Yannis Ritsos: Poems

by Yiannis Ritsos, Manolis (Translator), Apryl Leaf (Editor)

In this amazing collection, Manolis introduces us to the life work of Greek poet, Yannis Ritsos. This translated collection paints the poetry of a man's life and as such it captures the great magnitude of that life lived. From the sea-soaked childhood through the impatient adventures of a naïve summer youth and shattered innocence. The reader can follow the poet, Ritsos, through the heartache of life to experience the shifting of his voice into a maturity that is cynical and painful but edged with truth. And all is enveloped in the metaphor of nature, upon the backdrop of a Greece, painted in white and pastel and gold, tastes and textures exotic and foreign but beautiful and real.

Ritsos writes of seasons shifting to reflect a coming darkness. The bitter desolation that is war. Hard, sharp, hostile words that paint a time too painful to remember and yet which must be written.

Ritsos writes about life and in this collection, spanning so many years, the reader is gifted with the true sense of a life experienced. One is able to see a poet play with form and style to reflect an abundance of shifting moods and experiences, each poem telling its own story but also echoing the larger story of life. Each poem is a snapshot of a place in time, of a moment in a life, of a story being told. The reader is invited to browse through a truly amazing anthology of observations, both personal and public. This collection reflects a depth and vastness that must be savoured and digested, revisited and reviewed.

– Cathi Shaw

Genres: Poetry

553 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2010

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

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

We closed our eyes
in our white paternal bed
The lamp blown out
in the window frame
secret reflection of the sea
Behind fences and trees
we heard
her great voice calling us
filling our sleep with azure landscapes
all flowered with snow white sails
with gardens of gulls in silent reverie
sitting on the stony edge of the unknown
above the magnetic dark abyss
*
I want to show you these rose clouds in the night.
But you can't see. It's night—what can one see?
So I can see through your eyes he said
that I won't be alone that you won't be alone. And truly
there is nothing to the direction I pointed
Only stars crowded together in the night tired
like people on a picnic who come back on a truck
regretful sleepy nobody singing
with wilted wildflowers in their sweaty palms
But I shall insist in seeing and showing you he said
because if you don't see it is as if I didn't see —
I shall insist at least not seeing with your eyes —
and perhaps someday from different directions we shall meet

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A careful hand is needed to translate the poems of Yannis Ritsos, and Manolis is the ideal poet to undertake such an enormous task. Born in Crete, Manolis’s youth was intermingled with the poetry of Ritsos. Once a young man moved by the Theodorakis version of Epitaphios, he’s now a successful poet in his own right who is still moved to tears hearing the refrains of those notes from half a century ago. His Greek heritage, with its knowledge of the terrain, people, history and cultural themes, makes his translation all the more true to what Ritsos intended. Having visited the very places of which Ritsos wrote, he knows how the light and sea shift, and how Ritsos imagined those changes as being a temperament and personality of the Greece itself.




The parallels in their lives are uncanny: when Ritsos was imprisoned, Manolis’ father also was imprisoned on false charges. Both men dealt with the forces of dictators and censorship, and experienced the cruel and unreasoning forces of those times. In fact, they even lived for a time in the same neighborhood. In his foreword to Poems, Manolis relates that he viewed him as a comrade, one whose “work resonated with our intense passion for our motherland and also in our veracity and strong-willed quest to find justice for all Greeks.”




In Poems, Manolis chose to honor Ritsos first by not just picking and choosing a few titles to translate, although that might have been far easier. Instead, he undertook the complex task of translating fifteen entire books of Ritsos work-an endeavor that took years of meticulous research and patience. It should be noted that along with the translation, edited by Apryl Leaf, that he also includes a significant Introduction that gives a reader unfamiliar with Ritsos an excellent background on the poet from his own perspective.




Dated according to when Ritsos composed them, it’s fascinating to see how some days were especially productive for him. These small details are helpful in understanding the context and meaning. For example, in Notes on the Margins of Time, written from 1938-1941, Ritsos explores the forces of war that are trickling into even the smallest villages. Without direct commentary, he alludes to trains, blood, and the sea that takes soldiers away, seldom to return. Playing an active role in these violent times, the moon observes all, and even appears as a thief ready to steal life from whom it is still new. From “In the Barracks”:




The moon entered the barracks

It rummaged in the soldiers’ blankets

Touched an undressed arm Sleep

Someone talks in his sleep Someone snores

A shadow gesture on the long wall

The last trolley bus went by Quietness




Can all these be dead tomorrow?

