Odysseus Elytis Biography and List of Works

Greek poet and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature. Elytis's imagery is rich with history and myth. Inspired by the 'sanctity of the perceiving senses' Elytis celebrated in his early poems the mystery of the Greek light, the sea, and the air. Later themes are suffering, and search for and creation of an earthy yet spiritual paradise.

   "I was given the Hellenic tongue
my house a humble one on the sandy shores of Homer.
    My only care my tongue on the sandy shores of Homer. The sea-bream and perch
    wind beaten verbs
green currents with the cerulean
    all that I saw blazing in my entrails
sponges, medusae
    with the first words of the Sirens
pink shells with their first dark tremors."
(from Axion Esti, 1959)

Elytis was born in Iráklion, Crete, into a prosperous Cretan family. His parents and ancestors came from the island of Lesbos, home of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. Elytis studied law at Athens University from 1930 to 1935 without taking a degree. He worked periodically in the family's soap manufacturing business.

Inspired by French Surrealism and especially Paul Éluard, Elytis started to write verse. His first poems appeared in 1935 in magazine Ta Nea Grammata, which also published George Seferis's works. During WW II when Nazis occupied Greece, Elytis joined the resistance movement and served as a second lieutenant in Albania in 1940-41. In 1943 appeared Asma iroiko ke penthimo ghia ton hameno anthipolochago tis Alvanias (Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign). In it Elytis's sunlit visions of beauty, purity, youth and nature changed into a painful awareness violence and sudden death. In the poem the youthful hero is killed on the battlefield and miraculously resurrected through his youth and heroism.

"As a young man he had seen gold glittering and gleaming on the shoulders of the great   And one night   he remembers   during a great storm the neck of the sea roared so it turned murky   but he would not submit it

The world's an oppressive place to live through   yet with a litte pride it's worth it."
(from 'Deat and Resurrection of Constandinos Paleologhos')

After the war he wrote critics for the newspaper Kathimerini and worked for the National Broadcasting Institute in Athens in 1945-46 and again 1953-54. In 1948 he moved to Paris, where he studied literature at the Sorbonne. During this time he became acquainted with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and others of the Paris art world.

In 1953 Elytis returned to Greece and took an active role in cultural affairs. He served as member of the Greek critical and prize-awarding Group of the Twelve. He was president and governing-board member of Karolos Koun's Art Theater and of the Greek Ballet. His silence as a poet ended in 1959 with the long poem, To Axion Esti, reminiscent of WaltWhitman's Song of Myself. The work took him 14 years to write and. It combines the biblical story of the creation with modern Greek history. The poet identifies himself in its three sections with the sun, with his race, and with his country. He passes through the war decade, comparing humankind's suffering with the suffering of Christ, and eventually sees the rebuilding of love, freedom, and beauty.

Between 1965 and 1968 Elytis served on the administrative board of the Greek National Theatre, and then spent the next two years in Paris after the Greek military coup of 1967. In 1978 he published a long poetic work, Maria Nefeli, which was finished when he returned to Greece. In the poem a girl and a poet speak alternating monologues.

Elytis was also a talented painter and produced illustrations of his poetic world in gouaches and collages. Elytis died on March 18, 1996. His collected poems appeared posthumously in 1997.

For further reading: Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 2); Odysseus Elytis: Analogies of Light by I. Ivask (1981); Modern Greek Poetry by E. Keeley (1973)

PROSANATOLISMOI, (1940)