Odysseas Elytis (/ɛˈliːtɪs/;Greek:Οδυσσέας Ελύτης[oðiˈseaseˈlitis],pen name ofOdysseas Alepoudelis,Greek:Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλης; 2 November 1911 – 18 March 1996) was aGreek poet, man of letters, essayist and translator, regarded as the definitive exponent ofromanticmodernism in Greece and the world. He is one of the most praised poets of the second half of the twentieth century,[3] with hisAxion Esti "regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry".[4] In1979, he was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature.[5]
The family of Elytis (Alepoudelis), 1917. He is pictured on the far left wearing a sailor's uniform in the photo of his family.
Panayiotis Alepoudelis and his younger brother Thrasyboulos were both born in the village Kalamiaris of Panagiouthas ofLesbos. Their family had become well-established in the industries of soap manufacturing and olive oil production inHeraklion, Crete in 1895. In 1897 Panagyiotis married Maria E. Vrana (1880–1960) from the village Papados ofGera, Lesbos. From this union and as the last of six siblings, Odysseas was born in the early hours of 2 November 1911.
In 1914, the Alepoudelis family moved to Athens (at Solonos 98B), where his father re-situated the soap factory inPiraeus. In 1918, his older sister and firstborn, Myrsine (1898–1918), died of theSpanish influenza. While on summer holidays from their Athens home as guests on the island ofSpetses in the Haramis home in the St Nikolaos neighbourhood, his own father also died in the summer of 1925 from pneumonia. His father, Panayiotis, may have been the inspiration for Elytis to write. Apparently, his father wrote poetry and it remained unpublished. In 1927, worn out with overtiredness, Odysseas was diagnosed with tuberculosis. While in bed recuperating, he voraciously read all the Greek poetry he could and in this year discoveredCavafy. In 1928, he graduated from high school and successfully passed the competitive entrance exams for the Law School at theUniversity of Athens.
He read in the newspapers about the suicide of the poetKostas Karyotakis. In 1929, Elytis took a sabbatical between high school and university and decided secretly that he must only become a poet. In 1930, he and his family moved to Moschonision 14B. Elytis had initial aspirations to become a lawyer, but did not sit for his final examinations and did not get his legal qualification. He also had expressed aspirations to become a painter in the manner of the surrealists, but his family quickly thwarted this idea.
In 1935, Elytis published his first poem in the journalNew Letters (Νέα Γράμματα)[6] at the prompting of such friends asGeorge Seferis. In the same year, he also became a lifelong friend of writer and psychoanalystAndreas Embirikos, who allowed him to have access to his vast library of books. In 1977, two years after the death of his friend, Elytis wrote a tribute book to Embirikos from within the commonalities that founded their ideas, aptly titled "Reference to Andreas Embirikos" and originally published by Tram publishers in Thessaloniki. His entry to the magazineNew Letters in 1935 was in November, which was the 11th issue, and with his pseudonym Elytis established himself therein. With a distinctively earthy and original form in his expression, Elytis assisted in inaugurating a new era in Greek poetry and its subsequent reform after the Second World War.[6] In 1960, his older brother Constantine (1905–1960) died, followed by his mother, Maria Vrana Alepoudelis. Elytis was simultaneously awarded the First National Prize for poetry for his work "Axion Esti".
In 1967, Elytis travelled to Egypt, visiting Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan. Returning to Greece in March, he finished piecing together the fragments of Sappho's verses translated into modern Greek and brought them together with his own diaphanous iconography. These were finally published in 1984 without the drawings, which are deposited separately in the archives of the American School of Classical Studies along with the original manuscripts of the initial translations of Sappho. With the21th of April Regime (a military junta) in force, Elytis disappeared from public view. At the time of the dictatorship, he lived at Skoufa 26, and upon his return from Paris in 1972, he moved to Skoufa 23 to a fifth floor apartment, his final residence in Athens before he died.
From 1969 to 1972, under the Greek military junta, Elytis exiled himself to Paris after he refused money from the junta and established a modest residence there.[6] In Paris, he lived with Marianina Kriezi (1947–2022), who subsequently produced and hosted the legendary children's radio broadcastHere Lilliput Land. Kriezi was extraordinary, having published a book of poems at the age of fourteen. The title of the book wasRhythms and Beats and she sent a first edition copy to George Seferis along with a handwritten letter asking him to write a page of his poetry in longhand in a fountain pen and gift it to her. Apparently, she was going to put it across from her bed and see it every morning when she awoke for the rest of her life, treasuring the words of poetry. The irony is that she met up with Elytis, who was, in contrast to the cerebral Seferis, unmarried and a poet of the senses. When Elytis died, he was buried wearing the silver wedding band that had the name "Marianina" engraved inside it.
