Index


Engonopoulos, Nikos. Hymn of Glory to the Women we Love

—. The Clavicords of Silence

—. Voices

Karelli, Zoe. Journey of the Magi

Leivaditis, Tassos. Juggler with Oranges

Seferis, Giorgos. Mythic History (Part I)

—. Mythic History (Part II)

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Nikos Engonopoulos | The Clavicords of Silence

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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
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Zoe Karelli | Journey of the Magi

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    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
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Giorgos Seferis | Mythic History (Part II)

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    Lorenzo Costa, 'The Argonauts Leaving Colchis' (ca. 1480)   "The greatest mistake of my life”, wrote Giorgos Seferis in 1931, “was that I was born a man of the sea and became a man of the land. It is a characteristic of the seaman not to be content anywhere.” The poetic journey dominates Seferis’s poetry. A modern Odysseus, the poet endlessly voyages across many embittering seas, moving from the present back to a mythic time and land in search for a paradisal state of spiritual fulfilment and also, as Seferis notes, in an attempt to “shape and render meaning” to the futility and anarchy of modern history [1]. But the repetitiveness of the journey frustrates the effort and it even effaces the poet himself. What remain are the journey and its perpetual re-enactment with every reading of the poem. Mythic History            XXI We who set out on this pilgrimage glanced at the broken statues absent-mindedly we muttered that life does not fade so easily that death h
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