Yannis Ritsos. Poems. Selected Books
Translated by Manolis
Edited by Apryl Leaf
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY: Manolis on Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
***
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Katya Lembesis of Kedros Editions, Athens Greece, who introduced me to Ery Ritsos, the poet’s daughter, who granted me her permission for this effort. I extend my deepest thanks and appreciation to Ery, and I hope my humble effort is accurate, precise and a true reflection on the greatness of her father’s works.
My sincere appreciation and gratitude is extended to Apryl Leaf for her dedication and untiring effort in editing and making this book as pleasant to the eye as it is to the mind.
I would also like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the scholars who took time out of their very busy schedule to read through this enormous tome of poetry and enrich it with their positive and insightful comments. They are:
Cathi Shaw, PhD., Communications Instructor, Okanagan College, and poet
John Wall Barger, PhD., Lecturer at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and poet
Ilya Tourtidis, M. Ed., University of Victoria, retired school instructor, and poet.
– Manolis
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
***
One can certainly appreciate Ritso’s poetry in terms of the social and cultural referents that weave in and out of his work. I doubt very much if Ritsos believed even for an instant that the archaic struggle of man against the forces that subdue him would end in freedom from illusory attachments and entanglements.
On the contrary, what he skillfully presents in his work are mediating symbols, incarnating out of the depths of his awareness–diligently crafting a literary isthmus to the heart of his personal truth. His is the poetry of waiting, and yearning, and finally projecting the heroic Eros of the Greek psyche: the dominant imperative of an unfettered existence at the zero point of man’s subjectivity. Such an assertion I’m sure issued out of the odyssey of his life, a life sustained not only by the ancestral hiss of myth and political rationalism, but also by the differentiating activity of consciousness which works, collectively at least, in favour of the soul that still must survive its harness.
Indeed, his poems lack the compliance of subjugation and the often wounded indulgence of a narcissistic persona. What they do exhibit however, is the very authentic human endeavour of striving, reaching... imagining, and somehow, against all odds, assimilating the dissonance of an encountered self in the midst of upheaval through what he had to intuit as a metaphoric fall from grace despite his religious denouncements. This desire for a unitary reality is the value I see, feel, and admire in his work.
Ritsos was a poet who lived in chaotic but exciting times, and like Odysseus, was fated by the gods to take the scenic way home. I am awed by the integrating expanse of his gaze and by the process of his mind that was able to distinguish between reality and its representation... and also... also by the sense-memory in things he projected–things lost–but still things yet to be gained. He was a poet who survived the enchantment of rival impulses, as well as a poet who celebrated the sacred return of the imagination out of the deep ocean that contained him.
– Ilya Tourtidis, M. Ed., University of Victoria, retired school instructor, and poet
***
In this amazing collection, Manolis introduces us to the life work of Greek poet, Yannis Ritsos. This translated collection paints the poetry of a man’s life and as such it captures the great magnitude of that life lived. From the sea-soaked childhood through the impatient adventures of a naïve summer youth and shattered innocence. The reader can follow the poet, Ritsos, through the heartache of life to experience the shifting of his voice into a maturity that is cynical and painful but edged with truth. And all is enveloped in the metaphor of nature, upon the backdrop of a Greece, painted in white and pastel and gold, tastes and textures exotic and foreign but beautiful and real.
Ritsos writes of seasons shifting to reflect a coming darkness. The bitter desolation that is war. Hard, sharp, hostile words that paint a time too painful to remember and yet which must be written.
Ritsos writes about life and in this collection, spanning so many years, the reader is gifted with the true sense of a life experienced. One is able to see a poet play with form and style to reflect an abundance of shifting moods and experiences, each poem telling its own story but also echoing the larger story of life. Each poem is a snapshot of a place in time, of a moment in a life, of a story being told. The reader is invited to browse through a truly amazing anthology of observations, both personal and public. This collection reflects a depth and vastness that must be savoured and digested, revisited and reviewed.
– Cathi Shaw, PhD., Communications Instructor, Okanagan College, and poet
***
We should be grateful to Manolis for hauling this horn o’ plenty to Canada. He doggedly traces the manifold styles and voices of the remarkable Ritsos, who is at times like Rilke, in his sweeping metaphors and comprehension of the human heart; at times Lorca, with his visionary surrealism: hand mirrors, shadows, statues descending their plinths; and at times Kay Ryan, with lyrics so fragile that they might crumble if touched. Yet Ritsos is always Ritsos. He suffered much personal and public violence, in the autocratic Greece of the 20th century, but his poems resist judgment. They flower with the force of humility and pathos. We readers are his brothers and children and comrades, under the hot sun which is and is not a god, beside the “endless sea.” Love trumps Death. Every object is awake. “Every hour is our hour.”
– John
Wall Barger, PhD.,
Lecturer at Saint Mary’s University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, and poet
CONTENTS
***
Doxology
Hour
of Song
Healing
Fear
of Life
One
Dead
Punishment
On
the Eve of Autumn
Floating
in Air
Winter
is Approaching
Myth
Memory
An
Invitation
Portrait
Proportions
Succession
Etesian
Winds
Delay
Summer
in the City
Nude
Copper
Engraving
April
Admission
Old
Waltz
Frailty
Moon
Childish
Three
Lines
Exchange
After
the Flood
For
You
Duty
Assistance
Silent
Separation
Obstacle
In
the Barracks
The
Victor
The
Defeated
The
Hill
The
Meaning of Simplicity
Hunger
A
Face
Summer
Perhaps
Someday
Self-sufficiency
Final Agreement
Transformation
Suddenly
Racecourse
Afternoon
Understanding
Miniature
Women
Triptych
Rainy
The
Same Star
Conclusion
Waiting
Can
You?
Thank
you
If
Subsistence
The
Unknown
Dead
End
Transformation
Known
Outcomes
The
Undecided
Spring
of 1971
And
Another Night
Afternoon
in the Old Neighborhood
Passage
Refutation
A
Road
Resurrection
Dispatch
Nightly
Event
Water
Wells and People
Review
Exactly
Now
Unconvinced
On
the Lower Level of the Basement
Inapplicable
The
Wound
Spineless
Supervision
The
Secret Guard
Expanse
Displacement
Falsification
Midnight
Alien
Death
So
Much White
Sincerity
Deeper
Toward
Dawn
Grudge
Poem
Terminus
Fake
Passport
Among
the Lost
Observation
Post
Absence
Morning
Fog
Partial
Resignation
Empty
Bottles
Strange
Times
Silence
Then?
