The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis [Hardcover]

Professor Odysseus Elytis (Author), Mr. Jeffrey Carson (Translator), Professor Nikos Sarris (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 1997

"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

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." Elytis was largely unknown outside his native Greece before winning literature's highest honor, and much of his work has not been widely available in English.

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 20th-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.

Throughout his long career as a poet, Elytis remained true to his vision of a poetry that addresses the power of language and links Greece's two thousand years of myth and history with the social and psychological demands of the modern age. Renowned for their astonishing lyricism and profound optimism, Elytis's poems employ surreal imagery and a remarkable variety of forms to capture the natural, sun-soaked beauty of Greece and to give voice to the contemporary Greek--and to a more universally human--consciousness.

Praise for Odysseus Elytis:

"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

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Despite having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979, Odysseus Elytis--probably the greatest Greek poet of the 20th century--remained an obscure figure to the English-reading world. But with this posthumous edition (Elytis died in 1996 at the age of 84), translators Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris have given English-reading poetry lovers a chance to discover what all the fuss was about. Elytis's poems are passionate and subtle, rich with Greek history and myth, yet are also thoroughly modern in their sensibility. Any excerpt from a lifetime's worth of work is inadequate, but these lines from "Verb the Dark" give you a taste of Elytis's depth: "So then, what we called 'sky' is not; 'love' is not; 'eternal' is not. Things do not / Obey their names."

From Library Journal

The work of 1979 Nobel Prize winner Elytis (1911-96) has the quality of a cathedral or epic?vast in scope yet richly decorated. This excellent "complete" collected edition (it omits unpublished poems) testifies to the bountiful, sincere nature of Elytis's voice as patriot and poet. Carson and Sarris, who spent 20 years editing and translating this lifetime's work, argue that his poems are "quintessentially Greek, in that they seek symmetry and shape, are imagistic, insistently rhythmical, obsessed with language, and brimming with praise of creation." A charismatic public figure, like Pasternak or Yeats, Elytis, who fought in Albania in World War II and defied the Greek junta in the 1970s, wrote lofty, passionate poems until he died at age 84. Using a demotic idiom and complex musicality, his work synthesizes motifs of Byzantine and pre-classical history, literature, and thought in a way that is archetypal and intimate at the same time. Containing informative annotations, a chronology, an autobiographical essay, and the author's Nobel address, this work is a valuable resource on international poetry.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (August 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801849241
• ISBN-13: 978-0801849244
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,488,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poet Without Borders., September 4, 2001

By 

"schippergr" (Noank, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis (Hardcover)

Odysseus Elytis (1911 -1996) was a very gifted Greek poet who dedicated his life to a love of hope, beauty, freedom and Greek tradition conveyed in words and imagery that leave the reader thirsting for more. It is this insatiable thirst for droplets of human comfort during life's anguished moments and visionary beauty which together give rise to rainbows of hope that is shared by people of all cultures that has made Elytis a "poete sans frontiers", or a poet without borders.

The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis published in 1997 is the first collection of the entire body of poetry of Elytis in any language, including Greek. The translations by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris do justice to the original poems, providing the reader with the same captivating lyricism and surreal imagery used by Elytis to give voice to the universally human consciousness.

The poetry of Elytis gained the attention of the Swedish Academy which announced in 1979 that Odysseus Elytis had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature "for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness."

Another honorable recognition was bestowed upon Elytis in 1964 when the renown Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set Elytis' epic poem The Axion Esti to music and the resulting music and lyrics became so popular that today many Greeks know at least part of the song by heart. The Axion Esti was considered to be the poet's most ambitious poem and was described by the Swedish Academy as "one of twentieth century literature's most concentrated and ritually faceted poems". This poem recounts the world of Eros, including his battle against the darkness created by misunderstanding and hatred, his victory, and the ultimate justification and praise.

Elytis possessed an historical as well as a moral awareness that became a pivotal part of his poems and served as a counterweight to his deep and abiding love of the Aegean with all of its spectacular beauty. Elytis faced the prospect of his own human mortality as well as the manifestation of tragic human evil when he served with distinction at the Albanian front during the Second World War when the Greeks defeated the Mussolini's army in the first allied forces victory against the Axis. The horrors of that military campaign, followed by his brutal experiences with the Nazi occupation of Greece, a civil war and a military dictatorship, provided a significant catalyst for this gifted poet to continue to carry the literary torch in the tradition of Greece's best poetry which identified ideal beauty with moral good and truth.

