shapes of
  whatever existswithin time.

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Poets-Joanna Tsatsos
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Poets Angelos Sikelianos(1880-1951)

• Angelos Sikelianos was born in 1880 in Lefkas,
  one of the Ionian islands, and died in Athens in
  1951. For many years he roamed throughout the
  length and breadth of Greece, confirming his
  knowledge andmastery of Greek tradition and the
  demotic tongue. The central action of his life
  was the formation of the Delphic Festivals in
  1927 and 1930. Ath Delphi, where the Amphictyonic
  Council (the first League of Nations) used to
  meet, Sikelianos hoped to found a cosmic center
  where, through a dedication to a religious view
  of life without dogms, the nations of the world
  might meet to insure peace and justice.
  Aeschylus Prometheus Bound and Suppliantswere
  lavisly mounted, Olympic contests were held on
  the heights of Mt. Parnassos, Byzantine music was
  played, Greek demotic songs were delivered and
  danced, and an international university was
  planned. The author of nine books of poetry and
  of seven poetic dramas, Sikelianos was a poet in
  the grand tradition, a Years-like figure, a
  prophet and seer, a man of high vision and noble
  actions, one who had assimilated the cultural
  traditions of his own nationand those of the
  modern world, a revolutionary democrat and mystic
  who acted beyond the particular political creeds
  and religious faiths of the world. His vision was
  pantheistic and panhellenic, and his poetry, with
  its wide rhetorical sweep and unequaled command
  of language, encompassed both the lyric (of which
  he was a modern master), the philosophic poem,
  and in his later years, the poetic drama.

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Poets Angelos Sikelianos(1880-1951)

• Thalero
• Blazing, laughing, warm, the moon watched over
  the
  
• vineyards, and the sun was still parching the
  bushes,
  
• as it set in the dead calmness. The angry grass
  was
  
• heavily sweating milk in the warm stillness and
  you
  
• could hear the grape-pickers whistle among the
• young vines that climbed up the many wide steps
  of
  
• the hillside the robins were shaking their
  wings on
  
• the rivers banks the heat-haze spread over
  the
  
• moon a spider-web kerchief.

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Poets Angelos Sikelianos
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Poets Angelos Sikelianos
25
Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• Constantine Kavafis was born in
  Constantinopole in 1963 and died in Alexandria in
  1933. Except for three years in England, two
  years in Constantinopole, a few months each in
  Paris and Athens, he spent his entire life in the
  Alexandria he loved, employed for twenty years as
  a common clerk in the Department of Irrigation.
  He wrote only three or four poems a year,
  published some of them in broadsheets for private
  use, and not until he was forty-one d he bring
  out his first book, a slim volume of only
  fourteen poems not for sale, reissued five years
  later with the addition of only seven poems. His
  main work, collected after his death, totals some
  forty-six erotic, some forty-one contemplative,
  and some sixty-seven historical poems. Written on
  a demotic base, but with a mixture strangely his
  own from Ancient, Byzantine, and Medieval Greek,
  his poems (often with Hellenistic setting) are
  brief, neither emotional nor lyrical, but
  dramatic, narrative, objective, realistic, a
  recounting of facts and episodes in a tone of
  voice which is dry, precise, deliberately prosaic
  and, above all, ironic-the undisputed founder and
  master of modern Greek poetry, and one of the
  first poets of the modern world .

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• Ithaca
• When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca,
• pray that your journey may be long,
• full of adventure, full of knowledge.
• Of the Laestrygones and the Cyclopes
• and of furious Poseidon, do not be afraid,
• for such on your journey you shall never meet
• if your thought remain lofty, if a select
• emotion imbue your spirit and your body.
• The Laestrygones and the Cyclopes
• and furious Poseidon you will never meet
• unless you drag them with you in your soul,
• unless your soul raises them up before you.
•  

• Pray that your journey may be long,
• that many may those summer morning be
• when with what pleasure, what pleasure, what
• untold delight you enter harbors for the first
  time seen
  
• that you stop at Phoenician market places
• to procure the godly merchandise,
• mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony
• and voluptuous perfumes of every kind,
• as lavish an amount of voluptuous perfumes as
  you
  
• can
• that you venture on to many Egyptian cities
• to learn and yet again to learn from the sages.