Good
Old Man
Big
Hypocrite
His
Last Profession
At
the Edge of the Bridge
Relocations
Old
Expiation
Advise
Urgency
Decay
One
Sunday
Possible
Deformities
Inconsistencies
Uncompromised
Evening
Headache
Flow
Private
Productions
Fictitious
Murders
The
Other Health
Mistakes
Dance
of a Woman not so Young
Limits
of Drunkenness
Buildings
Difficult
Confession
Transformations
Link
Secret
Prisms
of the Hour
A
Gesture
Honesty
You
and the Crab
Devout
Comparison
Holy
Communion
The
Other Exactness
The
Karlovasi Wharf
Encounter
Equal
Pieces
Heavenly
Fondness
Relevance
of the Irrelevant
A
Familiar Dog
Upward
Today
Direction
We
Continue
On
Two Levels
After
One Pause
A
Street in Athens
Saving
Fall
The
Ropewalker and the Spectators
Rough
Plan
Like
Poetry
Miracle
Unexpected
Farm
Scene
Pointless
Solemnity
Intentional
Ignorance
Holidays
Mortality
Farewells
Equations
Neutral
Area
Nevertheless
Thus
Conjunction
Emptiness
The
Transparent Assets
Of
the Province
Gradually
The
Error
Bright
Light
The
Personal Element
The
Unknown Essentials
Glory
Protection
Still
That
Bird and You
Sometime
Suddenly
Unavoidable
Disorientation
Memory
of One Night
July’s
Blind
Artist’s
Foresight
Contradictions
In
the Harbor
Eleusinean
Avoiding
to Answer
Then
and Now
Ritual
Sharp
End
First
Night in Mondello
Unclear
Encounters
Freedom
of Travel
Morning
in Salerno, I
Morning
in Salerno, II
Morning
in Salerno, III
Morning
in Salerno, IV
Repossession
of Rights
Immediate
Reproduction
New
Simplicity
The
Poem –
Pozitano
Immobilizing
the Boundless
Encounters
Pompey
–
Red
Pompey
–
Death and Love
Pompey
–
Carnal Delight
Farewell
to Pompey
Rome
at Night
The
Everlasting Trip
In
Piazza Navona
Vatican
Museum
The
Street That Was Not Named “Pasolini Street”
Regained
Unity
Horseshoe
of Siena
Opening
of Vault
Memory
of Velies
Migration
Couplet
Dejection
Peeling
Entrance
–
Exit
After
the Dream
Noticeable
Difference
Aimless
Gesture
Morning
for Poetry
Secret
Classification
Third
Representation
Old
Age
Copying
Process
Way
of Life
Associations
Nightly
Chronicle
Breakout
Disinterment
Vague
Preparation
Suburban
Viewing
Consequences
Kalamos
Pointing
Out
Double
Disguise
Over
Strain
Without
Explanations
Aftermath
of the Feast
Sightseeing
Bus
Leftovers
Converging
Depictions
Resemblance
In
the Rain
Participation
Inventions
House
with One Bed
On
the Same Subject
Suspicion
Unconvinced
Conclusion
Insinuations
Bodies
Interchanges
Performance
Sequence
Illegal
Act
Shoeshine
Connections
Sicilian
Recollection
Abandonment
Unanswered
Wonders
Nightly
Saunter
Confusion
A
Different Night
By
the Sea
Reversal
of Roles
Passage
Gesture
Untransmitted
Theater
At
the Goula Castle
Old
Cafe
Dark
Contact
Certainty?
Reoccurring
Matter
Since
Then
Illegible
Omens
Like
Exodus
Why?
Approaching
Noon
Guilt
Different
Meaning
Static
Morning
Night
Music
Touch
of Loneliness
Absences
Concentration
Perhaps
Poetry
The
Departed
Persistent
Idea
Unexplored
Three
Misunderstandings
Bitter
Time
Delusions
Man
with the Black Hat
As
He Grows Old
Distance
Afternoon
Relationship
Secret
Looting
The
Borderless
The
Unshared
Morning
Dejection
Two
Different Ceremonies
Sunday
at Kalamos
Neutral
Time
Listening
Storing
Transparent
Things
In
Search of a Poem
Hellenic
Duration
Motionless
Fluctuations
Like
This Forever
Final
Affirmation
Birds
and Glasses
From
Pictures
Fog
Unnoticed
Deaths
Like
a Myth
Long
Journey
A
Mouse
Identification
Mutual
Dependencies
His
House
In
Two Levels
The
Big Door
The
Farthest Point
The
Inside and Outside Woman
Vaguely
Familiar Space
Friday
Night
The
Perfect Staging
At
the Inn
Hellenic
Line
The
Fundamental
Morning
Qualities
Just
Division
On
the Same Subject
Part
of the Unsaid
Night
of the Downpour
After
the Trumpeters’ Escape
Neighborhood
Events
Wintery
Changes
Unexpected
Outing
A
Summer Picture
The
Base of Music
Uneasy
Times
Understanding
Until
When?
Punishment
Vague
Fears
Nothing
The
Antidotes
Marks
Observing
Bad
Omen
At
the Tobacco Shop
Parting
Evening
Voiceless
Place
This
Continuance
The
Meaning of Cold
Sunday
For
This Reason
On
Gray Color
Failure
Process
The
Agreement
Unproven
Exercise
Expanse
The
Asleep and the Other
Then
Sovereign
Emotion
Unknown
Debts
Deaths
Instinctive
Reactions
Elsewhere
Ambush
Betrayal
Radiations
Degradation
Return
Acquittal
Incident
in the Harbor
Motionlessness
of the Top
The
Sin
FOREWORD
***
Yannis Ritsos, quite literally came into my life like a song. In 1960, at home in Greece, at the age of thirteen, I heard for the first time the musical composition Epitaphios, which combined poetic verses of Ritsos set to music by the internationally celebrated composer, Mikis Theodorakis. Even as a young man, I was moved in an unprecedented way by the songs. Importantly, these songs were a soothing caress over our young and rebellious souls at a time when the Cold War was causing deep divisions between the communist east and capitalist west, and the recent civil war in Greece had seen our country reduced to ruins.
