Odysseus Elytis, pen-name for Odysseus Alepoudhiéis, was born in 1911 at Herakleion
in Crete. The family, which originally came from Lesbos, moved in 1914 to
Athens, where Elytis, after leaving school, began to read law. He broke off his
studies, however, and devoted himself entirely to his literary and artistic
interests. He got to know the foremost advocate in Greece of surrealism, the
poet Andreas Embirikos, who became his lifelong friend. As time went on
impulses from Embirikos and others became merged with Elytis’ Greek-Byzantine
cultural tradition. In 1935 he published his first poems in the magazine Nea
Ghrammata (New Letters) and also took part - with collages - in the first
international surrealist exhibition arranged that year in Athens. In 1936 and
1937, in the magazine Makedhonikes Iméres (Macedonian Days) followed a
collection of poems with the title Prosanato lizmos (Orientations), in book
form 1939, I klepsídhres tou ahnóstou (Hourglass of the Unknown) and, in 1943,
Ilios o prostos (Sun the First).
Deeply felt experiences from the war lie behind the work that made Elytis
famous as one of the most prominent poets of the Greek resistance and struggle
for freedom: Ásma iroikó ke pénthimo yia ton haméno anthipolohaghó tis Alvanías
(Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian
Campaign) 1945.
After the war Elytis was engaged in various public assignments (among other
things he was head of programs at the radio) and, apart from literary and art
criticism, published very little for more than ten years. The work begun in
1948, To Áxion Estí (Worthy It Is), did not appear until 1959. The years
1948-52 he spent in Paris and travelling. He came in close contact with writers
like Breton, Eluard, Char, Jouve and Michaux and with artists such as Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti. The
poetic cycle To Áxion Estí (with introductory words taken from the
Greek-Orthodox liturgy) has come to be recognized as Elytis’ greatest work. It
has been translated into several languages and in 1960 was awarded the National
Prize in Poetry. It was set to music by Míkis Theodorákis in 1964.
Of later works - in several cases illustrated by the author himself or by his
friends Picasso, Matisse, Ghika, Tsarouchis and others - can be mentioned: Exi
ke miá típsis yia ton uranó (Six and One Remorses for the Sky) 1960, O ílios o
iliátoras (The Sovereign Sun) and To monoghramma (The Monogram), both 1971, Ta
ro tou érota (The Ro of Eros) 1972, Villa Natacha 1973, Maria Neféli 1979, and
the collection of essays with a personal touch Anihtá hártia (Open Book) 1974.
“Selected Writings;” (with collages by the author) recently appeared, and no
less than three entirely new works await publication.
For many years past translations of Elytis’ poems have been printed in literary
magazines and anthologies, but are also to be had in a number of separate
volumes:
In English: The Sovereign Sun: Selected poems. Kimon Friar, transl.
Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1974. - The Axion Esti (bilingual ed.) Edmund
Keeley Georges Savidis, transl. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1974.
In French: Six plus un remords pour le ciel. Texte francais de F.B. Mache.
Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1977.
In Italian: Poesie. Trad. Mario Vitti. Roma 1952. - 21 poesie. Trad. Vincenzo
Rotolo. Palermo: Ist. Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1968.
In German: Korper des Sommers. Auagewahlte Gedichte. Neugriechisch u. deutsch.
Uebertr. Antigone Kasolea u. Barbara Schlorb. St. Gallen: Tschudy Verlag p560.
- Sieben nachtliche Siebeneeiler. Griechisch-Deutsch. Uebertr. Gunter Dietz.
Darmstadt: J.G. Blaschke Verlag, 1966. - To Axion Esti-Gepriesen Sei.Uebetr.
Gunter Dietz. Hamburg: Claassen Verlag, 1969.
As well as in most of the above works Elytis is presented in detail in the
magazine Books Abroad (Univ. of Oklahoma), vol. 49(1975), No. 4 (Autumn).
December 8, 1979
By
Greece
Translation
May I be permitted, I ask you, to speak in the name of luminosity and
transparency. The space I have lived in and where I have been able to fulfill myself
is defined by these two states. States that I have also perceived as being
identified in me with the need to express myself.
It is good, it is right that a contribution be made to art, from that which is
assigned to each individual by his personal experience and the virtues of his
language. Even more so, since the times are dismal and we should have the
widest possible view of things.
I am not speaking of the common and natural capacity of perceiving objects in
all their detail, but of the power of the metaphor to only retain their
essence, and to bring them to such a state of purity that their metaphysical
significance appears like a revelation.