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• But you must always keep Ithaca in mind.
• The arrival there is your predestination.
• Yet do not by any means hasten your voyage.
• Let it best endure for many years,
• until grown old at length you anchor at your
  island
  
• rich with all you have acquired on the way,
• having never expected Ithaca would give you
  riches.
  
• Ithaca has given you the lovely voyage.
• Without her you would not have ventured on the
  way.
  
• She has nothing more to give to you now.
•  
• Poor though you may find her, Ithaca has not
  deceived you.
  
• Now that you have become so wise, so full of
  experience,
  
• you will have understood the meaning of an Ithaca.

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• The City
• You said, I will go to another land, I will go
  to another sea.
  
• Another city shall be found better than this.
• Each one of my endeavors is condemned by fate
• my heart lies buried like a corpse.
• How long now in this is withering shall my mind
  remain.
  
• Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I gaze,
• I see here only the black ruins of my life
• where I have spent so many years, worn thin and
  fallen to ruins.
  
•  

• New places you shall never find, youll
• not find other seas.
• The city still shall follow you. Youll wander
  still
  
• in the same streets, youll roam in the same
  neighborhoods,
  
• in these same houses youll turn gray.
• Youll always arrive at this same city. Dont
  hope for somewhere else
  
• no ship for you exists, no road exists.
• Just as youve ruined your life here, in this
• small corner of earth, youve worn it thin the
  whole world round.

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• As Much As You Can
• And if you cannot make your life as you want it,
• as least try this
• as much as you can do not disgrace it
• in the crowding contact with the world,
• in the many movements and all the talk.
• Do not disgrace it by taking it,
• dragging it around often and exposing it
• to the daily folly
• of relationships and associations,
• till it becomes like an alien burdensome life.

• Thermopylae
• Honor to those who in their lives
• are committed and guard their Thermopylae.
• Never stirring from duty
• just and upright in all their deeds,
• but with pity and compassion too
• generous whenever they are rich, and when
• they are poor, again a little generous,
• again helping as much as they are able
• always speaking the truth,
• but without rancor for those who lie.
• And they merit greater honor
• when they foresee (and many do foresee)
• that Ephialtes will finally appear,
• and in the end the Medes will go through.

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• An old Man
• At the back of the noisy café
• bent over a table sits an old man
• a newspaper in front of him, without company.
• And in the scorn of his miserable old age
• he ponders how little he enjoyed the years
• when he had strength, and the power of the word,
  and good looks.
  
• He knows he has aged much he feels it, he sees
  it.
  
• And yet the time he was young seems
• like yesterday. How short a time, how short a
  time.

• And he ponders how Prudence deceived him
• and how he always trusted her -- what a folly!
  --
  
• that liar who said "Tomorrow. There is ample
  time."
  
• He remembers the impulses he curbed and how
  much
  
• joy he sacrificed. Every lost chance
• now mocks his senseless wisdom.
• ...But from so much thinking and remembering
• the old man gets dizzy. And falls asleep
• bent over the café table.

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Poets Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933)

• The First Step
• The young poet Evmenes complained one day to
  Theocritus
  
• "I've been writing for two years now and I've
  composed only one idyll.
  
• It's my single completed work. I see, sadly, that
  the ladder of Poetry is tall,
  
• extremely tall and from this first step I'm
  standing on now I'll never climb
  
• any higher." Theocritus retorted "Words like
  that are improper, blasphemous.
  
• Just to be on the first step should make you
  happy and proud. To have reached this
  
• point is no small achievement what you've done
  already is a wonderful thing.
  
• Even this first step is a long way above the
  ordinary world. To stand on this step
  
• you must be in your own right a member of the
  city of ideas. And it's a hard, unusual
  
• thing to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
  Its councils are full of Legislators no
  
• charlatan can fool. To have reached this point is
  no small achievement
  
• what you've done already is a wonderful thing."