It may be accurately stated that the effects of the civil war would define the continuous dichotomy influencing the lives of Greek citizens until the middle of the nineteen-eighties, and in Yannis Ritsos’ life, became emblematic of this struggle.
Throughout our high school years, Ritsos remained prominent, and we felt him walking next to us with every step we took. The new wave of socialism and resistance against outside interests influenced the political life of Greeks, and became the fertile ground for a voice such as Ritsos’ to reach and establish itself in our psyche. This growing force brought us to the small secluded bars called ‘bouats’ where with a drink of a vermouth at the cost of about 60 cents, we listened to music most Greeks weren’t even aware of, and where we recited verses of contemporary poets.
One such poet was our comrade, Yannis Ritsos, whose work resonated with our intense passion for our motherland and also in our veracity and strong-willed quest to find justice for all Greeks. In the mid nineteen-sixties, I identified ever more closely with this poet who was imprisoned, along with thousands of other Greeks branded enemies of the state, to various prison camps in the Greek islands or mainland Greece, like my father, who was imprisoned for one year for no apparent reason; my unfortunate father’s crime was likely that he listened to the music of Mikis Theodorakis and to the news from a German radio station, the famous Dautche Welle, where all Greeks found refuge and a sense of hope that the world was listening to the Greek cries for justice and freedom.
Thus I learned what it meant to live under censorship and what it meant to be under the iron fist of a dictatorship. In those days Ritsos’ poem Romiosini, which was set in music by the same Mikis Theodorakis, and banned by the military, truly became our secret national anthem that we all sang on our walks, at our gatherings and our parties. Although the danger of an unfriendly ear hearing us was always around, in a small gesture of our resistance, we took part in the rebirth of freedom for our country in her darker hours.
Even while in the army, performing my duty in the country I was born to, we used to sing all these forbidden songs, though in a low voice or at safe distance from the ears of the officers who couldn’t reconcile with our fervour for new things, freedom: the officers who couldn’t understand our yearning for change and a new direction toward a democratically-elected government, our vision for a new and free Greece. Years later in the nineteen-seventies, when Ritsos lived in a house in Saint Nikolaos, I was also dwelling in Petroupolis, a suburb of Athens just a kilometre away from the poet’s neighbourhood where I walked and roamed. Should I have known his address, it’s likely I would have made an effort to go and meet him in person. Since discovering how closely situated we were, I regret this meeting didn’t happen.
The 15 books selected for this edition represent a broad view of the poet’s career from the mid nineteen-thirties to the nineteen-eighties, and most of them appear for the first time ever in a North America translation. While Moonlight Sonata, Romiosini and Helen, have been published in translation a number of times, we believe that the more intimate treatment we give to these books makes them stand apart from other translations, as though unfolding another petal of the same rose, while having more of the original fragrance.
According to several sources, Ritsos wrote all his life, from as early as eight years old to his eighties. Reportedly, it wasn’t uncommon for Ritsos to write 15 to 20 poems in one sitting, and before his death, he was able to enjoy seeing the majority of his work published. We had at our disposal, a total of 46 books (in Greek) written by Yannis Ritsos from his first published book Tractor, to the 14th edition of Yannis Ritsos - Poems XIV, published by Kedros in 2007. Out of these 46 volumes we selected 15 books for this translation. The books included in this translation are whole instead of selected poems from each and that is because first we had only a certain number of his books available and second it was awkward to separate them to satisfaction. These 15 books range from his earliest publications up to some of his last, since this presents the reader with a broad view as to who this significant poet is and how his poems reflect a contemporary style as much as they did in Greece more than 50 years ago.
In surveying the materials chosen, we witness that a certain transformation occurs from his early days when he was just the unknown defender of a cause, up to the period during his midlife when he finds a variety of admirers from around the world. Here we discover a mature and didactic man reflected in his poems, more laconic and precise, more careful with his words: they have become more and more precious as he uses them with utmost care. Then we witness the end of Ritsos’ creative life, where the poems reveal his growing cynicism and utter disillusionment with the human condition; the reasons for this lying solely on the way his world collapsed around him a number of times over the years. Even as he is gazing back, we see primordial truths hovering over his thoughts; the human pettiness that drives some people’s lives shadows him with a deep disappointment that he appears to take with him to his grave.
I have tried to remain as close as possible to the original Greek text, to preserve the linguistic charm of Ritsos’ style. For this reason the restructuring of sentences from their original settings are implemented only when it seemed too difficult for the reader to follow the poet’s true meaning and deep thought. The writer has a lot more freedom in Greek as to how to order a sentence as opposed to English, which is more a positional language, and the sequence of words somewhat more strict. I hope that this translation gives the reader a taste of Ritsos’ poetry from the admirer’s point of view, and with all due reverence and respect to other translations and to the great Yannis Ritsos himself, whose innermost feelings and thoughts we try to convey to the reader as accurately as possible.
The reader will notice dates under most poems and according to the notes in Yannis Ritsos – Poems XIV by Ekaterini Makrinicola they are all the poet’s notes and refer to the exact day that he wrote that particular poem. It is important to point out that even if the poet reworked that poem at a future date, and even if the poem was altered in a significant way, the poet insisted in keeping the date of the original composition of each of them. Perhaps this was his way of relating to the reader or to himself, the conditions of that day or days, and the reasons which influenced him to write that as a response to a particular event.
– Manolis
INTRODUCTION
Yannis Ritsos, the most prolific Greek poet of the twentieth century, was born in Monemvasia in the Southern part of Peloponnesos, May 1st 1909, to a noble and wealthy family with extensive land holdings. After a lengthy life of 81 years, after enduring the pain and anguish of the flesh and the spirit, having seen his world collapse in front of his eyes, and after fighting for the purely idealistic concept of freedom beyond any precondition or human border, he died in his sleep in Athens on November 11, 1990.
Ritsos began composing poetry at the rather young age of eight, and since the appearance of his first published poetry book Tractor in 1934 he compiled a colossal amount of work consisting of 181 individual collections, sequences, long poems, from as small as sixteen pages, (a 16-page pamphlet, a decahexaselidon as it was called in the publishing circles of those days) to long poems and extensive translation books: a body of accomplishments covering some thousands of pages of published material. He wrote short poems, long poems, and prose poems, and he experimented with various formats; early in his poetic adventure he tried the well known form of 15-syllable-verse, or decapentasyllabus. He also wrote in rhyming verse early on, before he turned into the free verse which he kept for the rest of his life.
