Οδυσσέας Ελύτης Φωτογραφικό υλικό από την έκθεση στο Ηράκλειο της Κρήτη - καλοκαίρι 2011.

             Odysseas Elytis was born in Heraklion, Crete in 1911. He studied law at the University of Athens. His poems first appeared in periodicals in 1935 and he published his first book of poems in 1940. Elytis writes against the background of Greek tradition which....
depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativeness. 
The Noble Prize in 1979 recognized the life work of a devoted poet. Elytis is more purely, more simply a poet than any other of the last century. He has written prose and written for the stage, but the momentum of his development has always been in poetry, from the sharp, sensory vigour of his earliest lyrics, through the influence of Eluard and of a certain stage of surrealism, to the powerful and deep chants of his post-war poetry. The early lyrics were unforgettable for their musical phrasing. They had the freshness of summer waves and the perfect motion ability of the sea. There was something gratuitous about their economy, their apparent lightness of construction. He never lost that skill, but in the course of years his words have strengthened and his tone has deepened. He died in Athens at the age of 84.                                                                                                                           

It’s still early in this world, you hear me
They beasts haven’t tamed, you hear me
My lost blood and sharp, you hear me
Knife
Like a ram running across the skies
Snapping the boughs of the stars, you hear me
It’s me, you hear me
I love you, you hear me
I hold you and I take you and I dress you
In Ophelia’s white bridal gown
Where do you leave me, where are you going and who, you hear me


Holds your hand over the floods


The enormous lianas and the volcanic lava
The day will come, you hear me
Which will bury us and thousands of years later
Will be shinning fossils, you hear me
For the heartlessness of men to burnish, you hear me
Of men
And thousands of pieces to throw away


In the waters one by one, you hear me
I count my bitter pebbles, you hear me
And time is big church, you hear me
Where sometimes the figures
Of the Saints
Shed real tears, you hear me
The bells open up high, you hear me
A deep passage for me to pass
The angels wait with candles and funeral psalms
Either both of us or no one


This flower of the storm and, you hear me
Of love
We cut it once and for all, you hear me
And it can not blossom otherwise, you hear me
On another earth, on another star, you hear me
The ground, the air that we touched
Is no longer the same, you hear me


And no gardener was happy in other times


To blossom a flower amid such a winter and such north winds, you hear me
It’s only us in the middle of the sea
Only from the very wish for love, you hear me
We made a whole island
With caves and capes and flowering cliffs
Listen, listen
Who is talking to the waters and who is weeping, do you hear me?
Who seeks the other, who shouts, do you hear me ?
It’s who is crying and its me who is weeping, you hear me
I love you, I love you, you do hear me.