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Poets Nikos Kazantzakis(1883-1957)

• Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heracleion, Crete,
  in 1883, and died in
  
• Feiburg, Germany, in 1957. He studied law at the
  University of Athens,
  
• philosophy under Henri Bergson at the College de
  France, and literature
  
• and art in Germany and Italy.In 1919 he served
  briefly in the Ministry of
  
• Public Welfare, and in 1947 he was appointed
  Director of Translations
  
• from the Classics for UNESCO. The greatest man of
  letters of modern
  
• Greece, Kazantzakis wrote some nine novels (of
  which Zorba the Greek,
  
• The Greek Passion, /freedom or Death, The Last
  Temptation of Christ, St.
  
• Francis, and The Rock Garden are available in
  English), five books of
  
• travel, sixteen poetic dramas, three
  philosophical treatises (including The
  
• Saviors of God Spiritual Excersises, availlable
  in English translation by
  
• Kimon Friar), and his great epical poem of 33,333
  lines, The Odyssey A
  
• Modern Sequel, hailed unanimously as a world
  masterpiece immediately
  
• on its American publication in a translation by
  Kimon friar. In addition, he
  
• was thranslated into modern Greek Homers Iliad
  and Odyssey, Dantes
  
• Divine Comedy, Goethes Faust, Darwins Origin of
  Species, and
  
• innumerable other books.

33
Poets Nikos Kazantzakis(1883-1957)

• O Sun
• O Sun, my quick coquetting eye, my red-haired
  hound,
  
• sniff out all quarries that I love, give them
  swift chase,
  
• tell me all that you've seen on earth, all that
  you've heard,
  
• and I shall pass them through my entrails' secret
  forge
  
• till slowly, with profound caresses, play and
  laughter,
  
• stones, water, fire, and earth shall be
  transformed to spirit
  
• and the mud-winged and heavy soul, freed of its
  flesh,
  
• shall like a flame serene ascend and fade in sun.

34
Poets Nikos Kazantzakis(1883-1957)

• From Odysseus, A Drama
• And you abandon your fortune to the suitors
• and do not dare utter a word in protest!
• Theyre after your mother like a dogs in heat,
• and you stare at the sea, and expect the
• hands of an old man to come and save you!
• Do you want to be like him? Then buckle
• his sword and go to the palace to kill!
• Ah, if he were to put his foot here again
• your island would shake with terror,
• and the suitors would keep quiet like deer
• that have scented a lions breath
• and they would pay with black blood
• For their ignoble and most indecent feasts!

• Greetings to you, my Lords where are you going?
• The doors are barred, and in my wide courts,
• O bridegrooms, in the weddings about to begin!
• Eh you woman, go crouch in the corner,
• take care-an arrow may wound you,
• lady, in tumult of the massacre!-
• Im Odysseus, and my faithful bow
• has recognized me, it dances in my hand
• and the string sings like a swallow full of joy!
• And in my tight grip death shines calm,
• like a thunderbolt in a just mans hand!

35
Poets George Seferis (1900-1971)

• George Seferis, pseudonym of George Seferiadhis,
  was born in Smyrna in 1900
  
• and in 1926 entered the Ministry of Foregn
  Affairs. He was formerly the Royal
  
• Greek Embassador to England. In 1961 he was
  awarded the William Foule
  
• Poetry Prize in England, and in 1963 the Nobel
  Prize in Literature. The author of
  
• eight books of poetry and two of critical essays,
  he is a poet of evocative
  
• symbols and metaphysical distinctions who has
  superbly translated Eliots The
  
• Waste Land and other poems. All of his mature
  poetry is written in a free verse
  
• of great sinuousness, rhythmical yet modulated,
  which never rises in tone or
  
• diction beyond the conversation between
  intellectual men, as Ezra Pound has
  
• it. His is a poetry of understandmentand
  hesitation, dealing with recurring themes
  
• of expatriation and the disintegration of the
  modern world. His poetry is
  
• brooming and contemplative, precise yet subtle in
  thought ang image. He has
  
• often attempted to define what Greece is as a
  state of being. Yet in the center
  
• of each poem is the poet himself, looking back
  into the mythological past of his
  
• country and her symbols, retracting her history,
  and telling a story which has the
  
• independent validity of imaginative finction.