Ritsos’ poems have been translated in 45 different languages and the latest tome of his works was published by Kedros in 2007. From his early days to his latest books, his inspiration remains undiminished and his acute eye for detail and exquisite perception is evident throughout his long creative life. Nothing miniscule or great went unnoticed by Yannis Ritsos, and every possibility was exposed and experimented with in his poems. His works incorporate endless infusions of color, melody, jest for catharsis and infinite tenderness. His perspective is infused with wonder about everyday events, drawn with the most eloquent images a poet can reach for when rendering his thoughts with love and compassion even for the simplest person.
His creative materials also included drama, fiction, essays and numerous volumes of translations. He became the voice of Greece in his own lifetime, and was internationally recognized for his endless accomplishments. He was awarded a number of national and international awards, such as the National Prize for Poetry in 1956 for his Moonlight Sonata, the Grand International Prize for Poetry of the Bienniale Knokke-le-Zoute Belgium (1972), the International Dimitrov Prize of Bulgaria, the Alfred de Vigny Award of France (1975), the International Poetry Prize of Etna-Taormina in Sicily, the Lenin Prize of USSR (1977), the Citation and Plaque with the designation ‘Poet of the International Peace’ by the United Nations Society of Writers, and he was nominated though unsuccessful, nine times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ritsos’ poetry evolved in such a way as though reflecting on the poet’s life from his youthful enthusiasm, idealism and rebelliousness, to the mature, pragmatic and didactic man who searches for each person’s place under the sun, for each hungry man’s chair at the table during the most elaborate feast. His poetry stands quite gracefully apart from hatred, as he never resorted to vitriol, not even against a system and a dogma that incarcerated him time and again for his political views. Even his political poems have, “a tone of gentle elliptical complaint; it is a tone that almost commiserates with those who persecuted him,” Minas Savvas writes from impressions gleaned while interviewing Ritsos.
And referring to his more or less healthy life, despite of all the physical abuses he endured because of harsh conditions in the concentration camps and prisons, the poet explained: “I learned the art of mental defence, since I found myself in the midst of many ordeals; I learned in the course of time that the mind is a lifebuoy. Work has rejuvenated me and continues to rejuvenate me. I have learned that working defeats hardship and today, if I do not work eight to ten hours, I’ll get sick.”
“In spite of all injustices against you,” Savvas continues, “your poetry is not bitter as Avgeris’ or Varnalis’ so often is.”
“Yes, yes, it’s not. I’m proud it is not,” Ritsos concurred, “bitterness ages us, Mr. Savvas.”
Ritsos managed to stay above demonizing and persecuting his opponents via the power of his medium, being a believer in the strength of human spirit as redeemer of all wrong doings. He held true to his ethics, proving once and again that no matter how often one is forced down or how low by the oppression of others, and no matter from what high position, one’s invincible spirit lifts and sets him on firm ground. It reflects, in the manner of a fairytale, the image of a thin thread suddenly appearing from nowhere and linking a person to an immortal, spiritual side of himself, gracing one with the ability to carry on.
Ritsos remained a simple man throughout his days, and the austere manner of his everyday life struck a chord of sorrow to his interviewer, Savvas who commented about Ritsos’ apartment being next to a school and having to work daily, amid its clamor.
“Aren’t you bothered by the noise?” Savvas asks.
“No, the songs, the mingling of the voices, the fighting, they are all a collective sound of life,’ Ritsos explained, ‘Then when it’s quiet in the afternoons, I taste a much sweeter silence. Goethe said that we must experience the depths if we are to appreciate the heights.”
“Do you find your neighbourhood depressing?”
“Not at all. It’s an old Athenian section, full of simple folk and color.”
“I only asked because a certain American critic called it depressing.”
“Some Americans are spoiled; they think lawns and trimmed grass make good neighbourhoods.”
During the 1970s in Greece, the country pendulated between the philosophies of east and west, and as powerful external forces influenced the hearts and minds of the populace, Greeks looked to their history and myths for a cultural compass. Ritsos’ work reflects this reality, repeatedly making references to the ancient myths and symbols within a setting of contemporary issues and Greek dilemmas. He reached back into ancient tributaries, into myths and symbols for guidance and for meaning while witnessing the injustices of contemporary Greek life. Drawing strength from the ancient heroes, he discovers the other side of things, the eloquent side of words won by chance, the poetic pleat of the ordinary, the serendipitous answer to every difficult or almost unanswerable question; he discovers as though in a form of epiphany, the answer to many difficult questions. Most significantly, Ritsos gains the perspective that nothing happens at random, nothing comes to the life of a person or a populace without a specific reason, and it’s the duty of the person or populace to recognize, appreciate and find solace in the opportunities provided by such meanings.
Ritsos resurrects images of heroes such as Philoctetes, Orestes, Ajax, Agamemnon, Persephone, Chrysothemis, Helen, Ismene and Phaedra. And by transposing their plight and anguish into his here and now of Greek life, he not only brings them back to life but also positions them into an expos of how Greeks of his day suffer and need guidance in order to find their path to the light. Under this perspective, the ancient heroes become today’s heroes and they take the flesh and blood of the fighters in the mountains of Greece against German invaders, or taking part in the liberation of the ancient spirit suffering under the oppression and the darkness of the time.
For Ritsos, the space created is where myth survives, resonates, embalms, while it rejuvenates and rebirths heroes and ideas; so the soil is not the dead dirt of other poets, but the primeval uterus, the ancient Gaia giving birth to the immortals. This is the role played by the Greek landscape – the same important role it plays in Elytis’ poetry where it localizes, and from the localized it turns to the worldly and from there to the eternal. This introduction will touch further on the prominence of location, when it examines Ritsos’ poem, Caretaker’s Desk.
