Greek poet and painter. Odysseas Elytis was one of our greatest poets, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979. He was one of the elite members of the so-called "thirty generation" in the field of artistic creation.
Odysseas Alepoudelis, as his real name was, was born on November 2, 1911 in Heraklion, Crete. He was the youngest of the six children of the Lesbian businessman Panagiotis Alepoudeli and his compatriot Maria Vranas. His father settled in 1895 in Heraklion, where he founded a soap-making and nuclear factory, and two years later he married his mother.
In the fall of 1924 he transferred to the 3rd Gymnasium for Boys of Athens and the following year he lost his father. In this period of his student years, his first intellectual interests are manifested. He collaborates with the magazine Diaplasis ton Paedon, reads Greek and French literature and in 1927 comes into contact with the poetry of Cavafy. In 1928, he graduated from the then High School and learned about the poetry of Kostas Karyotakis. During all these years, Odysseus visited one of the Aegean islands almost every summer, which will influence the lyrical background of his poetry.
1929 is a defining year for his poetic journey. Discovers surrealism and reads Lorca and Eliard. He writes his first poems and sends them under a pseudonym to magazines. In 1930 he enrolled in the Law School of the University of Athens.
In 1935 he will meet the poet and psychoanalyst Andreas Empirikos, who will decisively influence his poetry, as well as the popular painting of Theophilos, which will exert a significant influence on the figurative orientation of his poetry. In the same year, his friend and fellow artist Giorgos Sarantaris puts him in touch with the literary society, which published the innovative magazine Nea Grammata. It consisted, among others, of George Seferis, George Theotokas, George Katsimbalis and Andreas Karantonis. In Nea Grammata his first trial poem entitled To Agaios will be published, with the signature: Elytis.
In 1936 he met the poet Nikos Gatso and from then on a long and close friendship would connect them. Joining them are the painters Nikos Chatzikyriakos-Gikas and Yiannis Moralis, as well as the poet Nikos Karydis, creator of the Ikaros publishing house, which will publish most of Elytis' books. In the same year, he will interrupt his studies in Law and join the army. He would be discharged as a reserve officer in 1938.
In December 1939, when the Second World War has broken out, he will publish 300 copies of his first poetry collection entitled Orientations, a bright ray in "the cloudiness of the world". In 1940, Samuel Beau-Bovi translated the first poems of Elytis into French.
In 1943 he publishes his second poetry collection Helios o Protos together with the variations on a ray, an allegorical resistance within the Occupation, camouflaged in a hyperrealistic form, like Gatsos's Amorgos and Engonopoulos's Bolivar, published in the same year.
In 1945 he collaborates with the surrealist magazine Tetradio. He publishes translations of Lorca's poems and a work of his own, the elegy Song heroic and mournful for the lost lieutenant of Albania. In the same year, at the suggestion of Giorgos Seferis, he was appointed program manager of the National Radio Foundation (EIR), a position from which he resigned shortly after. During this period he was engaged in painting, which was an old occupation of his, complementary to his poetry.
In 1959 Axion Esti is released, a peak moment in Greek literature. The poet dives into the roots of Greek myth and draws material and forms, images and sounds, achieving a dramatic composition, in which the lyrical "I" is identified with the epic "we" and modern writing is combined with a wealth, ancient Byzantine and more recent. This work by Elytis will be widely recognized and will become "the property of the People", when it will be set to music by Mikis Theodorakis in 1964.
In 1979 comes the great moment for the poet. On October 18, the Swedish Academy announces that he will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his poetry, which, with the Greek tradition on its pedestal, describes with aesthetic power and high intellectual discretion, the modern man's struggle for freedom and creation." The announcement of the Swedish Academy points out that Axion Esti is one of the masterpieces of 20th century poetry. Elytis attended the customary award ceremony on December 10, 1979 in Stockholm, receiving the award from King Carl Gustav of Sweden and receiving worldwide publicity.
The next few years will be quite creative for Elytis, with important publications of his works in poetry, essay and translation. The distinctions and honors for his work, inside and outside Greece, will continue and intensify. Odysseas Alepudelis will pass away on March 18, 1996, at the age of 85.
Odysseus Elytis was one of the last representatives of the literary generation of the thirties, one of whose characteristics was the ideological dilemma between Greek tradition and European modernism. Elytis himself characterized his own position in this generation as strange, noting characteristically: "on the one hand I was the stern of a generation, which bowed to the sources of a Greekness, and on the other hand I was the first of another that accepted the revolutionary theories of a modern movement".
