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Yiannis Ritsos | |
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| Born | (1909-05-01)1 May 1909 Monemvasia, Greece |
| Died | 11 November 1990(1990-11-11) (aged 81) Athens, Greece |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Literary movement | Modernism Generation of the '30s[1] |
| Notable awards | Lenin Peace Prize 1975 |
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Yiannis Ritsos (Greek:Γιάννης Ρίτσος[ˈritsos]; 1 May 1909 – 11 November 1990) was aGreekpoet and communist and an active member of theGreek Resistance duringWorld War II. While he disliked being regarded as apolitical poet, he has been called "the great poet of the Greek left".
Born to a well-to-do landowning family inMonemvasia, Ritsos suffered great losses as a child. The early deaths of his mother and eldest brother fromtuberculosis, his father's struggles with a mental disease, and the economic ruin of his family marked Ritsos and affected his poetry. Ritsos himself was confined in asanatorium for tuberculosis from 1927 to 1931.[2]
In 1934, Ritsos joined theCommunist Party of Greece (KKE).[3] He maintained a working-class circle of friends and publishedTractor in 1934.Kostis Palamas, the well known and respected poet, impressed by his talent, praised him publicly.
In 1935, he publishedPyramids; these two works sought to achieve a fragile balance between faith in the future, founded on theCommunist ideal, and personal despair.Tractors andPyramids initially were not well received by leftist critics, who found the language "too embellished" and Ritsos overly focused on form.[4]
He was inspired for his landmark poem "Epitaphios" by a photo of a dead protester during a massive tobacco-workers demonstration in Thessaloniki in May 1936. Published the same year, it broke with the shape of the Greek traditional popular poetry and expressed in clear and simple language a message of the unity of all people.[2]
In August 1936, theright-wingdictatorship ofIoannis Metaxas came to power andEpitaphios was burned publicly at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. Ritsos responded by taking his work in a different direction. He began to explore the conquests ofsurrealism through the domain of dreams, surprising associations, explosions of images and symbols, a lyricism illustrative of the anguish of the poet, and both tender and bitter souvenirs. During this period Ritsos publishedThe Song of my Sister (1937) andSymphony of the Spring (1938).[2]
During theAxis occupation of Greece (1941–1945) Ritsos became a member of the EAM (National Liberation Front) and authored several poems for the Greek Resistance. These include a booklet of poems dedicated to the resistance leaderAris Velouchiotis, written immediately upon the latter's death on 16 June 1945.[5] Ritsos also supported the Left in the subsequentCivil War (1946–1949); in 1948 he was arrested and spent four years in prison camps. In the 1950sEpitaphios, set to music byMikis Theodorakis, became the anthem of the Greek Left.
In 1967 he was arrested by thePapadopoulos dictatorship and sent to aprison camp inGyaros, later toSamos and finallyLemnos.
Today, Ritsos is considered one of the great Greek poets of the twentieth century,[6][7][8] alongsideKonstantinos Kavafis,Kostas Kariotakis,Angelos Sikelianos,Giorgos Seferis, andOdysseas Elytis.[4] The French poetLouis Aragon once said that Ritsos was "the greatest poet of our age."Pablo Neruda declared him to be more deserving of theNobel Prize for Literature than himself.[4] Ritsos was proposed several times for it,[9] and was shortlisted as one of the final candidates at least once, in 1973.[10] When he won theLenin Peace Prize in 1975, he declared "this prize is more important for me than the Nobel."[8]
His poetry was banned at times in Greece due to hisleft wing beliefs.
Notable works by Ritsos includePyramids (1935),Epitaphios (1936; second edition, 1956),Vigil (1941–1953),Romiosini (1954) and18 short songs of the bitter Motherland (18 λιανοτράγουδα της πικρής πατρίδας/18 Lianotragouda Tis Pikris Patridas) (1973).[11][12]Stratis Haviaras also praised two poems (the one aboutJesus and the one aboutKarl Marx) in his first collectionTractor (1934).[11] Robert Shannan Peckham described him as "perhaps Greece's greatest contemporary poet."Epitaphios became an anthem of the Greek left in the 1950s,[13] and his best-known work.[14]
Ritsos won the first Greek state poetry award forMoonlight Sonata:[15]
I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I've tried it. It doesn't help.
Let me come with you.— Moonlight Sonata. Translation by Peter Green and Beverly Bardsley
Some offer more measured praise. In a review ofSelected Poems: 1938-1988, James Erdman argued,[16]
To my ear, many of these selections are simply short prose works, lacking the concentration of the best poetry. The pieces of ancient history and mythology from Repetitions such as "The Graves of Our Ancestors," "Alcmene," "Philometa," and "Achilles After Death" seem among the better efforts. [...] he often uses dream imagery, which can be effective in small doses but soon grows monotonous: not all concepts can be expressed in images. [...] But Ritsos is also capable of writing with great power. His best poem is "Romiosini," a lengthy paean to the spirit of the Greek Resistance.
Ted Sampson stated that Louis Aragon's declaration about Ritsos was "hyperbolic", but wrote that the poet still "excelled in brief epigrammatic utterances as well as in extended lyrics, sequences, and verse dramas of astonishing imagistic and thematic originality—to say nothing of their latent emotional intensity".[17]
Ritsos is also a Golden Wreath Laureate of theStruga Poetry Evenings for 1985.
His daughter, Eri, was a candidate for the European Parliament withKKE in the elections of 25 May 2014.
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