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Poetry of Yannis Ritsos (1909 - 1990)
A poet with an enormous output.
His family was wealthy but suffered financial ruin, family members became mentally ill. His mother died from tuberculosis. Due to his leftist politics he suffered persecution and even exile and his works banned.
Said to compose a dozen poems in one sitting, his encompasses, by one count, 46 books.
His work ranges from the political to the personal, with many poems about some painfully small and uneventful moment of life which he manages to make pregnant with significance.
Succession
The sun doesn't think about your hesitations -
it wants you naked and it takes you naked
until the night comes to dress you
After the sun there is repentance
after repentance the sun again
Duty
One star gleams in the twilight like a lit
keyhole
you glue your eye on it - you look inside - you see everything
The world is fully illuminated behind the locked door
You need to open it
Penelope's Despair (Excerpt. Translated by Edmund Keeley)
It wasn't that she didn't recognize him in the light from the hearth: it wasn't
the beggar's rags, the disguise - no. The signs were clear:
the scar on his knee, the pluck, the cunning in his eye. Frightened,
her back against the wall, she searched for an excuse,
a little time, so she wouldn't have to answer,
give herself away. Was it for him, then, that she'd used up twenty years?
Obstacle (excerpt)
In the other room was loneliness with her big book
and all light was concentrated in half a glass of water
Transformation (excerpt; punctuation as in the translation)
He opened his palms There were no stigmata
Wounds heal The nails remain inside
Even deeper Nothing shows
Links
Poetry Foundation (Up 12/6/22)
Works
S
Yannis Ritsos
Poems: Selected Books
Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
(2nd ed. 2018, Libros)