I am thinking here of the manner in which the sculptors of the Cycladic period
used their material, to the point of carrying it beyond itself. I am also
thinking of the Byzantine icon painters, who succeeded, only by using pure
color, to suggest the “divine”.
It is just such an intervention in the real, both penetrating and
metamorphosing, which has always been, it seems to me, the lofty vocation of
poetry. Not limiting itself to what is, but stretching itself to what can be.
It is true that this step has not always been received with respect. Perhaps
the collective neuroses did not permit it. Or perhaps because utilitarianism
did not authorize men to keep their eyes open as much as was necessary.
Beauty, Light, it happens that people regard them as obsolete, as
insignificant. And yet! The inner step required by the approach of the Angel’s
form is, in my opinion, infinitely more painful than the other, which gives
birth to Demons of all kinds.
Certainly, there is an enigma. Certainly, there is a mystery. But the mystery
is not a stage piece turning to account the play of light and shadow only to
impress us.
It is what continues to be a mystery, even in bright light. It is only then
that it acquires that refulgence that captivates and which we call Beauty.
Beauty that is an open path—the only one perhaps—towards that unknown part of
ourselves, towards that which surpasses us. There, this could be yet another
definition of poetry: the art of approaching that which surpasses us.
Innumerable secret signs, with which the universe is studded and which
constitute so many syllables of an unknown language, urge us to compose words,
and with words, phrases whose deciphering puts us at the threshold of the
deepest truth.
In the final analysis, where is truth? In the erosion and death we see around
us, or in this propensity to believe that the world is indestructible and
eternal? I know, it is wise to avoid redundancies. The cosmogonic theories that
have succeeded each other through the years have not missed using and abusing
them. They have clashed among themselves, they have had their moment of glory,
then they have been erased.
But the essential has remained. It remains.
The poetry that raises itself when rationalism has laid down its arms, takes
its relieving troops to advance into the forbidden zone, thus proving that it
is still the less consumed by erosion. It assures, in the purity of its form,
the safeguard of those given facts through which life becomes a viable task.
Without it and its vigilance, these given facts would be lost in the obscurity
of consciousness, just as algae become indistinct in the ocean depths.
That is why we have a great need of transparency. To clearly perceive the knots
of this thread running throughout the centuries and aiding us to remain upright
on this earth.
These knots, these ties, we see them distinctly, from Heraclitus to Plato and
from Plato to Jesus. Having reached us in various forms they tell us the same
thing: that it is in the inside of this world that the other world is
contained, that it is with the elements of this world that the other world is
recombined, the hereafter, that second reality situated above the one where we
live unnaturally. It is a question of a reality to which we have a total right,
and only our incapacity makes us unworthy of it.
It is not a coincidence that in healthy times, Beauty is identified with Good,
and Good with the Sun. To the extent that consciousness purifies itself and is
filled with light, its dark portions retract and disappear, leaving empty
spaces—just as in the laws of physics—are filled by the elements of the
opposite import. Thus what results of this rests on the two aspects, I mean the
“here” and the “hereafter”. Did not Heraclitus speak of a harmony of opposed
tensions?
It is of no importance whether it is Apollo or Venus, Christ or the Virgin who
incarnate and personalize the need we have to see materialized what we
experience as an intuition. What is important is the breath of immortality that
penetrates us at that moment. In my humble opinion, Poetry should, beyond all
doctrinal argumentation, permit this breath.
Here I must refer to Hölderlin, that great poet who looked at the gods of
Olympus and Christ in the same manner. The stability he gave a kind of vision
continues to be inestimable. And the extent of what he has revealed for us is
immense. I would even say it is terrifying. It is what incites us to cry out—at
a time when the pain now submerging us was just beginning--: “What good are
poets in a time of poverty”. Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit?
For mankind, times were always dürftig, unfortunately. But poetry has never, on
the other hand, missed its vocation. These are two facts that will never cease
to accompany our earthly destiny, the first serving as the counter-weight to
the other. How could it be otherwise? It is through the Sun that the night and the
stars are perceptible to us. Yet let us note, with the ancient sage, that if it
passes its bounds the Sun becomes “uBpls”. For life to be possible, we have to
keep a correct distance to the allegorical Sun, just as our planet does from
the natural Sun. We formerly erred through ignorance. We go wrong today through
the extent of our knowledge. In saying this I do not wish to join the long list
of censors of our technological civilization. Wisdom as old as the country from
which I come has taught me to accept evolution, to digest progress “with its
bark and its pits”.
But then, what becomes of Poetry? What does it represent in such a society?