In the same spirit as when referring to classical statues, the mythical images featured throughout his poetry, are not only abundant but they identify the contemporary space with the ancient, they reinforce the power of the resistance and finally when answers are sought from them, when the poet relies upon them seeking resolve, they are used by Ritsos as well as by Elytis in a manner similar to the deux ex machina, Από μηχανής Θεός – (apo michanis theos) – of the ancient tragedies where the god presents a respite by becoming the solver of any riddle, any dichotomy. Thus the myth preserves historic time and memory as through time it has been the same since ancient days, to the present. And when matters are stretched to the point of no return, to the highest point of tragedy, the god, myth, and the people’s perception of current events is re-established, and brings about a new resolve and a renewal for the people.
Myth, in Ritsos’ poetry, works and develops on three main levels; it reflects on the mythological-historical background, on personal memory and also on contemporary social problems. The mythological-historical background bestows on the poems, a deeper perspective by extending their dimensions via another concept of time and by means of pure endurance – thus becoming the stability sought by modern Greeks; the personal memories of the poet are anointed by the poet’s early childhood and suffering at a tender age, his family, their fate and the image of their house in Monemvasia, he identifies with a historical grandeur that at the same time defines an entrapping medium: resembling both a palace and a prison.
The relative location, in this case is the ancient space where Clytemnestra and Orestes live, and at the same time the house where his sister dies of illness. The space carries sweet memories of tender motherly and fatherly love, and at the same time the grief for his and his family’s suffering. It is also the space occupied by the ordinary people, nurses, gardeners, and servants of old days.
On the third level of development, we see the contemporary social problems and injustices predominantly straddling the poems the same way they did for the ancient heroes, whereas the Atreides family’s events reflect on modern problems of inequality, and the search for meaningful change, for an improvement of everyone’s life; these become the duty of the poet to uncover and suggest, thus creating not only a poem or poems but a new life and by extension, a new world.
Due to the symbolic weight that the myth carries, it empowers the psychological truth of the real-life persons that the poet carries within himself to extrude, as if through a sieve and while doing so, he also carries the emotional weight of a childhood destined to crumble under disease, disaster and grief. The poet himself transforms into the new Prometheus bringing about the anticipated release via his creation of a new world beyond the influence of disease, or in this case of the Greek nation’s civil war, by leading the people to a new dawn.
There are times that Ritsos’ poetry seems flat and somewhat simplistic, or lacking that phantasmagorical poetic embellishment other poets often resort to. But in that simplistic way where platitudes don’t exist, he discovers the true meaning of himself. He even becomes a bit simpler in his later works and particularly in his short poems. In the poem Hercules and Us, written during the dictatorship years he describes the creative efforts of dissidents like himself in the remote places of interment…
‘...Our only diplomas, three words: Makronissos,
Yiaros,
and Leros
And if our verses
will someday strike
you as clumsy, remember
that they were written
under noses of
guards and always with the bayonets
ready by our side
not that
we need excuses: take the words bare as they are
Dry Thucydides
will tell you more than elaborate
Xenophon’
Along with these locations, certain images are used time and again throughout his poetic landscape and it’s imperative that we refer to them as we find their repetition quite interesting and peculiar at the same time.
First and foremost, the mirror appears in thousands of instances and one cannot but see themselves in one: the image being used as a means of self-reflection, appreciation of who one is and what one believes, while at the same time a mirror fills an empty spot on the wall as it fills the void of a loss or puts under a spotlight, the new direction a person may take. The poet repeatedly brings a mirror in front of the reader’s eyes with the suggestion of turning the reader into a poet and at the same time turning himself into the reader who reflects on the idol of the poet-creator.
A window appears in almost all his short poems, always leading the reader to the openness of the horizon where everything is wide and well lit, where the world can be seen at its enormity and its endlessness. This is where the poet basks under the creative and rejuvenating force of the sun and the reader is never enclosed or incarcerated.
Often we see the poet bringing in the midst of a poem, the third person …he said…who speaks for the rest of the conversing partners, thus reflecting on the objective observer of the world who is not of special education or wealth, but the common person from whom the wisest statements come. In this way, the poet suggests that it takes only common sense to arrive at the most profound answers to the question at hand.
A woman always exists behind the window or the curtain looking on at things, gazing on life outside the house, which at this time represents her imprisonment, her labour camp, as she walks from room to room preparing a meal, ironing her husband’s clothes or sewing socks. Or one may see such images as images of the woman in her realm, the family home, and more particularly the kingdom of every Grecian mother-wife in the nineteen-forties and fifties, which is often her kitchen. It can also be ascertained, that the poet’s mother is in his mind.
The soldier is also predominant in Ritsos’ imagery, perhaps in reference to the duty the poet sees in everyone’s life, any common person who must offer something: a poet or a construction worker, a street cleaner, a small flower vendor with his basket. In this case, it is a soldier with his gesture of offering, always standing amid the catastrophe of war, particularly a civil war when a brother may fight against a brother and a father may kill his own child standing on the other side of the fence, the other side of the dividing line based on political views or differences. This handling of the ideal exposes the twisted ethos created for a civil person and their position in society, being asked to contribute something beyond duty, for uncertain benefit or outcomes.
The color red is also abundant in many poems, and always referring to the poet’s ties to the cause of the Left and communism; we always find a red tree, a red wall or road painted by the poet himself. Red also speaks of life, death and powerful emotions.
Remarkable is the transformation that takes place throughout Ritsos’ creative years and his change of attitude from the idealistic and rebellious stance of the nineteen-thirties and forties as he writes Ocean’s March, On the Margins of Time, Romiosini, Skirmish, and Smoked Earthen Pot, moving into more reflective and philosophical views of the nineteen-fifties and sixties in his middle years: books such as Parentheses, Moonlight Sonata, and Helen.
These also stand in contrast to poems of the dictatorship years in Greece with his doubtful and cryptic Caretaker’s Desk in the nineteen-seventies, and then the mature, didactic man of the nineteen-eighties whose teaching voice we hear in books such as the Short Admission, The World is One, Replacements, as well as They Left, Furnished Rooms and Inhalings.
The poet himself refers to this transformation, when he comments from his exile in Karlovasi Samos, August of 1972, looking back at his work of nearly forty years:
“As time goes by, I notice clearer everyday that my work in its development, its evolution and its exercise, tends to camouflage (not intentionally) every nightmare and in a more general sense, death into the comical and funny by ridiculing and exploiting it. If there is certain redemption in this, it’s based in the liberation from the weight of pain and fear (natural, moral or social) with a selective irony from our historical illusions, in the communion of emotions from a true or imaginary inclusion and involvement – in the community with a common fate.
