Odysseas Elytis Biography
Odysseas Elytis (November 2, 1911 – March 18, 1996) was regarded as a major exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. In 1979 the Nobel Prize in Literature was bestowed on him.
Descendant of the Alepoudellis, an old industrial family from Lesbos, Elytis was born in Heraklion on the island of Crete, on November 2, 1911. His family later moved to Athens, where the poet graduated from high school and later attended courses as an auditor at the Law School at University of Athens.
In 1935 Elytis published his first poem in the journal New Letters at the prompting of such friends as George Seferis. His entry with a distinctively earthy and original form assisted to inaugurate a new era in Greek poetry and its subsequent reform after the Second World War.
From 1969–1972, under the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, Elytis exiled himself to Paris. He was romantically linked to the lyricist and musicologist Mariannina Kriezi, who subsequently produced and hosted the legendary children's radio broadcast "Here Lilliput Land". Elytis was intensely private and vehemently solitary in pursuing his ideals of poetic truth and experience.
Freely beside me the vineyards are running and unbridled
Remains the sky. Wildfires trade pinecones and one
Donkey bolts uphill
for a little cloud
...
Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
tomorrow foreign.
...
Spotlight a
SCENE ONE: Open-air court in the ancient city of Athens. The accused arrive
and proceed among curses and cries of Death! Death!
...
MARIA NEFELE:
I walk in thorns in the dark
of what's to happen and what has
with my only weapon my only defense
...
IF ONLY MOTHER you could see me: as I was born, I
departed. I was far too little - besides who un-
derstands? - and far too many were the creeping
monsters with the lateral, slimy legs.
So, from the length of a life constructed with such dif-
ficulty all that remains is a half-ruined door and a lot
of large decaying water anemones. Therefrom I pass
and proceed - who knows? - to a womb sweeter than
my country.
...
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