Odysseus Elytis (1911-96) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. With Seferis and the 'Generation of the Thirties', he introduced French Surrealism into Greek poetry. Kimon Friar's classic translation The Sovereign Sun begins with his brilliantly sensuous early poems. It has large selections from his master work, Axion Esti (1959), and includes the whole of his Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign (1945). His Nobel Prize citation stated: 'Against the background of Greek tradition, his poetry depicts with sensuous strength and clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness.'

"Originally published in 1997, The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis was the fist complete collection of Elytis's poems in any language." "For this expanded new edition, translators Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris have added sixty free verse and prose poems from the posthumous 1998 volume From Close By; a set of song lyrics, The Rhos of Eros; and a cantata, The Sovereign Sun."--BOOK JACKET.

Olga Broumas has chosen poems from the full range of Odysseas Elytis's Nobel Prize-winning poetry, including his early work when he was associated with the Surrealists, to the entirety of his long poem The Little Mariner, as well as a previously unavailable selection of his last poems, written shortly before his death in 1996. Elytis himself offers the best description of his work: If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must be irreparably planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of the truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying eros, eros, eros.

Engaging with the work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis within the framework of international modernism, Marinos Pourgouris places the poet's work in the context of other modernist and surrealist writers in Europe. At the same time, Pourgouris puts forward a redefinition of European Modernism that makes the Mediterranean, and Greece in particular, the discursive contact zone and incorporates neglected elements such as national identity and geography. Beginning with an examination of Greek Modernism, Pourgouris's study places Elytis in conversation with Albert Camus; analyzes the influence of Charles Baudelaire, Gaston Bachelard, and Sigmund Freud on Elytis's theory of analogies; traces the symbol of the sun in Elytis's poetry by way of the philosophies of Heraclitus and Plotinus; examines the influence of Le Corbusier on Elytis's theory of architectural poetics; and takes up the subject of Elytis's application of his theory of Solar Metaphysics to poetic form in the context of works by Freud, C. G. Jung, and Michel Foucault. Informed by extensive research in the United States and Europe, Pourgouris's study makes a compelling contribution to the comparative study of Greek modernism, the Mediterranean, and the work of Odysseus Elytis.

Open Papers Selected Essays If, through the decades, Elytis did take political and artistic risks, this clear articulation shows that his art was not guided by luck or risk alone but by a real belief in modernism.--Publishers Weekly. "Open Papers is ... a sweeping exploration of the mind and the mystic imagination of one of the most original, visionary, and compelling poets of this century."--Translation Review.

This anthology is composed of revised translations selected from five volumes of work by major poets of modern Greece offered by Keeley and Sherrard during the 1960s and '70s. Poems chosen are those that translate most successfully into English and that are also representative of the best work of the original poets--C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, and Nikos Gatsos.

The Nobel laureate's prizewinning poem tells of a young female radical of our age and comments on history, politics, and culture to create a portrait of the modern situation.

The Axion Esti is probably the most widely read volume of verse to have appeared in Greece since World War II and remains a classic today. Those who follow the music of Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis have been especially drawn to Odysseus Elytis's work, his prose is widely considered a mirror to the revolutionary music of Theodorakis. The "autobiographical" elements are constantly colored by allusion to the history of Greece, thus, the poems express a contemporary consciousness fully resonant with those echoes of the past that have served most to shape the modern Greek experience.