36
Poets George Seferis (1900-1971) The House Near
the Sea

• The houses that I had they took from me.
  The timeshappened to be unpropitious war,
  destruction, exilesometimes the hunter hits the
  migratory birds,sometimes he doesnt hit them.
  Huntingwas good in my time, many felt the
  pelletthe rest circle aimlessly or go mad in
  the shelters.
•  

• Dont talk to me about the nightingale or
  the lark or the little wagtailinscribing figures
  with his tail in the lightI dont know much
  about housesI know they have their own nature,
  nothing else.New at first, like babieswho play
  in gardens with the tassels of the sun,they
  embroider coloured shutters and shinning doors
  over the day.When the architects finished, they
  change,they frown or smile or even grow
  resentfulwith those who stayed behind, with
  those who went awaywith others whod come back
  if they couldor others who disappeared, now that
  the worlds become an endless hotel.

37
Poets - George Seferis Summer Solstice

• The greatest sun on one sideand the new
  moon on the otherdistant in memory like those
  breasts.Between them the chasm of the starry
  nightdeluge of life.
• The horses on the threshing-floorsgallop
  and sweatupon scattered bodies.All are going
  thereand that woman whomyou saw beautiful, in a
  momentis bending, can endure no longer, has
  knelt.The millstones are grinding them alland
  all become stars.
• Eve of the longest day.

All have visionsyet no one will admit
itThey go thinking theyre alone.The large
rosehad always been thereby your side deeply in
sleepyours and unknown.But only now that your
lipsve touched iton the outermost leaveshave
you felt the dancers dense weightfalling into
the river of time-the dreadful splash.Dont
waste the breath this respitehas granted you.

•  

38
Poets Odysseus Elytis (1912- )

• Odysseus Elytis, pseudonym for Odysseus
  Alepoudhelis, was born in Hracleion, Crete in
  1912, of a well-known industrial family, and
  studied law and political science at the
  University of Athens. In the period between 1940
  and 1941 he served as a second lieutenant on the
  Albanian front in the Greek-Italian war. In 1938
  he represented Greece at the eleventh
  International Congress of Writers at Geneva, and
  in 1950 at the first International Congress of
  Art Critics in Paris. He has spent many years in
  France and several months touring the United
  States in 1961 under the auspices of the State
  Department. The author of five books of poetry,
  his work marks the joyous return to nature, to
  summer and the sea, to the blaze of the noonday
  sun over the aegean, to the praise of adolexcence
  and its sentiments. His second book was entitled
  Sun the First, as one might refer to the emperor.
  Though his poetry is rhythmical in effect, he is
  more interested in the plastic use of language
  and imagery, both of which still reflect his
  earlier preoccupation with surrealism. His
  experience on the Albanian front during the war
  brought greater depth and sobriety to his poetry
  and resulted in one of the best elegies written
  about the war. He was awarded the State Award in
  Poetry in 1960 for Worthy It Is.
•  
•  

39
Poets Odysseus Elytis (1912- )Aegean

• Loveits shipand the nonchalance of its
  windsand the jib sail of its hopeon the
  lightest of waves an islandcradles the arrival.
  
• Playtings, the watersin their shadowy
  flowspeak with their kisses about the dawnthat
  beginshorizoning--
  

• LoveThe network os islandsand the prow
  of its foamand the gulls of its dreamson its
  highest mast a sailorwhistles a song.
  
• LoveIts songand the horizons of its
  voyageand the sound of its longingon its
  wettest rock the bridewaits for a ship.
  

