In Secret: Versions of Yannis Ritsos

by Yiannis Ritsos, David Harsent (Translator)

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) is one of Greece's finest and most celebrated poets, and was nine times nominated for a Nobel Prize. He wrote in the face of ill health, personal tragedy, and the systematic persecution by successive hard-line, right-wing regimes that led to many years in prison. In Secret gives versions of Ritsos's short lyric poems: brief, compressed narratives that are spare, though not scant. They possess an emotional resonance that is instinctively subversive. The poems are so pared-down, so distilled, that the story-fragments we are given - the scene- settings, the tiny psychodramas - have an irresistible potency.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Yiannis Ritsos (Greek: Γιάννης Ρίτσος) is considered to be one of the five great Greek poets of the twentieth century, together with Konstantinos Kavafis, Kostas Kariotakis, Giorgos Seferis, and Odysseus Elytis. The French poet Louis Aragon once said that Ritsos was "the greatest poet of our age."

Yannis Ritsos was born in Monemvassia (Greece), on May 1st, 1909 as cadet of a noble family of landowners. Born to a well-to-do landowning family in Monemvasia, Ritsos suffered great losses as a child. The early deaths of his mother and his eldest brother from tuberculosis, the commitment of his father who suffered with mental disease and the economic ruin of losing his family marked Ritsos and affected his poetry. Ritsos, himself, was confined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis from 1927–1931.

These tragic events mark him and obsess his œuvre. In 1931, Ritsos joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). During the Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1945) he became a member of the EAM (National Liberation Front), and authored several poems for the Greek Resistance. These include a booklet of poems dedicated to the resistance leader Ares Velouchiotis, written immediately upon the latter's death on 16 June 1945. Ritsos also supported the left in the subsequent Civil War (1946-1949); in 1948 he was arrested and spent four years in prison camps.

Reviews

[Kassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harsent's book is well-timed. The subtitle "Versions of..." absolves Harsent of the burden of fidelity to the original text, and thus frees him to versify in Ritsos' spirit, without tripping over his words and cadences. Unfortunately for me, it also absolves the publisher of the added cost of typesetting the Greek in a bilingual edition, my preferred way of reading poetry in translation. Yet I think that will serve as a better introduction to Ritsos for most readers.

A single line of Ritsos can blow up social relationships better than any Molotov hurled against a Starbucks window. My hope is that Harsent's poetic renderings will clear the path for more comprehensive and scholarly translation efforts. Read it now, and see which lines explode for you.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm grateful to David Harsent for introducing me to a Greek poet whom I'd never come across before. His "versions" rather than translations are entirely appropriate for the source material, a poet creating the original poems for us in English. Many of the poems are short, concentrated descriptions of a scene or a moment which often leave more questions than answers, particularly when you read about Ritsos's life as a Communist Party member in Greece, often imprisoned. The poems themselves are often suggesting a threat or foreboding, but always intriguing.

A lovely collection.