Giannis Ritsos Books

The collection showcases the life and work of Greek poet Yannis Ritsos, capturing the essence of his experiences from childhood to maturity. Through vivid imagery and the metaphor of nature, Ritsos explores themes of heartache, innocence lost, and the impact of war. Each poem serves as a snapshot of moments in life, reflecting a range of emotions and styles that echo the larger narrative of human experience. The anthology invites readers to engage deeply with the poet's journey, offering a rich tapestry of personal and public observations that resonate across time.

The last poems of this 20th-century Greek master are tinged with sadness and loss, but they also, in their candidly poetic reporting of the life and world around him, hum with vitality and an odd note of hope. Ritsos felt defeated in his own health and politics, but as a poet he experienced a surge of creativity that is fascinating to follow in its chronology and exactitude.

Yannis Ritsos, a renowned modern Greek poet, explores life's tragic sense through shorter poems that reveal the complexity behind "simple things." This collection, translated by Edmund Keeley, spans 1946-1975 and includes works from seven volumes, showcasing Ritsos's lyrical depth and his significance among European poets.

This work of Ritsos is it a novel with an emphatic question mark added by the poet himself? Is it roman fleuve in the sense of Proust's Remembrance of things Past? Is it a wild prose-poetic fling in a "sarcastic climate?" Or is it an autobiography of Greece's most human poet, whom Aragon hailed as "the greatest poet of his time?" And what about the strange title? How are the established Orthodox saints, traditionally decorating the panels near the altar, how are they replaced by Anonymous human beings? "Everyday people from Ritsos" neighborhood; members of his large family and simple inhabitants of Monemvasia; unassuming fellow-prisoners on exile islands and a closely knit band of friends. All these "anonymities" are skillfully counterpoint with the hero- Ion- and Ion's alter ego Ariostos - and woven into a fascinating tapestry of reminiscences and reflections, vivid memories from childhood and ado- lescence, speculations on Greece's recent history

Yannis Ritsos is a poet whose writing life is entwined with the contemporary history of his homeland. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this volume, which presents a series of three diaries in poetry that Ritsos wrote between 1948 and 1950, during and just after the Greek Civil War, while a political prisoner first on the island of Limnos and then at the infamous camp on Makronisos. Even in this darkest of times, Ritsos dedicated his days to poetry, trusting in writing and in art as collective endeavors capable of resisting oppression and bringing people together across distance and time. These poems offer glimpses into the daily routines of life in exile, the quiet violence Ritsos and his fellow prisoners endured, the fluctuations in the prisoners’ sense of solidarity, and their struggle to maintain humanity through language. This moving volume justifies Ritsos’s reputation as one of the truly important poets in Greece’s modern literary history.

Yannis Ritsos, a pivotal figure in Greek poetry, explores a tragic sense of life through dramatic and symbolic expression in his works. This collection includes three volumes spanning from 1946 to 1975, showcasing a thirty-year evolution of his poetic voice. The poems reflect Ritsos's deepening sensibility and nuanced perceptions, capturing the essence of his maturity as a poet.

Yannis Ritsos (1909 - 1990) is one of Greece's finest and most celebrated poets, and was nine times nominated for a Nobel Prize. In Secret gives versions of Ritsos's short lyric poems: brief, compressed narratives that have an irresistible potency.

The word Romiosini or 'Greekness' derives from the Byzantine idea that the Greeks are the true Romioi, the heirs of the Roman Empire. For hundreds of years under the Turkish occupation the flame of romiosini was kept alive in codes of honour, loyalty, bravery, love of the land, religious devotion and patriotism. For Yiannis Ritsos, the Greek Partisans of EAM/ELAS in the Second World War were the heroic heirs to the romiosini of the mountain klephtes, the medieval epic hero Digenis Akritas, and the revolutionaries who fought against the Turks in the 1820s.

Greek poet Yannis Ritsos' remarkable collection of 336 single-line poems, composed in 1979, with linocut responses by artist and filmmaker Chiara Ambrosio, created in 2020; each line and image an essential observation of a moment, a personal archive of time past, present and future.

Ritsos' Gedichtzyklus, eine Art literarisches Testament, das 1986 und 1987 entstand, wurde erst nach dem Tod des Autors veröffentlicht. In den achtundsechzig Gedichten dieses Gedankentagebuchs eines letzten strahlenden Ägäissommers unterzieht Jannis Ritsos (1909-1990) die tragenden Ideen seines literarischen und politischen Lebens einer illusionslosen Prüfung. Sie wird im Zeichen des nahe bevorstehenden Endes vollzogen. Radikal in der Bestandsaufnahme, läßt Ritsos als letzte Gewißheit nur mehr die der Selbsterneuerung fähige künstlerische Produktivität gelten - losgelöst von jeder externen Zwecksetzung.§Ein Höhepunkt innerhalb von Ritsos' Oeuvre ist dieses Alterswerk dadurch, daß die ideologischen und persönlichen Abschiede als Augenblicke intensivster Wirklichkeit des Verabschiedeten gestaltet sind. Ritsos' tiefe Trauer um die Schönheit der Welt, die er verlassen muß, macht diese desto überzeugender wahrnehmbar für die Lesenden.§§