This is what I reply: poetry is the only place where the power of numbers
proves to be nothing. Your decision this year to honor, in my person, the
poetry of a small country, reveals the relationship of harmony linking it to
the concept of gratuitous art, the only concept that opposes nowadays the
all-powerful position acquired by the quantitative esteem of values.
Referring to personal circumstances would be a breach of good manners. Praising
my home, still more unsuitable. Nevertheless it is sometimes indispensable, to
the extent that such interferences assist in seeing a certain state of things
more clearly. This is the case today.
Dear friends, it has been granted to me to write in a language that is spoken
only by a few million people. But a language spoken without interruption, with
very few differences, throughout more than two thousand five hundred years. This
apparently surprising spatial-temporal distance is found in the cultural
dimensions of my country. Its spatial area is one of the smallest; but its
temporal extension is infinite. If I remind you of this, it is certainly not to
derive some kind of pride from it, but to show the difficulties a poet faces
when he must make use, to name the things dearest to him, of the same words as
did Sappho, for example, or Pindar, while being deprived of the audience they
had and which then extended to all of human civilization.
If language were not such a simple means of communication there would not be
any problem. But it happens, at times, that it is also an instrument of
“magic”. In addition, in the course of centuries, language acquires a certain
way of being. It becomes a lofty speech. And this way of being entails
obligations.
Let us not forget either that in each of these twenty-five centuries and
without any interruption, poetry has been written in Greek. It is this
collection of given facts which makes the great weight of tradition that this
instrument lifts. Modern Greek poetry gives an expressive image of this.
The sphere formed by this poetry shows, one could say, two poles: at one of
these poles is Dionysios Solomos, who, before Mallarmé appeared in European
literature, managed to formulate, with the greatest rigor and coherency, the
concept of pure poetry: to submit sentiment to intelligence, ennoble
expression, mobilize all the possibilities of the linguistic instrument by
orienting oneself to the miracle. At the other pole is Cavafy, who like T. S. Eliot reaches, by
eliminating all form of turgidity, the extreme limit of concision and the most
rigorously exact expression.
Between these two poles, and more or less close to one or the other, our other
great poets move: Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos, Nikos Kazantzakis, George Seferis.
Such is, rapidly and schematically drawn, the picture of neo-Hellenic poetic
discourse.
We who have followed have had to take over the lofty precept which has been
bequeathed to us and adapt it to contemporary sensibility. Beyond the limits of
technique, we have had to reach a synthesis, which, on the one hand,
assimilated the elements of Greek tradition and, on the other, the social and
psychological requirements of our time.
In other words, we had to grasp today’s European-Greek in all its truth and
turn that truth to account. I do not speak of successes, I speak of intentions,
efforts. Orientations have their significance in the investigation of literary
history.
But how can creation develop freely in these directions when the conditions of
life, in our time, annihilate the creator? And how can a cultural community be
created when the diversity of languages raises an unsurpassable obstacle? We
know you and you know us through the 20 or 30 per cent that remains of a work
after translation. This holds even more true for all those of us who,
prolonging the furrow traced by Solomos, expect a miracle from discourse and
that a spark flies from between two words with the right sound and in the right
position.
No. We remain mute, incommunicable.
We are suffering from the absence of a common language. And the consequences of
this absence can be seen—I do not believe I am exaggerating—even in the
political and social reality of our common homeland, Europe.
We say—and make the observation each day—that we live in a moral chaos. And
this at a moment when—as never before—the allocation of that which concerns our
material existence is done in the most systematic manner, in an almost military
order, with implacable controls. This contradiction is significant. Of two
parts of the body, when one is hypertrophic, the other atrophies. A
praise-worthy tendency, encouraging the peoples of Europe to unite, is
confronted today with the impossibility of harmonization of the atrophied and
hypertrophic parts of our civilization. Our values do not constitute a common
language.
For the poet—this may appear paradoxical but it is true—the only common
language he still can use is his sensations. The manner in which two bodies are
attracted to each other and unite has not changed for millennia. In addition,
it has not given rise to any conflict, contrary to the scores of ideologies
that have bloodied our societies and have left us with empty hands.
When I speak of sensations, I do not mean those, immediately perceptible, on
the first or second level. I mean those which carry us to the extreme edge of
ourselves. I also mean the “analogies of sensations” that are formed in our
spirits.