In 1937, he served his military requirements. As an army cadet, he joined the National Military School inCorfu. He assistedFrederica of Hanover off the train and onto Greek soil personally when she arrived from Germany to marry hereditaryPrince Paul. During the war, he was appointed Second Lieutenant, placed initially at the 1st Army Corps Headquarters, then transferred to the 24th Regiment, on the first line of the battlefields. In 1941, he contracted an acute case of typhus abdominalis and was transferred to the Ioanina Hospital to the pathology unit for officers. Elytis came very close to his death here and was given the options between staying at the hospital and being a prisoner when the Germans fully invaded and occupied Greece, or being transferred with the risk of intestinal perforation and hemorrhage. On the eve of the invasion of the German armies, he decided to be transferred to Agrinio and from there eventually back to Athens, where he made a slow but steady recovery during the German occupation. He began to outline poetry for his eventual work "Sun The First"; in Alexandria, Seferis delivered a lecture on Elytis and Antoniou. Elytis was sporadically publishing poetry and essays after his initial foray into the literary world.[6]
He was twice Programme Director of theGreek National Radio Foundation (1945–46 and 1953–54), Member of theGreek National Theatre's Administrative Council, President of the Administrative Council of theGreek Radio and Television as well as Member of the Consultative Committee of the Greek National Tourists' Organisation on theAthens Festival. In 1960 he was awarded the First State Poetry Prize, in 1965 theOrder of the Phoenix and in 1975 he was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa in the Faculty of Philosophy atThessaloniki University and received the Honorary Citizenship of the Town ofMytilene.
In 1948–1952 and 1969–1972, he lived in Paris. There, he audited philology and literature seminars at theSorbonne and was well received by the pioneers of the world'savant-garde (Reverdy,Breton,Tzara,Ungaretti,Matisse,Picasso,Françoise Gilot,Chagall,Giacometti) asTériade's most respected friend. Teriade was simultaneously in Paris publishing works with all the renowned artists and philosophers (Kostas Axelos,Jean-Paul Sartre, Françoise Gilot,René Daumal) of the time. Elytis and Teriade had formed a strong friendship that solidified in 1939 with the publication of Elytis' first book of poetry entitled "Orientations". Both Elytis and Teriade hailed from Lesbos and had a mutual love of the Greek painterTheophilos. Starting from Paris, he travelled and subsequently visited Switzerland, England, Italy and Spain. In 1948, he was the representative of Greece at theInternational Meetings of Geneva, in 1949 at the Founding Congress of theInternational Art Critics Union in Paris, and in 1962 at theIncontro Romano della Cultura in Rome.[6]
In 1961, upon an invitation of the State Department, he traveled through the USA, from March until June, to New York, Washington, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Buffalo and Chicago . His return was to Paris to meet up with Teriade and then to Greece — Upon similar invitations in 1962 with Andreas Embirikos and Yiorgos Theotokas (1905-1966) through theSoviet Union to Odessa Moscow and Leningrad. Elytis did not likeYevgeny Yevtushenko when they were introduced but appreciated Voznesensky That summer he spent part of his holidays on Corfu Island and the rest on Lesbos where he and Teriade, who had returned from Paris, were establishing the foundations of a museum dedicated to the painter Theophilos. In 1964, the inaugural performance of the oratorio to the poetry of theAxion Esti as set to music byMikis Theodorakis was held. In 1965, he completed the essays that would comprise the bookThe Open Papers and that summer visited the Greek islands yet again. He visitedBulgaria in 1965[6] with his friend Yiorgos Theotokas on the invitation of the Union of Bulgarian Authors; it would be their final journey together as Theotokas would die in October 1966. Their guide throughout this country was the poetElisaveta Bagryana (1893–1991), who had been nominated three times until then for the Nobel prize in Literature. In 1965, he was also bestowed with the Phoenix Cross, the highest honour of the Greek nation.