40
Poets Odysseus Elytis (1912- )Aegean

• Waves in the lightrevive the eyeswhere
  life sails towardsthe recognitionlife
  
• The surf a kiss on its caressed
  sand-LoveThe gull bestows its blue libertyto
  the horizonwaves come and gofoamy answer in the
  shells ear.
• Who carried away the blonde and sunburnt
  girl?The sea-breeze with its transparent
  breathtilts dreams sailfar outlove murmurs
  its promise--Surf

• And the pigeons in the cavesrustle their
  wingsblue awakening in the sourceof a
  daysun--
  
• The northwest wind bestows the sailto the
  seathe hairs caressin the insouciance of its
  dreamdew-cool
  

41
Poets Yiannis Ritsos (1909- )

• Yiannis Ritsos, was borne in Monemvasia, a
  town of Peloponnesos, in 1909, fell ill at the
  age of eighteen months of tuberculosis and spent
  many years in various sanatoriums. His heritage
  is a tragic one, for both his mother and elder
  brother died of tuberculosis and his father and
  sister died insane. Because of his left-wing
  activities, he spent the years 1948-52 in various
  detention camps in Greece. The author of
  twenty-three books of poetry, three volumes of
  Collected Poems (1961-64), of two plays and a
  poem for dance, he won the State Award in Poetry
  for 1956 for Moonlight sonata.

42
Poets Yiannis Ritsos

• Moonlight Sonata
• Let me come with you. What a moon there is
  tonight!
  
• The moon is kind it wont show that my hair
  turned white.
  
• The moon will turn my hair to gold again. You
  wouldnt understand.
  
• Let me come with you.
• When theres a moon the shadows in the house grow
  larger,
  
• invisible hands draw the curtains, a ghostly
  finger writes forgotten words in the
  
• dust on the piano I dont want to hear them.
  Hush.
  
• Let me come with you a little farther down, as
  far as the brickyard wall,
  
• to the point where the road turns and the city
  appears concrete and airy,
  
• whitewashed with moonlight, so indifferent and
  insubstantial so positive, like
  
• metaphysics, that finally you can believe you
  exist and do not exist,
  
• that you never existed, that time with its
  destruction never existed.
  
• Let me come with you.

43
Poets - Yiannis Ritsos

• From Romiosini
• These trees cannot adjust to lesser
  sky,these stones cannot adjust beneath the tread
  of strangers,these faces cannot adjust unless
  they feel the sun,these hearts cannot adjust
  unless they live in justice.
• This landscape is as harsh as silence,it
  hugs to its breast the scorching stones,clasps
  in its light the orphaned olive trees and
  vineyards,clenches its teeth. There is no water.
  Light only.Roads vanish in light and the shadow
  of the sheepfold is made or iron.
• Trees, rivers, and voices have turned to
  stone in the suns quicklime.Roots trip on
  marble. Dust-covered lentisk shrubs.Mules and
  rocks. All panting. There is no water.All are
  parched. For years now. All chew a morsel of sky
  to choke down their bitterness.

44
PoetsNikos Gatsos (1915- )

• Nikos Gatsos was born in a small village in
  Arcadia and took his degree from the School of
  Letters at the University of Athens. From early
  childhood he grew up in the heroic traditions of
  his countryside, made vivid for him by the
  ballads and folksongs of the region. He is the
  author of only one longish poem, Amorgos, but it
  has had a disproportionate influence among the
  writers of his generation. In Amorgos, the
  practice of surrealism, the rhythms of the Bible,
  and the traditions of Greek folk ballads were
  combined for the first time in a strange,
  arresting, and elegiac manner. Profoundly
  influenced by the Ionian philosopher Heracleitos,
  Gatsos believes that the essence of life and art
  is to be found in nothing static, but in an
  eternal flux. In the brooding long lines of his
  Iamentations, however, there is always to be
  found the sprig of basil or rosemary, symbols of
  hope and resurrection, joyful melancholy.