For all art speaks through analogy. A line, straight or curved, a sound, sharp
or low-pitched, translate a certain optical or acoustic contact. We all write
good or bad poems to the extent that we live or reason according to the good or
bad meaning of the term. An image of the sea, as we find it in Homer, comes to
us intact. Rimbaud will say “a sea mixed with sun”. Except he will add: “that
is eternity.” A young girl holding a myrtle branch in Archilochus survives in a
painting by Matisse. And thus the Mediterranean idea of purity is made more
tangible to us. In any case, is the image of a virgin in Byzantine iconography
so different from that of her secular sisters? Very little is needed for the
light of this world to be transformed into supernatural clarity, and inversely.
One sensation inherited from the Ancients and another bequeathed by the Middle
Ages give birth to a third, one that resembles them both, as a child does its
parents. Can poetry survive such a path? Can sensations, at the end of this
incessant purification process, reach a state of sanctity? They will return
then, as analogies, to graft themselves on the material world and to act on it.
It is not enough to put our dreams into verse. It is too little. It is not
enough to politicize our speech. It is too much. The material world is really
only an accumulation of materials. It is for us to show ourselves to be good or
bad architects, to build Paradise or Hell. This is what poetry never ceases
affirming to us—and particularly in these dürftiger times—just this: that in
spite of everything our destiny lies in our hands.
I have often tried to speak of solar metaphysics. I will not try today to
analyse how art is implicated in such a conception. I will keep to one single
and simple fact: the language of the Greeks, like a magic instrument, has—as a
reality or a symbol—intimate relations with the Sun. And that Sun does not only
inspire a certain attitude of life, and hence the primeval sense to the poem.
It penetrates the composition, the structure, and—to use a current
terminology—the nucleus from which is composed the cell we call the poem.
It would be a mistake to believe that it is a question of a return to the
notion of pure form. The sense of form, as the West has bequeathed it to us, is
a constant attainment, represented by three or four models. Three or four
moulds, one could say, where it was suitable to pour the most anomalous
material at any price. Today that is no longer conceivable. I was one of the
first in Greece to break those ties.
What interested me, obscurely at the beginning, then more and more consciously,
was the edification of that material according to an architectural model that
varied each time. To understand this there is no need to refer to the wisdom of
the Ancients who conceived the Parthenons. It is enough to evoke the humble
builders of our houses and of our chapels in the Cyclades, finding on each
occasion the best solution. Their solutions. Practical and beautiful at the
same time, so that in seeing them Le Corbusier could only admire and bow.
Perhaps it is this instinct that woke in me when, for the first time, I had to
face a great composition like “Axion Esti.” I understood then that without
giving the work the proportions and perspective of an edifice, it would never
reach the solidity I wished.
I followed the example of Pindar or of the Byzantine Romanos Melodos who, in
each of their odes or canticles, invented a new mode for each occasion. I saw
that the determined repetition, at intervals, of certain elements of
versification effectively gave to my work that multifaceted and symmetrical
substance which was my plan.
But then is it not true that the poem, thus surrounded by elements that
gravitate around it, is transformed into a little Sun? This perfect
correspondence, which I thus find obtained with the intended contents, is, I
believe, the poet’s most lofty ideal.
To hold the Sun in one’s hands without being burned, to transmit it like a
torch to those following, is a painful act but, I believe, a blessed one. We
have need of it. One day the dogmas that hold men in chains will be dissolved
before a consciousness so inundated with light that it will be one with the
Sun, and it will arrive on those ideal shores of human dignity and liberty.
|
Swedish Academy |
Odysseus Elytis's name tells us a great deal about him as a person and a writer.
Odysseus - the seafarer, the Homeric poem's hero, alive with the spirit of
freedom, with defiant intrepidity, enterprise, and an insatiable appetite for
all the adventures and sensuous experiences that the seas and isles of Greece
can offer. Odysseus is the name given to the poet by his parents. It testifies
to the feeling for the past and to the links with the myths and distinctive
character of Greek tradition. The family comes from the Aegean islands. The
poet was born in Crete just before the liberation from Turkish rule.
Elytis is the name he adopted at the very beginning of his career as a writer.
The name is a composite one, with allusion to several concepts dear to the
poet's heart - it could be called a much abridged manifesto. The components in
the name are to serve as a reminder of the Greek words for Greece (Ellas), hope
(elpídha), freedom (elefthería) and the mythical woman who is the
personification of beauty, erotic sensuality and female allure, Helena (Eléni).
Eros and Heros are closely connected in Elytis's world of poetry or myth.
The sea and the islands, their fauna and flora, the smooth pebbles on the
beaches, the surge of the waves, the prickly black sea-urchins, the tang of
salt, and the light over the water are constantly recurring elements in his
writing - like the bright flood of sunlight which baptizes this world with its
all-pervading lustre, at once fertile and purifying. Sensuality and light
irradiate Elytis's poetry. The perceptible world is vividly present and
overwhelming in its wealth of freshness and astonishing experiences.
