Volume 27, Number 11 · June 26, 1980
The Poets' Greece
By Peter Green
RECENT BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Twenty Contemporary Greek Poets
edited by Dino Siotis, by John Chioles
Wire Press, 130 pp., $4.95 (paper)
The Sovereign Sun: Selected Poems
by Odysseus Elytis, translated by Kimon Friar
Temple University Press, 200 pp., $7.95 (paper)
The Axion Esti
by Odysseus Elytis, translated by Edmund Keeley, by George Savidis
University of Pittsburgh Press, 86 pp., $4.95 (paper)
Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems
translated by Edmund Keeley, by Philip Sherrard
Princeton University Press, 144 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Poems
by George Seféris, translated by Rex Warner
David R. Godine/Nonpareil Books, 127 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Scripture of the Blind
by Yannis Ritsos, translated by Kimon Friar, by Kostas Myrsiades
Ohio State University Press, 251 pp., $20.00
Ritsos in Parentheses
translated by Edmund Keeley
Princeton University Press, 200 pp., $5.95 (paper)
The Fourth Dimension: Selected Poems of Yannis Ritsos
translated by Rae Dalven
David R. Godine, 184 pp., $6.95 (paper)
When the Swedish Academy announced its choice for the Nobel Prize in literature last year, the general reaction was one of bewilderment. Who on earth, people asked; was Odysseus Elytis? Some students of the international literary scene ('irritated,' as a friend wrote me, 'at the selection of a man who hadn't been published by Penguin') hinted that the Academy's recent habit of honoring elderly obscure poets such as Vicente Aleixandre or Harry Martinson was rapidly becoming an affectation. This is unfair to Elytis, a poet of large achievement; but it does pinpoint, with some force, the problems involved in getting Greek poetry across to a Western audience. An unfamiliar alphabet and language are only the first hurdles to be overcome. Behind them lie an attitude to life and a cultural tradition that are at odds with the AngloAmerican literary scene.
Review, 4113 words
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