The art, literature, philosophy and religion of pre-Classical Greece also greatly influenced the lifetime work of Elytis. In many of his poems, Elytis wrote about heroism in the context of the ancient hero upon whom risks, danger and even terror are thrust by Fate, after which the hero bravely confronts the challenge and is transformed by the experience. The hero, to whom the reader can relate from his own life's experiences, is given this opportunity for growth and development through the inevitable wounds, wisdom and willfulness that result from his encounter with Fate's challenge ... wounds that will heal and sculpt scars of remembrance; wisdom that is born of reflection, generosity of spirit and adherence to life's values; and willfulness of the inner strength of our spirit. A reader of his poetry cannot help seeing himself in many of these poems that at the same time serve to inspire and throw down the gauntlet.

I will always remember Elytis as the Poet of the Aegean Sea. He was born in 1911 and began writing poetry in 1929 in the Aegean islands. He later established himself as one of the leading voices of a generation of literary giants, including his fellow Nobel Laureate George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos. Unlike Seferis who spent a lifetime struggling against melancholy, Elytis is widely appreciated by his readers because he finds hope even in tragedy. His poetry clearly reflects his relentless search for the paradise that lives deeply within all of us and his conviction that the discovery of paradise is within our capability as well as our grasp. Elytis' poems celebrate the vitality and vibrancy of the Aegean landscape, the energies of man and his soul and the spirit of nature. He uses the power of language to link myth with history and to confront good and evil. His poetry clearly reflects his love of hope, freedom and the beauty that is in all.

This first collection of all the works of the great master is a must for anyone who endeavors to explore the Modern Greek culture and discover its representation of the universal human experience. This book has become a source of constant inspiration and discovery in our home.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent translation of a major world poet., December 3, 1998

By 

William Borden (Royse City, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis (Hardcover)

What a pleasure now to have the complete poems of Odysseus Elytis, the Greek winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature, thoughtfully and sensitively translated by the American poet Jeffrey Carson and the Greek musician Nikos Sarris. Elytis was born on Crete in 1911. His family was from Lesbos, the island of another great poet, Sappho, and Elytis often vacationed there. Carson and Sarris both live on Paros, and it is no doubt their familiarity with the nuances of Aegean sun and sea, and their love for that harsh clarity, that gives them insights into Elytis' poetry. The erotic and the sea are themes that Elytis pursues throughout his long life. (He died in 1996.) Eros is love, sensual love, for the kore, the young woman who appears in his poems; she is a muse, and she also embodies the truth that resides within, and beyond, the familiar things of the world-in particular, the archipelago, the sun-drenched world of the Aegean, of Greece. Any translation of poetry may be suspect, but these translations are not only faithful to the Greek but harmonious with the music and the spirit of the original. Elytis encouraged and approved Carson's and Sarris' twenty-year labor of love and diligence, begun in the late `70's when Elytis happened upon some poems of Carson's. Carson, already an admirer of Elytis' poetry, had written, in Greek, a series of notes on Elytis' work, which Elytis arranged to have published. Elytis encouraged Carson and Sarris to capture the flavor, rather than the literalness, of his poetry, but they found that a literal translation in fact best captured the spirit of Elytis' verse. Carson's Introduction and Notes provide informative and concise guidance to the reader new to Elytis. This is the only complete collection of Elytis' poems in any language, including Greek. The poems' bracing adventurousness is not only quintessentially Greek but uncannily American, too, in the tradition of Whitman's sensual inclusiveness and Henry Miller's cosmic exuberance. Elytis may be a healthy elixir for our present minimalist, formalist, confessional fashions. William Borden, North Dakota Quarterly

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, but not the _complete_ works, February 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis (Hardcover)

An awesome book, but readers should be aware that the "collected" in the title is somewhat misleading. "Collected", yes, "complete", no. In August 1998 _Eros, Eros, Eros : Selected and Last Poems_ by Elytis (his real name was Odysseus Alepoudhelis, by the way) was published, containing his last poems.