wordς alone ...

    Konstantinos Parthenis, 'Angel' (post-1940)     If, for Yiannis Ritsos, the work of the poet should reflect his engagement with history, projecting a politicised image of the artist as a public persona seeking to interpret and furthermore cultivate a response to historical reality, the poetry of his contemporary Giorgos Seferis proposes a somewhat different viewpoint, one that derives from a fictional (and mythical) universe populated by solitary figures. Paradoxically, it was one of the latter's poems, “Denial”, set to music by Mikis Theorodakis, that epitomised for the Greek nation the struggle for freedom. Seferis’s funeral in 1971 turned into a mass demonstration againsts the repressive regime of the dictators and a lament for a life that, in the poet’s words, had begun “with such feeling, such force, with such desire and passion” and had gone bitterly wrong. Born in Smyrna – a prosperous, commercial city in Asia Minor with a thriving Greek population – in 1900, t

  Joan Miró, 'The Escape Ladder' (1940)   He was the kind of poet you thought was not touching the ground. Tasos Leivaditis's poems accompnied my youthful dreamy days and solitary nights in much the same way that W.B. Yeats would years later. I find politicised poetry rather forced and wooden, writing motivated by some ideology, which willfully forces the text to unforld in a certain preconceived direction. But Leivaditis's poetry - especially of his middle and later period - largely transcends the poet's own political ideology and opens up new paths of expression, not only emotional but also philosophical, if not metaphysical and mystical. The retreat to the inner life often gives rise to unanswered - and perhaps unanswerable - questions about the meaning and value of life but, as in 'Juggler with Oranges', the existential angst generated by the absurdity of existence is intertwined with moments of unexpected joy and wonderment.   Juggler with Oranges   It’

    Russian icon, 'The Three Magi' (19th c)   Poet, playwright and literary translator – Zoe Karelli was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1901. She is regarded as a pioneer feminist in her country, helping to introduce many women poets into the Greek canon. Her work is mainly concerned with the inner life and existential questions, but it can often be read in reaction to the horrors of World War II, the Occupation and the Greek Civil War that followed between the Greek Communist Party and the British-backed forces of the Greek government. Her poem ‘Journey of the Magi’, written in 1955, re-imagines the story from the point of view of one of the magi. In terms of style and mood, it echoes T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same title, written in 1927, and it is possible that Karelli was aware of it or had even read it. She certainly knew of Eliot’s work and had translated into Greek his plays The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party .   Karelli's poem is not a celebration of j

   Nikos Engonopoulos, 'Poet and Muse' (1939)     Dans les peuples vraimant libres, les femmes sont libres et adorées.                           SAINT-JUST              T.     the women we love are like pomegranates they come and find us at night when it rains with their breasts they eliminate our solitude deep in our hair they submerge and adorn it like tears like bright seashores like pomegranates   the women we love are swans their parks flourish in our hearts alone their wings are the wings of angels their sculpted forms are our bodies the lovely tree groves are they themselves as they stand on the tip of their great feet they approach us and it is as if we are kissed on the eyes by swans   the women we love are lakes through their reed-beds our burning lips whistle our fine fowls swim in their waters and then when they fly – being haughty – they are reflected in the lakes and on their shores the poplars are lyres whose music drowns our so

  Nikos Engonopoulos, 'Orpheus' (1957)   to André Breton through the closed shutters in the yellow blaze of the afternoon – when the statues keep silent and the myths concur – the voices quiver first feebly slowly and then thunderously and fast in the alley   and suddenly they reveal the age-old secrets   at times – of course – they are terrible and dreadful like graves and then at times affectionate like graves again and like the caress of long thin fingers   and they call each thing by its name   they call water from the tap a mouth the tall black trees they call oblivion the night in the gullies Omphali   they call the weeping trees a woman-friend the cool carmine lips they name leaves the amorous teeth a demon dream   the crimson beds of love they call abyss the black harbour waters an oil lamp and they call the rusty moorings of dream a lament   they lay colourful plumes upon Orpheus' melancholy gaze in O

Nikos Engonopoulos, 'Composition' (1960)     ... and everything remains silent, and silence is good only if it holds joy within. Otherwise I fear it ...                         LEE     the seeds of werewolves strain the rudders of the horizon they thrust illuminated flutes amid the blood-stained dresses hanging from the leafy branches of trees they drown crows in the mirrors they seek the justice and mercy of children   but I lay red flowers in her hair I rise all naked in crimson gardens I lose myself inside dark caves whose depths shroud sewing-machines and yellow fish that talk like flowers   and perhaps I am that werewolf of lightning the one they call – when darkness falls – the “man as parenthesis” in the bellows of snares in the shrouds of the pathway at some nightly hour when a bird dies away like a sulphur candle   and so down the temples of the despairing clavichords – drop by drop – they fall, the coup