The dominated seem to acquire the power of a domineering force, amid this vague and unverified space – resulting in the visual pinning down of the nightmare in a transforming way – something like a redemption or liberation. The inescapably tragic transcends into the tragicomic or in other words into the paradoxical, and therefore into the objective. Perhaps this is deeply tragic, though it embraces a certain catharsis and compassion in a willed, final grimaced smile that at times via poetry, arrives at a real smile dipped in emotion: a decisive action and power of a new beginning, a new act. And this is not only the result of the sensual act influencing the reader or listener, but it is exactly the reality of the sensual act. This is verified and witnessed in a lot of my older poems, in such books as ‘Testimonies’ but also in some newer poems such as ‘Tanagra’, ‘Figurines’, ‘Exercises’,‘Wall in the Mirror’, ‘Gestures’, ‘Corridor’ and ‘Stairs’ and very often in ‘The Caretaker’s Desk.’
In this reality of the sensual act, the unbearable “rareness” of the individual dissolves in a serene way amid the innocent wholeness that shelters everyone and everything. The lack of communication and inability to understand, transform into a leniency and forgiveness, if not into an acceptance and agreement that presents the achievable, the friendly “joking” even the sarcasm – as though it is something extended beyond the differences and mutual accusations when reaching for grace in the spirit of brotherhood. – It is as though we discuss the morality of aestheticism.”
Ritsos continues, “Only before the truly familiar (or perhaps even before the foreign and unknown) can we disarm ourselves from any defensive or aggressive and apparent seriousness or pretentiousness, and may we joke with them. Only before them may we disguise ourselves, quite openly at that, (like actors of an ancient tragedy or comedy) or we may undress, displaying each piece of garment, hair-pieces, the beads, the hats with feathers, the buskins and masks, the wooden swords of the act – actors of a real unwritten drama; actors who take off his or her makeup in pretence and undress after the performance, leaving the impression that the just-performed drama, live-act was only a theatrical piece that ended, and cannot be repeated though we can re-stage it after we improve it.
The real (and this real originating in a fantasy or a dream) transforms into the fabulous, and the tyrannical into entertainment in a mocking travesty. Not always, of course. But by the portrayal of the twisted and accompanying images of the nightmare and the inexplicable human condition (along with its poetic transformation, distortion, and transmutation) one has the impression that the result is (not only for its creator) some extreme satisfaction of meaning, perhaps the ability and power of self-control and even the virginal feeling of the inexhaustible, of continuance, and even a sense of accomplishment.”
What we find strange is the lack of fanfare for or reference to the church in Ritsos’ writings, opposite other poets who devoted plenty of space and attention to organized religion and the church. Perhaps it is this poet’s desire to ignore the issue, at least to the level that other poets have paid attention to it and perhaps that is because of his adherence to communist doctrine and its position that the church is a negative influence in the psycho-spiritual development of a person. Perhaps Yannis Ritsos is a true believer of the axiom, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition,” Karl Marx wrote, “Religion is the opium of the masses. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness…” and Ritsos, by ignoring the church, pays them back with the proper coin.
What is most astonishing about Ritsos’ work, is its power to render entelechia to its reader, to bestow a potency that suddenly pokes through the hard soil like new shoots, and transforms the reader into part of his creative force. One immersed in such potency is often swept by emotions of gratitude and respect for the power of his eloquence springing up to bloom its flowers in an unprecedented way. Also deeply touching to a reader aware of the poet’s circumstances, is Ritsos’ self-sacrifice, by staying true to his beliefs up to the bitter end, by enduring the worst adversity in order to not be silenced or coerced into hiding his views.
Another respected quality is the attention Ritsos pays to miniscule aspects of life and the potent value he gives to that miniscule. It would be impossible for any reader to miss the attention to detail: the sway of the lower pleat of the curtain, the almost imperceptible movement of the eyelid at sleep or waking, or the slightest fragrance of chamomile, images that render an eloquence and richness to his writings as they reveal the heart and soul of Greece. Had he not been such an expert observer and charismatic creator, it is thinkable that some may have forgotten how to name simple things and feelings he brought to prominence. As the great author, Nikos Kazantzakis once said… “Happiness – and all other things – is a small shrub in your front yard, and you go by it every day without even seeing it…” and as another great poet, Odysseus Elytis put it, “What you save during the lightning will last, cleansed forever.”
The Ocean’s March, the first book included in this translation, was written between 1939 and 1940 and was published in 1940. At this time, Yannis Ritsos is in Athens, mostly in bed due to illness and he writes prolifically.
The Ocean’s March is a stout, 31-page poem that opens with a dark scene of a dark harbor and “faces without memory or continuance” referencing war with slaves tied on anchors while a poet searches for direction via a sea voyage to a far locale, he notes, “A seagull is calling me”, highlighting comradeship and brotherhood: this is a book about all of these elements, and not just a single person,
‘but we don’t know anything
about the
taste in the ash of the voyage’,
this is also a book about struggle, and the fate of the émigré who will travel with empty pockets to a foreign land seeking a better future for himself but most importantly for his children, since
‘we heard the song of the sea
and we can’t
sleep anymore’
he has knowledge of far away lands that he collects via seamen coming back with stories and experiences
‘we saw ships bringing mythic lands here
in
the blond sand’
innocence as a true human condition of young age is extolled in the passage
‘venerable heart
unsuspecting childish heart
who never refuses’
drawing from mythology, his references to Odysseus, Laertis and Nausica, who he brings to life in his day and age, with their austere conditions and hunger
‘from Troy, on the Hellenic clay pitchers
mother you…salted our supper with tears…
girls who got
engaged to Odysseus sighed’
and here he questions the eternal justice of why and who
‘who cuts to pieces God’s soul
and
our joy?’
