Yannis Ritsos is hailed as one of the twentieth century's five great Greek poets, celebrated for his profound and often tragic outlook on life. His poetry, marked by personal loss and political struggle, delves into themes of resilience, grief, and the search for meaning in the face of adversity. Ritsos's style is characterized by its raw emotionality and potent imagery, reflecting his experiences with oppression and hope. His work resonates with readers for its unflinching honesty and timeless exploration of the human spirit.
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, una de las mejores voces de la lírica europea, creó una serie de monólogos de excepcional sutileza, con los que consigue trasladar a nuestros días el pathos de la tragedia griega. En esta pieza, el poeta da voz a la anciana Helena, que examina su vida dejando que los recuerdos de quienes ya la abandonaron la conmuevan, y al recrear la interioridad del personaje mitológico nos descubre su vigencia: Helena pervive en tantas otras mujeres de hoy. Con esta obra proseguimos la publicación de los soliloquios dramáticos del autor en versión de Selma Ancira.
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.
Jannis Ritsos (1909-1990) ist im deutschen Sprachraum vor allem als Dichter des linken politischen Widerstands und der Straflager bekannt geworden. Ziel dieser neuen Auswahl - der Ritsos noch selbst zugestimmt hat - ist es, sein facettenreiches Werk aus dieser Engführung zu befreien. Voraussetzung für den Umfang, die Vielseitigkeit und die Kontinuität des Œuvres ist eine — von Deutschland aus schwerverständliche - sich unablässig selbst regenerierende Wechselwirkung von politischem Anspruch und ästhetischem Bedürfnis.
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.
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.
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 (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.