The Swedish Academy cited Elytis “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.”
Born Odysseas Alepoudelis in 1911 on the island of Crete, the poet is descended from a family of wealthy soap merchants which came from the Aegean island of Lesbos, the home of Sappho. Kimon Friar, his major English language translator, has written that Elytis derived his pen-name from Ellas (“Hellas”), elpida (“hope”) and eleftheria (“freedom”), and in particular from that most beautiful of all women, Eleni (“Helen”), adding the suffix -tis which would not limit him to any particular area of Greece.
Educated in Athens and Paris, Elytis first published highly surrealistic poems in 1935. It was his participation as a soldier in the Albanian campaign in World War II that marked the turning point in his life. Based on that experience, he wrote Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign. It expressed a more mature attitude, summed up by the Academy: “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.”
In 1948 he began a poetic cycle which took him eleven years to complete: To Axion Esti (“Worthy It Is”). It was translated into English by Edmund Keeley and George Savvides in 1974 and also included by Kimon Friar in his volume of translations of Elytis’ selected poems called, The Sovereign Sun.
It was reported in the press that the Academy members had read the Laureate’s works mainly in English translation. As Friars’ Sovereign Sun is the only published volume containing a substantial number of Elytis’ translated poems (51 plus Axion Esti), it may be assumed that it was the chief vehicle to bring Elytis’ work to the world’s attention. To Axion Esti became popular when Mikis Theodorakis set it to music in 1969. Although the international press and the poet himself have referred1 to the existence of foreign language editions, Elytis has not been widely translated: Three small volumes in German, one containing only seven poems; two translations of limited scope in French and two in Italian; and one in Spanish.
In his modest Athens flat the unmarried and reclusive poet said, “I wish to believe that with this year’s decision the Swedish Academy wanted to honour, in my person, Greek poetry in its entirety.”
In Friar’s words, Elytis is “the poet of joy and health, of the virginal glance and the celebration of whatever was lovely, carefree, and summery in burgeoning adolescence.” The 1979 Nobel Prize for literature has been awarded to a poet who has expressed the modern world’s deepest need.
Under the Spell
SCREAMING protesters surrounded the Iraklion Museum on the first of March and prevented Minoan masterpieces, already packed up in styrofoam for showing in New York in December, from joining other works of art which were to become the first major exhibition of prehistoric Aegean antiquities ever displayed abroad. Today, at the National Gallery, a bronzed fashion mannequin in a Mario Fortuny 1930s dress stands across from a gilded Augustus Saint-Gaudens “Victory”, such as Paionios of Olympia could never have dreamt of but which, for the American sculptor at the turn of the century, contained everything that he strongly felt about antiquity. So vividly and vitally, so variously and even violently, does the Classical Spirit still blow across the ages.
The catalogue calls the Metropolitan Museum’s reciprocal exhibition “Memories and Revivals of the Classical Spirit”. But the posters around town, more demotically and aptly, call it “Under the Classical Spell”.
“Rather amusing, if you like pawnshops”, remarked a gentleman as he descended from the vernissage of the exhibition in September. It was one of those rather clever, rather smug, but basically innocent remarks that still give social occasions in Athens their smalltown charm. Insofar as a pawnshop is eclectic, of course, the gentleman was right. Neo -classicism in all its forms was the most eclectic and popular of arts — and judging from these heavily varnished ‘Loui Sez’ living room sets that are still the pride of a village girl’s dowry, perhaps it still is. More likely, however, the gentleman had expected rows of Tintorettos, Claude Lorrains and Ingres set up in stately neo-classical colonnades. Not so, the Metropolitan show. The cool Empire odalisque of Ingres is hung next to Frederick Church’s Parthenon set in the light of a Hudson River sunset. Rembrandt’s wife, ill-disguised as the classic goddess of war, is placed before a vast Flemish tapestry illustrating The Iliad. The Tintoretto is beside a French Greek-Revival silver tea-set. The classical spirit not only gave birth to a variety of styles, it expressed many ways of life in any number of tastes and this is what the exhibition so vividly brings out. The works of art are displayed in a historical and social frame. But far from being helter-skelter, the exhibition is arranged with careful thought to size, to colour and to texture.
