Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses

by Yiannis Ritsos

The celebrated modern Greek poet Yannis Ritsos follows such distinguished predecessors as C. P. Cavafy and George Seferis in a dramatic and symbolic expression of a tragic sense of life. The shorter poems gathered in this volume present what Ritsos calls "simple things" that turn out not to be simple at all. Here we find a world of subtle nuances, in which everyday events hide much that is threatening, oppressive, and spiritually vacuous--but the poems also provide lyrical and idyllic interludes, along with cunning re-creations of Greek mythology and history. This collection of Ritsos's work--perhaps most of all those poems written while he was in forced exile under the dictatorship of the Colonels--testifies to his just place among the major European poets of this century. The distinguished translator of modern Greek poetry Edmund Keeley has chosen for this anthology selections from seven of Ritsos's volumes of shorter poems written between 1946 and 1975. Two of these volumes are represented here in English versions for the first time, two others have been translated only sporadically, and the remaining three were first published in a bilingual edition now out of print (Ritsos in Parentheses). The collection thus covers thirty years of a poetic career that is the most prolific, and among the most honored, in Greece's modern history.

Genres: Poetry

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

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

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yannis Ritsos, Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses (Princeton, 1991)
[originally posted 12Mar2001]

Yannis Ritsos, one of the true elder statesmen of Greek poetry, never truly left adolescence (despite being over eighty at his death); he mixes ancient Greek myth and a kind of blissfully revelatory scurrilousness into a poetic soup that's alternately amusing and annoying. When he's on, his work resounds; when he's not, it has the feel of a horny thirteen-year-old typing with one hand. Odd, since one doesn't usually think of there being a fine line between the two.

While there are pieces scattered throughout this one that make it worthwhile, much of those were also printed in the superior volume Exile and Return; this is probably better off in the collection of Ritsos completists. ***

[thalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had a more commanding knowledge of Ancient Greek texts, less bc I think Ancient Greek texts are so interesting but more Bc Ritsos brilliantly Re renders these ancient stories and characters, giving new life to these usually exhausted myths, pushing the bounds of Greek literature and all poetry.

[Clarice · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not all of these poems struck me in a deep place, there were a few quite exceptional gems. "Women" broke my heart, and I find myself unable to stop picking up the book and rereading it.

[l · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "Moonlight Sonata" and was enchanted. I'm not sure what I think of his poetry in these collections though...

Doubtful Stature
Pale, very pale; thorns in his hair-thorns
down to his shoulders, to his waist, to the soles of his feet-
maybe they were actually his wings; because just
as I glanced a second time toward the door, there was nothing
but the slightest smoke in place of the hammer.

Insomnia
This relentless repetition of the same illegible text-
at the top of the sheet the rusted hole from the thumbtack,
at the bottom two drops of black blood. The two-he said-the two,
the double, the double sound, the double meaning. I'm tired of doors
closed and open with the dead or women. Lefteris
got going in a hurry before it started raining.
Afterwards he came back with the damp blanket and the cap belonging to the one who was executed.

Interesting.

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two sections, "Repetitions" and "Testimonies" are a total snore heavy on classical Greek allusion. The last two, "Parentheses" and "The Distant" are where you find what you are looking for in Ritsos' work. Strange, surreal, and quotidian all at once. It is put succinctly by Ritsos in the first poem of "Parentheses":

The Meaning of Simplicity

I hide behind simple things so you'll find me;
if you don't find me, you'll find the things,
you'll touch what my hand has touched.
our hand-prints will merge.

The August moon glitters in the kitchen
like a tin-plated pot (it gets that way because of what I'm saying to you),
it lights up the empty house and the house's kneeling silence—
always the silence remains kneeling.

Every word is a doorway
to a meeting, one often cancelled,
and that's when a word is true: when it insists on the meeting.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Afternoon

The afternoon is all fallen plaster, black stones, dry thorns.
The afternoon has a difficult color made up
of old footsteps halted in mid-stride,
of old jars buried in the courtyard, covered by fatigue and straw.

Two killed, five killed, twelve -- so very many.
Each hour has its killing.
Behind the windows stand those who are missing,
and the jug full of water they didn't drink.

And that star that fell at the edge of evening
is like the severed ear that doesn't hear the crickets,
doesn't hear our excuses -- doesn't condescend to hear out songs--
alone, alone, alone, cut off totally, indifferent to condemnation or vindication.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the imagery and feel of Ritsos's poems, though these particular poems are short to the point of being fragments. He has an interesting way of bringing depth and meaning to the everyday world, often with (encyclopedic) references to Greek mythology, or to images of death and/or sex.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ritsos wrote way too much and many of the poems in this exemplary collection are unnecessary, but the finest are as fine as almost anyone's.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edmund Keeley's translations of Ritsos are some of the best available.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible work by a major modern Greek poet. Love this collection!

[Voula Halliday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ritsos is my favourite poet.

[Shermin · Rating 5 out of 5]

sublime,breathtaking,full of imagery.