and like a new Odysseus, he admits that the voyage is of utmost importance
‘the voyage always remains with us
and the
endless clamour of the sea’
as the injustices of his time overshadow every shred of goodness in the hearts of the people and in the poet’s mind, he feels
‘tonight we go to sleep with a bitter heart
like the bread of fishermen in the storm’
and is deeply grieving for his personal situation, being ill with tuberculosis and also bitter and disappointed by the conditions for the majority of Greeks during the war against the Italians in 1940. And as he finds strength from his human spirit, he finds solace from what seems an endlessness of the struggle against the day’s enemy and against any future enemy; he declares that his cry will stand next to the undiminished power and endurance of the sea that never sleeps and never lets go – never succumbs
‘sea sea as you are
we are
we shall
never succumb
to the night and to sleep’
and his final cry is to his comrades, who he calls for a unified fight against any darkness and against any oppression and it is nothing but an invocation to the sun, to whom the poet is willing to sacrifice his life
‘Sun –
sun that paints the sea with blood
I
offer myself naked to your fire
to light the eyes of men
My brothers listen to your voices
to my voice listen
to
the song of the sun and the sea’
Notes on the Margins of Time, the second book in this translation was written between 1938 and 1941, while the poet was still in Athens, yet the book was not published until 1961, as part of the collection, Yannis Ritsos – Poems I. This is Ritsos’ first book of short poems and from this point he pendulates between the long poem format and the short poem, continuing like this until the end of his life. On this, Kimon Friar says in his commentary, “There is to be a seeming dichotomy in the style of Ritsos, between short poems and those long poems in which he can ruminate at leisure on large themes involving characterization, motivation, the political scene, or whatever he felt needed long and subtle elaboration.”
In Poems I, however he follows a laconic and precise format and although he experiments with it for the first time, we find still, his well-known themes, and all Ritsos’ heated elements remaining on guard and at attention, ready to strike with brief, powerful jolts to any naive onlooker as equally as to the dear, thoughtful reader.
In Doxology, we find the sun giving life to everything, while at the same time burning the tree, the dominant symbolic element for giving life and death;
‘He stood at the far end of the road
like
a leafless dusty tree
like a tree burned by the sun
praising the sun that cannot be burned’
These poems are the short cries echoing the universal sobs of planets and the microcosm, reflecting the mega-cosmos and the transformation of the marginally important to the utmost serious, evident in lines such as,
‘Next to the wine jugs
next to the
fruit baskets
we forgot to sing
On the evening of
our separation
with the consent of the evening star
alone we sang’
they are short bursts of energy aimed at the defeated energy of the Greek nation under the wrath of war but where,
‘memory doesn’t feel sorry for you anymore’
but stands vigilant and ready to reignite the soul of his people, who while everything dies around them, they do not, because that fear of death is the breath that keeps them alive,
‘and the fear that perhaps you wouldn’t
die
and the fear of water trickling
the
fear the water the breath –
life’
they are Zeus’ lightning bolts striking the unsuspecting reader with energetic bursts such as,
‘Moments –
moments
uncounted
tamed by the
sun
Countless
Then we counted them
with the palm of a dry
grapevine leaf
we secured the summer’
Then they become tender riddles that stay afloat, waiting for the reader’s interpretation and response to the emotion stirred by admissions,
‘And I have something to tell you
that even I
cannot hear’
Romiosini is Ritsos’ long narrative poem, consisting of seven parts of various lengths; it was written between 1945 to 1947 when the poet had joined the EAM, (National Liberation Front) the Greek Leftist party, that in conjunction with Republicans became the main arm of resistance against the Axis during WWII. EAM’s struggle with Greece’s violent right-wing factions and against foreign interference that divided the nation and inflamed into a civil war in 1946, lasting for three years. The events of this time had a lasting effect on Ritsos’ works.
He contributed theatrical plays to the People’s Theatre of Macedonia that were performed in Thessaloniki and other northern cities, especially Kozani. Romiosini, published for the first time as part of the book Vigilance, in 1954, is an epic poem in the same format as Odysseus Elytis’ Axion Esti, in that they both try to unfold the condition of Greece at this junction of her history, though Ritsos focuses primarily on the life of the Leftist army in the mountains, who though living under harsh conditions, still uphold a code of honor and dedication to their cause.
The poem became very popular because of the pride it evoked and because it coincided with the Greek people’s persistent search for a guiding symbol during the dark hour of the civil war.
The poem’s central them is the resistance against any oppressing force or doctrine; it is the resistance of the free Greek spirit against the subversion of freedom; a resistance to anything working against the needs of the populace with its thousands of years of struggle against external or internal enemies. The landscape in Romiosini is described as harsh, but at the same time luminous and gleaming under the merciless sun
‘This landscape is merciless like silence
it
hugs its fiery rocks tightly in its bosom…
… there is no
water Only light’
suggests the landscape suffers the same as these proud fighters defending it against all odds. The basis of these songs derive from the old ‘klephtic’ songs of the war for Independence against the Turks and the Cretan ‘rizitika’ songs, having numerous repetitive stanzas and matching sentences. The dedication of the mountain fighters to their cause extols their commitment and willingness to die instead of betray such a cause
‘their hands are glued to their rifles
their
rifles are extensions of their souls’
even when the elements themselves stand against it, they never question the validity of their struggle, and they accept death as their companion
‘sweltering has devoured their fields and
salinity has
drenched their homes
wind has pushed down their
doors and the few lilac shrubs
of the plaza
death goes in and
out the holes of their overcoats
the rain pounds on their bones’
yet these fighters follow the example of the Byzantine hero, Digenis Akritas, on the same threshing floors where he fought against death for three days, so they stay fixated on their posts and they are,
‘petrified on their battlements, they smoked
cow
dung and the night
keeping watch on the furious pelagos where
the
broken mast of the moon sank’
Among the wealth of imagery in Romiosini, one element is heard above the rest: the bell with its rhythmic peal for death,
‘Silence any time now the bells will
chime
This soil is theirs and ours
Under the earth in their
crossed hands
they hold the bell rope –
waiting for the hour
they don’t
sleep they don’t die
waiting to ring the resurrection’
for
celebration, mass, or for a wedding. Bells echo in revolution, and
they persevere over the harsh Greek landscape, orchestrating the new
beginning after a war that will pass like so many others in history.