If the Athenians were a bit haughty and condescending at the opening, this is understandable. For all their own beloved late nineteenth-century neoclassical architecture (which they are tearing down at a great rate), it is hard for Athenians to think neo-classically in the shade of the Acropolis. The Parthenon is the very antithesis of neo-classicism, because all classical revivals were by definition inspired by antiquity, while antiquity itself was inspired by something which no one has even yet tried to define.
Meanwhile, until January 7, at the National Gallery, the mother of classical civilization is playing host to an enormously varied progeny, collected, dolled up, and displayed by its imaginative, clever, often witty but always dedicated governess, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
For the Birds
IN September the Minister of Public Works announced that he would dedicate himself to making Athens fit “for the birds”. This laudable statement, however, in translation takes on a rich extra layer of ambiguity that Mr. Zardinidis may not be aware of but which may be extremely to the point. The slangy English phrase, in all its pre-environment conscious crudity, means that what is fit for birds is not fit for man. An eight-lane extension to Alexandras Avenue and a broadening of Kifissia Avenue to twelve lanes have been officially announced and should, if completed, be added to the lengthening list of the ‘wonders of the world’. These projects, however, would seem to suggest that Athens will soon be fit for neither man nor feathered friend. Hence it is reassuring to read Mr. Zardinidis’ statement.Studies of migratory birds have led scientists to believe that they are endowed with a special intelligence. But today the most dim-witted bird avoids Athens. Even those birds which don’t really seem to care about trees are rarely seen here any more. The stork which used to live on one of the columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus set up house elsewhere years ago. The martins and swallows which returned regularly to the wooden or tiled eaves of Athens no longer come back to their concrete replacements, as people who loved them have observed. The pigeons, whom one would have thought had committed total environmental suicide by depending on man too much, don”t flock down to the Zappeion Gardens or around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or even on the little blue and white striped guardhouses of the Evzones with the enthusiasm that they used to.
In trying to bring the birds back to Athens, the Ministry of Public Works seems to be enjoying the support of the Ministry of Agriculture. Critics of the latter are saying that certain recent amendments to the Forest Code are encouraging arson. In the past, laws allowing construction in a forest area ten years after it was burnt over no doubt did encourage foul play. Stricter laws followed, and if the new amendments have softened this legislation, the rash of fires that broke out in September and October encouraged this suspicion, particularly as the extensive Marathon fire is said to have broken out several times and in several places at once.
Burning off the forests of Attica, however, is an unreasonable way of bringing the birds back to the city. The little trees that have been planted hither and thither in the city’s streets will have to grow very sturdy indeed to support this huge avian population as it migrates from Africa to Poland. Nor are they going to stay for long. Like package tourists whom we like to fleece, they are going to fly on as quickly as their wings can take them.
The broadening of Kifissia Avenue seems to have commenced when bulldozers moved into the Syngros Park in October. This huge tract below the Anavryta School was given by the eminent banker Andreas Syngros and his wife at the turn of the century to promote agricultural studies. Today, cutting down trees seems to be the most popular field of study. The work began quite spectacularly: At 10:15 a.m. on Monday October 1, a large Aleppo pine, whose roots were in the jaws of a bulldozer fell without warning across three of the highway’s four lanes. Most miraculously, it did not cause a major accident since this is one of the few stretches in all the fourteen kilometre length of the road from Syntagma Square to Platanos Square in Kifissia which is wide enough and therefore never jammed. But because the roadside there is inhabited only by trees which cannot object (although there is a growing belief that trees do object if you listen to them carefully enough), it was the first to go.
A truck driver whose vehicle was very nearly hit by this tree, leapt out cursing and gesticulating. One would think that a furious Greek truck driver and a defensively aggressive Greek bulldozer driver in altercation would create the noisiest spectacle in the world. But in fact as that Aleppo pine struck the road, a huge cloud of birds rose out of the trees in the Amaleion Orphanage opposite in a joint scream of terror and protest. Surely there must be a better way to lure the birds back to Athens.