Elytis was a believer and follower of numerology in all its forms: Biblical, Kabbalah, Chaldean and Pythagorean. He also believed in Vedic astrology and held certain beliefs of Hinduism to be true. Elytis was beset with the untimely death of friends and relatives throughout his life: Yiorgos Theotokas, George Seferis, Andreas Embirikos, George Sarandaris. Of all the deaths that happened, Karydis, his publisher at Ikaros, shook him up the most. Elytis had cordial relations with Yiannis Ritsos and close ties with his best friendNikos Gatsos, both poets of the same generation.
Odysseas Elytis had been completing plans to travel overseas to see friends when he died of heart failure in Athens on 18 March 1996, at the age of 84. He had made it known that he was a believer in cremation and had wished that somehow he could have been cremated, which the tenets of his Greek Orthodox religion do not support or allow. He was also a supporter of the legalization of euthanasia for people who wished to die after pain and suffering. Furthermore, he believed it was a woman's right to choose abortion in any circumstance.
In the last ten years of his life, he lived with a companion, Sofia Iliopoulou, who was 53 years his junior. Iliopoulou is an activist for children throughout the world, imparting her knowledge whenever she is able to. She is a successful artist in her own right, translating and composing her own works and giving poetry recitals at the Theocharakis Foundation in Athens.
The funeral was held the next day after his death. The funeral was jammed with people who had loved his poetry. He was buried in a family grave beside his family, including his mother and brother.
Iliopoulou, as his life partner, inherited the immovable property in real estate of Elytis, which consisted of four apartments and the trustee power of copyrights to his work. She has been promoting Elytis with excellence in his legacy. Elytis was survived in his bloodline by his niece Myrsine (from his oldest brother Theodoros, born 1900) and his next in line older brother Evangelos. This brother (1909–2002) also received a writ of condolence from the mayor of Athens on behalf of the nation at the funeral at the First Cemetery of Athens.
"Greek the language they gave me; poor the house onHomer's shores."
—"To Axion Esti" (1959)
Elytis' poetry has marked, through an active presence of over forty years, a broad spectrum of subject matter and stylistic touch with an emphasis on the expression of that which is rarefied and passionate. He borrowed certain elements fromAncient Greece andByzantium but devoted himself exclusively to today'sHellenism, of which he attempted—in a certain way based on psychical and sentimental aspects—to reconstruct a modernistmythology for the institutions. His main endeavour was to rid people's conscience from unjustifiable remorses and to complement natural elements through ethical powers, to achieve the highest possible transparency in expression and finally, to succeed in approaching the mystery of light,the metaphysics of the sun of which he was a "worshiper"-idolater by his own definition. A parallel manner concerning technique resulted in introducing theinner architecture, which is evident in a great many poems of his, mainly in the landmark workIt Is Truly Meet (Το Άξιον Εστί). This work, due to its setting to music byMikis Theodorakis as an oratorio, is a revered anthem whose verse is sung by all Greeks for all injustice, resistance and for its sheer beauty and musicality of form. Elytis' theoretical and philosophical ideas have been expressed in a series of essays under the titleThe Open Papers (Ανοιχτά Χαρτιά). Besides creating poetry, he applied himself to translating poetry and theatre as well as a series of collage pictures. Translations of his poetry have been published as autonomous books, in anthologies, or in periodicals in eleven languages.
Mario Vitti:Odysseus Elytis. Literature 1935–1971 (Icaros 1977)
Tasos Lignadis:Elytis' Axion Esti (1972)
Lili Zografos:Elytis – The Sun Drinker (1972); as well as the special issue of the American magazineBooks Abroad dedicated to the work of Elytis (Autumn 1975. Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.A.)
Odysseas Elytis:Analogies of Light. Ed. I. Ivask (1981)
A. Decavalles:Maria Nefeli and the Changeful Sameness of Elytis' Variations on a theme (1982)
E. Keeley:Elytis and the Greek Tradition (1983)
Ph. Sherrard: 'Odysseus Elytis and the Discovery of Greece', inJournal of Modern Greek Studies, 1(2), 1983
K. Malkoff: 'Eliot and Elytis: Poet of Time, Poet of Space', inComparative Literature, 36(3), 1984
A. Decavalles: 'Odysseus Elytis in the 1980s', inWorld Literature Today, 62(l), 1988
I. Loulakaki-Moore:Seferis and Elytis as Translators. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010)
