The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis
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In awarding Odysseus Elytis the 1979 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy declared that he had been selected "for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness." The Collected Poems is the first collection in any language, including Greek, of Elytis's complete poetry, a body of work marked by a profound love of hope, freedom, beauty, and Greek tradition. Twenty years in preparation, this volume includes his early poems, influenced in equal parts by surrealism and the landscape and climate of Greece and the Aegean Sea; his long, epic poem connecting Greece's - and his own - Second World War experience to the myth of the eternal Greek hero, Song Heroic and Mourning for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign; his most ambitious work, the Axion Esti, which the Swedish Academy praised as "one of twentieth-century literature's most concentrated and ritually faceted poems"; and his mature poetry, from Maria Nephele, a poem in two voices, to his last collection, West of Sorrow, written the summer before his death in 1996 at age 84.
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Product details
- Hardback | 768 pages
- 152 x 235mm | 1,035g
- 19 Sep 1997
- JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
- Baltimore, MD, United States
- 0801849241
- 9780801849244
Review quote
"Perhaps the most pervasive presence throughout his work...is the physical experience of Greece: the sun's intense illumination, the seas strewn with jewel-like islands, the life of its proud people beneath the invasion of 20th-century culture and politics. From these Elytis crafts powerful and sparkling lyrics, sometimes bitter, often full of wonder and celebration." --'Christian Science Monitor' "Elytis is a paragon of enthusiasm, of protean moods, multiple forms; his purpose, in essence: the deification of the sun and the body of man."--'Hudson Review' "A poet of large achievement...His work...has a kind of passionate optimism about the possibilities of his small Aegean world."--'New York Review of Books' "Jeffrey Carson--a poet himself with a kindred sensibility to Elytis's--has admirably succeeded in bringing across the Greek poet's lyrical voice and the richness of his diction. This first translation of Elytis's complete works is accurate and elegant, a work of diligence and love that affords the English-speaking reader a picture of the evolution of the poet's work."--Dorothy M-T. Gregory, The Ionian University, Corfu
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About Odysseas Elytes
Odysseus Elytis--one of the most highly regarded poets in the second half of the 20th century--was born Odysseus Alepoudhelis on Crete in 1911. His first collection of poems, 'Orientations', was published in 1939 in Greece. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1979, and continued to write and publish poetry until his death in 1996. Jeffrey Carson lives on Paros where he teaches at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts. His most recent book is 'Poems 1974-1996'. Nikos Sarros, also a resident of Paros, is currently translating Archilochus.
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