The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis

by Odysseus Elytis and Odysseas Elytis

In awarding Odysseus Elytis the 1979 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy praised him 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. Throughout his long career as a poet, Elytis (1911-1996) remained true to his vision of a poetry that addresses the power of language and connects the history and mythology...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801880459
• ISBN13: 9780801880452
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 768 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 22 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Poet Without Borders.

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

Being There

This translation by Jeffrey Carson is a delight for the senses. The poetry of Elytis has stimulated a great number of intellectual reviews, but there can be no true appreciation without experiencing the context of his work. These poems present a life that could be lived only in Greece. No translator who has not tasted that life would be able to capture this essence of Elytis. Carson was chosen for this task partly because of his own life in Greece: because he truly does understand.

Great book, but not the _complete_ works

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.

An excellent translation of a major world poet.

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