45
PoetsNikos Gatsos (1915- )

• Amorgos
• With their country tied to their sails and their
  oars hung on the wind
  
• The shipwrecked slept tamely like dead beasts on
  a bedding of sponges
  
• But the eyes of seaweed are turned toward the
  sea
  
• Hoping the South Wind will bring them back with
  their lateen sails newly painted
  
• For one lost elephant is always worth much more
  than two quivering breasts of a girl
  
• Only if the roofs of deserted chapels should
  light up with the caprice of the Evening star
  
• Only if birds should ripple amid the masts of the
  lemon trees
  
• With the firm white flurry of lively footsteps
• Will the winds come, the bodies of swans that
  remained immaculate, unmoving and tender
  
• Amid the streamrollers of shops and the cyclones
  of vegetable gardens
  
• When the eyes of women turned to coal and the
  hearts of the chestnut hawkers were broken
  
• When the harvest was done and the hopes of
  crickets began
  
• And indeed this is why, my brave young men, with
  kisses, wine, and leaves on your mouths
  
• I would want you to stride naked along the
  riversides

46
Poets -Nikos Gatsos
47
Poets Nikiphoros Vrettakos (1911- )

• Nikiphoros Vrettakos, born in Sparta in
  1911, worked as a common laborer in Athens until
  he was given a post in the Ministry of Labor. The
  author of twenty-one books of poetry, he is a
  pure singing voice, writing spontaneously without
  much attention to form, impelled by an almost
  naïve religious devotion and a deep sentiment for
  the ills of down trodden humanity. His hatred of
  injustice and his desire to better the world
  often leads him to moralize in the midst of song.
  Christian and democratic in his views, he
  believes and asserts in his poetry that art must
  be expression of love and goodness, that these
  form the beauty of civilization as a higher
  ordering of human relations, a kind of divine
  law, a deathlessness of art. He has twice won
  the State Award for Poetry in 1940 for the
  Grimaces of Man, and in 1956 for poems,
  1929-1951.
•  

48
Poets Nikiphoros Vrettakos (1911- )

• An Almond Tree
• An almond tree with you beside it.But
  when did you two blossom?Standing by the
  windowI look at you and weep.
  
• My eyes cant bear suchmirth. God, give
  meall the cisterns of heavenand Ill fill them
  for you.
  
• Peace
• Love is in my heart like an almond tree
  branchin a glass of water. The sun caresses
  itand is filled with birds.The best nightingale
  utters your name.

• The Strange Presence
• As if God had molded you out of unused
  earth,light and water, you are
  beautiful,strangely so.
  
• Your hands resemblean assembled people
  mediatingupon your breast. Your neck is a
  columnsupporting a frieze. Your laugha piece
  camp. The sun alightson your upright forehead,
  strangely.
• Your hair is a tamed storm. And your eyes
  arethe wisdom of silence, the harmony of the
  storm,the love one another.

49
Poets Nikiphoros Vrettakos (1911- )

• There is no Solitude
• There is no solitude where a man isdigging
  or whistling or washing his hands.There is no
  solitude where a treestirs its leaves. Where an
  anonymousinsect finds a flower and sits,where a
  brook is reflecting a star,where holding his
  mothers breastwith his blissful little lips
  openan infant sleeps, there is no solitude

• Without you
• Without you doveswouldnt find water.
• Without you Godwouldnt switch on the light in
  his fountains.
  
• An apple tree sows its blossomsin the wind in
  your apronyou bring water from the skythe glow
  of wheat, and above youa moon of sparrows
  

50
Poets Nikiphoros Vrettakos (1911- )

• from Murky Rivers
• Love is the mountainand the night with its
  stars.Love is the seaand the day with its
  sun.And the little sparksthat fly from the
  chimneyof the house and the eyesof the little
  bird even thoseare love.

• If I Were
• If I were to offer you a lilyI would be
  addinga stemto the Evening Star.
  

51
Poems from Greek Cyprian Poets

• Petros Sophas Resolution
• Youve gathered all the patiencefrom the
  beggars traysand have tied it a knot in your
  handkerchief.Youve sat so many timesat the
  threshold of Springhearing but the same
  dirge.You were looking at the skyfor hours on
  end so many nightswith no star filling your
  palm.What are you still waiting for?Take the
  beggars empty traysand make them a
  tambourine.Take a sound from the dirge of
  Springand make the song of Tomorrow.Tighten
  your empty handand strike to open your way.