These people know what perseverance is; they have tasted bitterness,
lived on through the anguish of war, and yet they discover a new
beginning;
‘Ah what silky stars
will the pine needles
still need to embroider
over the
scorched fence of summer
this will also pass
but not until the destruction ends and the people go out to the fields to locate the dead with their faces to the ground. And when they discover their names they may cry ‘I love’; and peace is bestowed on the world once again when,
‘thousands of doves fly out’
and the country will move on,
‘when you grab a hand
in the darkness
and say goodnight’
life will start over and the émigré will come back to find his family who don’t even recognize him,
‘because he has met death
because he has met
life before life, and
beyond death’
at that moment asking,
‘and which key will lock up your heart, that
with
its two spread open door-leaves
stares at God’s
star-drenched orchards?’
Although Romiosini is uniquely attractive after it was blended with the music of Mikis Theodorakis, it became a monumental piece of contemporary Grecian life, ultimately because of the success of Ritsos’ poetry but also by the power of artful music the soulful composer wove around it.
The book that follows, Parentheses, was written between 1946 and 1947 and published for the first time as part of the second volume of Yannis Ritsos – Poems II, in 1961. The title itself suggests that this collection of 21 short poems is a sort of intermission between the long poems before it and after it. And like the short poems of In the Margins of Time, they unfold the various moods of the poet, and refer to various themes.
In this book we see a playful Ritsos as we read in the opening poem, ‘The Meaning of Simplicity’: “it turns like that because I tell you this”, suggests the poet will make a diversion from the seriousness of the long poems where he can develop longer themes and subjects at his leisure. Here he devotes some of his genius to writing short-form poems though the depth and the solemnity aren’t diminished with the length – contrarily, we find again, a sensitive and shrewd, an enigmatic Ritsos employing hidden meaning and mystical nuances from what each poem doesn’t say, but intends.
The poet reaffirms his humble attitude, and the poems are open to various interpretations, depending on the view and openness of the reader. This further transforms the reader into a poet and conversely the poet to a reader, assimilating the two persons and bridging any chasm between them.
In Parentheses, we find a lively and jovial Ritsos, who leaves us to decide what is better: a straightforward approach to things or one that beats around the bush. His quest resembles that of a child trying to locate a hidden treasure in a very familiar, yet well guarded place. A most appropriate poem for such a book is of course, ‘The Meaning of Simplicity’, where Ritsos opens by saying,
‘I hide behind simple things so you may find me’
illustrating his playfulness often referred to by his readers.
Images of windows in this poem appear to relate to openness, to a communication with nature, with the endlessness of light coming into the rooms and thus eliminating the sense of measurement as the immense becomes a room and a room turns into the infinite,
‘The four windows hang rhyming quatrains
Made
of sky and sea inside the rooms’
Human time appears in the form of a wristwatch showing twelve noon and the person feeling free with his/her ‘hair in the hands of the sun, in the light, in the air’ Ritsos plays with the reader, as he insists in Perhaps Someday,
‘But I shall insist in seeing and
showing
you –
he said
because if you don’t
see it is as if I didn’t see
I shall insist at least on not
seeing with your eyes’
the poet being the reader and vice versa – both are the creators of the image to be seen or the one they both truly see.
Smoked Earthen Pot was written in 1949, in the prison camp of Limnos and was first published in the collection Yannis Ritsos – Poems II, in 1961.
Between 1948 and 1952, the poet was arrested and sent to prison camps in Limnos then to Makronissos and then to Saint Eustratios, also known as Ai Strati. During these years and always under the watchful eye of guards and of other prisoners, he secretly wrote and hid his work in whichever box, bottle, or other means to a safe place for his materials to be preserved. After four years in these places of internment, he was released and he returned to Athens where he devoted time to their publication.
In this book, the poet opens the curtain of a passage leading back to his communist ideas of equality among the citizens, freedom for all and most importantly, food and shelter for all. Greece was still feeling a deep wounding from the civil war, and the conditions of people’s lives were deteriorating as well. Devastation and hunger were obvious to every eye. With Smoked Earthen Pot, Ritsos displays his wish that he could become a gigantic caldron, a great earthen pot, cooking enough food to feed the hungry people living in his country, hungry people the world over. Bravely, in the opening lines, the poet presents us with his brotherly emotion,
‘It was a very long road up here very long my
brother
The cuffs were heavy on the hands…’
Throughout a discussion between two people or more, the first person voice never refers to himself by saying ‘I did this’ but always uses ‘we’ in referring to a brotherhood of people working together or struggling together. Images of the war aftermath are prevalent also,
‘The handicapped man next to you takes off his
leg
Before he goes to bed he leaves it in the corner
A wooden
hollow leg
You have to fill it like you fill a flowerpot with
soil
And plant flowers
Like darkness is filled up with
stars
Like poverty slowly fills up thought and love’
The universality of his message appears when he says
‘Because my brother we don’t sing so that
We
may stand out in the world
We sing so that we may unite the world’
and he discovers that his fraternal love becomes a river from which just
‘two drops are enough to sprinkle the
nightmare’s face
and it vanishes like smoke behind the trees’
he emphasizes that he only wants to become
‘An earthen pot then Nothing else
Earthen,
blackened pot
boiling boiling and singing
boiling on top
of the sun’s fire and singing’
Skirmish is a long poem consisting of eight parts, written in 1952 in Saint Eustratios internment camp and published for the first time as part of the book Vigilance in 1954 when the poet lived in Athens and worked for the newspaper Avgi (Greek word Αυγή means Dawn). With the title Skirmish, the poet underscores the animosity and the differences of the political sides of east and west that dominated Greek politics during the civil war and the Cold War that followed. The poem illustrates how affected every person is, one way or another, as though caught up in a skirmish where none is declared a winner and both sides have their casualties; this skirmish sometimes takes place between people, in the minds and hearts of people and of the poet himself.
The poem opens with a desperate cry of anguish, informing the reader about the perils of civil war and imprisonment as well as the influences of foreign interests,
‘You know the great loneliness of exile
these
infuriated seashores that could be ours
though they are foreign’
the isolation of the prison camp where,
‘We saw the dusk
spending its loneliness without leaving
anything behind’
and the stillness of time when one is imprisoned,
‘Tomorrow seems to be so far the same as yesterday’
The evil of political upheaval and the dichotomy of the Cold War and its effects on Greece; the resulting civil war and the poet’s imprisonment along with thousands of other Greeks constitute his strongest cry for justice,
‘Then what separates people when you and I
are hungry
when we both thirst together or on our own
–
we thirst the same way
what
separates us that you are a guard and I am the exiled?
when both
know the meaning of the word mother’