But through Elytis's evocative verbal art, this world is also elevated to a
symbolic reality. It becomes an ideal for the world that is not always so
bright and true and wonderful, but which should be, and could be. We should
always praise and worship this world for what it ought to be, and for what it,
thereby, can be to us: a life-giving source of strength. Elytis's extolling of
existence, of man and his potentialities, and life in communion with the rest
of creation, is no idealizing or illusory escapism. It is a moral act of
invocation of the kind to be found so many times in Greek history, from the
present-day struggles for freedom against fascist or other oppression far back
through the centuries to the heroic phase of the classical era. What matters is
not to submit. What matters is constantly to bear in mind what life should be,
and what man can shape for himself in defiance of all that threatens to destroy
him and violate him.
This is not political writing in the narrow sense of the word. It is a writing of
preparedness, which aims at defending the moral integrity or pride that is
essential if we are to be able to resist at all, and to endure hardships and
dangers, outrage and adversity. These sides of Elytis's poetry emerged strongly
during the first years of the 1940s when he took part in the campaign in
Albania against the fascist invasion. He passed through what he himself calls a
crisis. Everything had to be tried out afresh - how to live, what the use of
poetry was, how the beauty of poetry and art could serve in the fight for human
dignity and resistance, yet preserve its freedom as art.
The poem, Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenent of the
Albanian Campaign was written during this war, most of it based on personal
experience. It immediately evoked response and became a kind of generation
document for the young. It has kept its position as an expression of the
Greeks' indomitable spirit of resistance. The fallen soldier is a
representative of the Greeks who were killed in this war, but also of all those
who have fallen during Greece's long history of struggle for national liberty
and individuality. Here, as so often in Elytis's writing, realistic and
mythical depiction are combined.
The Albanian campaign and the "heroic and elegiac song" about it
were, in a way, a turning point for Elytis as a poet. His first verses had been
published in the middle of the 1930s in a magazine which was then a forum for
young writers, Nea Ghrámmata -- in fact, a school for budding poets. The
impulses from French surrealism, in particular, made themselves felt - in
Elytis's case, chiefly from Paul Éluard. Surrealism became a liberator. It
helped the young writers to find themselves, not least, in relation to the
great Greek classical tradition, which might threaten to become oppressive and
to stagnate in stereotyped and rhetorical formulae. Elytis's first poems,
before Heroic and Elegiac Song, are youthfully sensual, full of light,
brilliant, and very evocative in their visual and charming freshness. They
quickly established him as one of the leading new Greek poets.
With Herioc and Elegiac Song, however, other sides of the writer emerged
and insisted on becoming part of his creative world - sides which had been
there from the outset but which now demanded more room: the tragic and the
heroic. In the poetic cycle which many regard as Elytis's foremost work, To
áxion estí (Worthy It Is ), these very complex experiences and
programs have been given a form which makes this work one of 20th century
literature's most concentrated and richly-faceted poems. The cycle is a kind of
lyric drama or myth with strains from Hesiod, the Bible and Byzantine hymns. In
its severe and polyphonic structure it is also linked to the avant-gardism of
modern western writing. The cycle begins almost as drama of creation,
concerning not only the poet himself, but, through him, us all. For, Elytis
says, "I do not speak about myself. I speak for anyone who feels like
myself but does not have enough naiveté to confess it." But it is also
about the origin of Greece, in fact of the world. Then follows an
architecturally complicated section with descriptions of the war and other
scourges that have afflicted Greece and modern man. After this section, which
represents a crisis or path of suffering, comes a concluding part, the actual
song of praise; mature man is tempered and strengthened through his experiences
but also fortified in his indomitable and defiant will to defend life and its
sensuous abundance.
In one of his short essays, Elytis sums up his intentions: "I consider
poetry a source of innocence full of revolutionary forces. It is my mission to
direct these forces against a world my conscience cannot accept, precisely so
as to bring that world through continual metamorphoses more in harmony with my
dreams. I am referring here to a contemporary kind of magic whose mechanism
leads to the discovery of our true reality. It is for this reason that I
believe to the point of idealism, that I am moving in a direction which has
never been attempted until now. In the hope of obtaining a freedom from all
constraints, and the justice which could be identified with absolute
light..."
In its combination of fresh, sensuous flexibility and strictly disciplined
implacability in the face of all compulsion, Elytis's poetry give a shape to
its distinctiveness, which is not only very personal but also represents the
traditions of the Greek people.