• Kypros Chrysanthis Lefkosia
• For miracles and a flood is the time,of
  commemorative lamps the rosy flamesand,
  Lefkosia, the twilight framesyour sky like a
  fate sublime.
• Your castles were filled by an ancient
  tale,much as for flowers the bees of
  springblessings and perfumes bringsuch as the
  prayers of a maiden unveil.
• Come, empty the jug, stranger-friend,fille
  d with the rosy-grape wish.Cyprus pride is the
  stead.
  
• As if for a beautiful archaic head,o
  friend, the hymn for our isle finish,thats
  blooming, no longer wilted by conquerors tread.

52
Poems from Greek Cyprian Poets Yiannis K.
Papadopoulos

• Lets say
• Lets say that now we are first facing the
  light of the world,that our ships never set sail
  for troyand the Mycenean kings didnt go hunting
  lions,for the artisans to engrave their golden
  memories on the metal immortality.Lets say that
  the Persians havent yet cometo ask for our
  landand the buzzards at marathon havent counted
  their bodiesand the shells in the sea of
  Salamishavent clung to the sunken triremes
• That Pheidias handsare the tiny hands
  of this newborn baby awaited by the unwrought
  marbles of our country.
  

• Lets say that the masterpieces of
  Aeschylus and Sophoclesare still these bright
  sparks
  
• In the eyes of the youth who passes
  bythat the golden age is that fair wheatwe sow
  in sweat with the vision of Threshingthat the
  leaves of this wild tree we are now graftingwill
  some day shine like silverat the flowering of
  Platonic thought.Lets say that now we are first
  facing the light of the worldand lets say only
  that the others call us Greeks.

53
Poets Nikolaos Kontaridis

• Do not Wonder, Passerby
• Do not wonder, passerbyin the meaningless
  pathways of life.Only lead the footsteps
  there,where the night pours the holy lightand
  the stars never cease to shine.
• Have the thread of truthas your trustful
  guide,quickly feel what the world is,what
  purpose you have in life.
  
• Destroy images of ruined gods,raise the
  big idea,become its standard-bearer and go to
  openthat unravels itself to you.
  
• Do not wonder, passerby,in the
  meaningless pathways of life.Only lead your
  footsteps therewhere a man becomes a man.

• Do not Cry
• Do not cry over lost joys,migratory
  birds,that have flown away from you
  Somewhere,somewhere life blossomswith more
  beautiful flowers.If storms throw youon to
  deserted seashoresa thousand times over,do not
  cry.The storms ragewill quickly pass.If the
  nights darknessengulfs feathered dreams,do not
  cry.Somewhere,somewhere the sun will risewith
  brighter sunshine.

54
Poets Nikolaos Kontaridis

• It Is Not Easy
• It is not easy
• To take a paintbrush
• And draw a man.
• With words
• To illustrate
• The deepness of his soul.
• With colour
• To add passion
• To his life.
• With persistence, gather
• The ruins
• Of his dreams.
• Yellow rose petals of a stripped blossom
• That lose themselves and disappear

• I AM
• I am
• A migratory breath,
• A feather in the wind,
• A bird without a voice
• In a barren desert.
• I eagerly wait
• For the flight of my soul
• In an endless domain
• And time
• Without an end.
• There and only there
• The winds will silence,
• The storms will cease
• And life will journey
• To the eternally open sea.

55
Poets Nikolaos Kontaridis

• We
• We, who were once children
• And created imaginary words
• Erecting
• Palaces and towers in dreams
• We, who partook the experience
• Of our ancestors
• And courageously we sought
• Everything worthy and great
• We, who wore the lions skin
• Who made our heart of steel
• Who filled our existence with anxieties
• Who took long journeys

We, who the bitter taste of life
Knew well And became wise With the gray temples
We, who are the children of our fathers The
fathers of our children Drops of rain Of infinit
y We, peace Desire only As our fathers demand
ed it As our children will demand it.