Μονόχορδα

by Yiannis Ritsos, Γιάννης Ρίτσος

Translated from the Greek by Paul Merchant. Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) is one Greece1s most prolific, distinguished and celebrated poets. He is the author of some 50 volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems 1938-1988 (1989) reflect that abundance as it contains 440 poems gathered from some 43 volumes. His Monochords written at about ten during 1979, can be read as miniature encapsulations by a master of the art of brevity Or they can be read as keys to his whole work, his lexicon of images and ideas. Ritsos, though a world reknown poet, is, unfortunately hardly known in the United States. Hopefully this translation of Monochords by Paul Merchant will help in spreading Ritsos1 poetry by offering toAmerican readers a 3sampler of the Greek poet1s work. Paul Merchant's translations of Ritsos, in his Greek issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (1968) and read by Ted Hughes on BBC radio in 1970, were among the first published in England. Merchant recently collaborated with Doug Erickson and Jeremy Skinner on a bibliography of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and on a reprint of a rare Expedition text. Since 1996 he has been Director of the William Stafford Archives.

Genres: Poetry

74 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1980

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

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

-- 5 stars for the original Trask House Press edition, 2007.
-- 3.5 stars for the revised Tavern Books edition, 2017.

One of my very favorite books, in the original edition. A collection of one-line gems.

However, in the revised 2017 edition, the translator, in the interest of polishing the translations, appears to have polished away some of the intimacy and mystery of his originals -- at least to my ear.

I have no Greek, and cannot speak to the accuracy of these revisions. But I find many of the "re-translation" choices unfortunately flat. But then, maybe I'm biased from my first love of the original translations.

A few examples here below: decide for yourself. Still, there is plenty of magic in both editions, and you can't really go wrong with either.


2007 versions

(88) If you never close your eyes, you'll never grow.

(152) Tell me again, my friend -- so you start over.

(178) Grape harvesters and horses in the ocean. Bravo, comes the call from the balconies.

(195) All the words are not enough to get anything said.

(230) Night insects tangled in women’s hair, and voices in the corridors.

(329) Quiet night creatures, smelling the roses, patrolling the walls.



2017 versions

(88) If you never ever close your eyes, you won't grow.

(152) My friend, you tell me again, and start over.

(178) Grape harvesters and horses in the ocean. Bravo, they call from the balconies.

(195) All the words are too few for you to say anything.

(230) Nocturnal insects tangled in the women's hair and voices in the corridors.

(329) Quiet nocturnal creatures, smelling the roses, patrolling wall to wall.

[17CECO · Rating 3 out of 5]

SPD sent this free along with Fred Moten’s The Service Porch. So what the hell, I read it.

Ritsos takes up a challenging form in Monochords: the one line poem (though the book’s layout forces several poems into two lines). In one light, everything in a short poem can seem essential and luminous. In another light, the same poem can seem banal. There’s no remainder, no good or bad part, just a few words that don’t add up to zip. Imagistic poems seem to double down on this: “ The book asks the reader to rise to the challenge of slowing down, lingering in the spaces between the words. The poems themselves sometimes suggest to the reader that they look longer for what might be embedded in other lines—“They broke the drums and hid them in their manuscripts” (307)—or to imagine a poem beyond the poem—“The sawdust that fell from your hair, I find in my poem today” (300). Some monochords have a maxim/tool like quality, a nice little synoptic formula: “They loaded their sins onto others, and that way became saints” (42). What didn’t do it for me is the relentless vocabulary of archetype—sun, stones, seas, moons, Oedipus, monuments, etc.

[Drottnigu · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Με το μικρό σου δάχτυλο, ανακινείς έναν κόσμο.»

[35]

[cy]

A little “one-note” if you catch my drift (hehe) — I did like some of these a lot, but more than that I’m curious about his other work!!!