Can they be dead from right now?




A soldier wakes up

He looks around with glassy eyes

A thread of blood hangs from the moon’s lips


In Romiosini, the postwar years are a focus (1945-1947), and they have not been kind. The seven parts to this piece each reflect a soldier’s journey home.



These trees don’t take comfort in less sky

These rocks don’t take comfort under foreigners’

Footsteps

These faces don’t take comfort but only

In the sun




These hearts don’t take comfort except in justice.




The return to his country is marked by bullet-ridden walls, burnt-out homes, decay, and the predominantly female populace, one that still hears the bombs falling and the screams of the dead as they dully gaze about, looking for fathers, husbands, and sons. The traveler’s journey is marked by introspection and grim memories reflected on to the surfaces of places and things he thought he knew.




And now is the time when the moon kisses him sorrowfully

Close to his ear

The seaweed the flowerpot the stool and the stone ladder

Say good evening to him

And the mountains the seas and cities and the sky

Say good evening to him

And then finally shaking the ash off his cigarette

Over the iron railing

He may cry because of his assurance

He may cry because of the assurance of the trees and

The stars and his brothers




An entirely different feeling is found in Parentheses, composed 1946-1947. In it, healing is observed and a generosity of spirit exerts itself among those whose hearts had been previously crushed. In “Understanding”:



A woman said good morning to someone –so simple and natural

Good morning…

Neither division nor subtraction To be able to look outside

Yourself-warmth and serenity Not to be

‘just yourself’ but ‘you too’ A small addition

A small act of practical arithmetic easily understood…



On the surface, it may appear simple, a return to familiarity that may have been difficulty in times of war. Yet on another level, he appears to be referring to the unity among the Greek people-the ‘practical arithmetic’ that kept them united though their political state was volatile. Essentially timeless, his counsel goes far beyond nationalism.




Moonlight Sonata, written in 1956, is an impossibly romantic and poignant lyric poem that feels more like a short story. In it, a middle-aged woman talks to a young man in her rustic home. As he prepares to leave, she asks to walk with him a bit in the moonlight. “The moon is good –it doesn’t show my gray hair. The moon will turn my hair gold again. You won’t see the difference. Let me come with you”




Her refrain is repeated over and over as they walk, with him silent and her practically begging him to take her away from the house and its memories:



I know that everyone marches to love alone

Alone to glory and to death

I know it I tried it It’s of no use

Let me come with you




The poem reveals her memories as well as his awkward silence, yet at the end of their journey, she doesn’t leave. Ritsos leaves the ending open: was it a dream? If not, why did she not go? What hold did the house have over her? Was it just the moonlight or a song on the radio that emboldened her?




In 1971, Ritsos wrote The Caretaker’s Desk in Athens, where he was under surveillance but essentially free. At this time he seems to be translating himself-that of how he was processing his own personal history. Already acclaimed for his work, perhaps he was uncertain of his own identity.




From “The Unknown”,




He knew what his successive disguises stood for

(even with them often out of time and always vague)

A fencer a herald a priest a ropewalker

A hero a victim a dead Iphigenia He didn’t know

The one he disguised himself as His colorful costumes

Pile on the floor covering the hole of the floor

And on top of the pile the carved golden mask

And in the cavity of the mask the unfired pistol




If he is indeed discussing his identity, it’s with incredible honesty as to both his public persona and his private character. After all, he’d been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968 (and eight more times) and he was likely weighing, in his later years, all that he’d endured.



The beauty of this particular translation is that, while subjects and emotions change over time, they still feel united by the underlying character of Ritsos. Some translators leave their own imprint or influence, yet this feels free of such adjustment. It’s as if Ritsos’ voice itself has been translated, with the pauses, humor, and pace that identify the subtle characteristics of an individual.

[Pinar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ritsos' poems are always a treat and the translation is pretty good (though, of course, more or less missing the lyrical quality of Greek.) This will most likely remain in my 'currently reading' shelf for a while; one does not read poetry as one reads an Agatha Christie novel.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

reading "Furnished Rooms."

[Anna Coopey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I just... really don't like this translation of Ritsos, but it's not /bad/. I feel like it captures the Ritsos style very well, I just... Don't like it. But it was useful to get a handle on Ritsos' oeuvre, throughout his life, and to identify bits I want to dig more into.

[Oussama · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal poet.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

read "The Caretaker's Desk."