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Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems
Lyrical, vigorous, deeply inventive, the poetry of Greece's Odysseus Elytis has been known to American readers largely through short and scattered selections by the present translators. The world-wide recognition that only recently came to Elytis with the award of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature makes this collection - drawn from all periods of his long and distinguished career - an especially welcome event.
Selected Poems traces the development of Elytis's oeuvre from the early surrealism of Orientation (1940), a celebration of the sacred aspects of visible things, through the new dramatic style of The Axion Esti (1959), a spiritual autobiography and meditation on modern Greece, through his most recent work, including Maria Nefeli (1979), in which he continues to experiment with new forms for expressing his perennial themes. With their distinctive blend of classical metaphor and personal mythology, these poems are splendid evidence - as the Nobel citation read - of "the sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness" with which Odysseus Elytis "depicts modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness."
Selected Poems traces the development of Elytis's oeuvre from the early surrealism of Orientation (1940), a celebration of the sacred aspects of visible things, through the new dramatic style of The Axion Esti (1959), a spiritual autobiography and meditation on modern Greece, through his most recent work, including Maria Nefeli (1979), in which he continues to experiment with new forms for expressing his perennial themes. With their distinctive blend of classical metaphor and personal mythology, these poems are splendid evidence - as the Nobel citation read - of "the sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness" with which Odysseus Elytis "depicts modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness."
- GenresPoetryNobel PrizeGreece
114 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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About the author
Odysseas Elytis
102 books279 followersGreek poet Odysseas Alepoudellis Elytis received the Nobel Prize for literature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssea...
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July 15, 2025
„Kad više niko ne tuguje za slavujima a svi pišu pesme“
Ovo je preštampano izdanje (sa još kojom dodatnom pesmom) beogradskog Doma omladine iz 1980, što je izbor pesama koje je Elitis lično odobrio za naše čitaoce.
A Elitis uvek prija.
Poezija o mediteranskim motivima uvećanih na nivo primordijalnih sila kosmosa.
Poezija o Mediteranu koji uplovljava u podsvest i poezija o Mediteranu koji isplovljava iz naše podsvesti.
Vrelo leto, kamen i oglašavanje zrikavaca na Veliku Gospojinu.
Posle čitanja Elitisa gledaju mi se platna Petra Lubarde.
Što sam i učinio.
Ovo je preštampano izdanje (sa još kojom dodatnom pesmom) beogradskog Doma omladine iz 1980, što je izbor pesama koje je Elitis lično odobrio za naše čitaoce.
A Elitis uvek prija.
Poezija o mediteranskim motivima uvećanih na nivo primordijalnih sila kosmosa.
Poezija o Mediteranu koji uplovljava u podsvest i poezija o Mediteranu koji isplovljava iz naše podsvesti.
Vrelo leto, kamen i oglašavanje zrikavaca na Veliku Gospojinu.
Posle čitanja Elitisa gledaju mi se platna Petra Lubarde.
Što sam i učinio.
October 29, 2021
All the cypress trees point toward midnight
All the fingers
Toward silence
Outside the dream's open window
Slowly, slowly
The confession unwinds
And, as pure colour, deviates toward the stars
*
Unguarded night was taken by memories
*
Summer was killed with the first drop of rain
Words that had given birth to starlight were drenched
All those words whose single goal was You.
Where will we stretch our hands now the weather no longer takes us into account?
[...]
No, it isn’t death we will confront
But the tiniest autumnal raindrop
An obscure feeling
The smell of wet earth in our souls that grow continually farther apart.
*
And the sea, so exquisite in her sleep, spread
unbleached gauze of sky
*
Words half-formed of waves or half-guessed in a rustling, and others
seemingly of the dead, words startled among the cypresses, like
strange Zodiacs circling her head, suddenly illuminated her.
[...]
"And that loneliness, from the time it became unendurable to the
heart of man, has scattered and sown stars!"
*
Suddenly the swallow's shadow reaped the glances of its nostalgia:
Noon.
All the fingers
Toward silence
Outside the dream's open window
Slowly, slowly
The confession unwinds
And, as pure colour, deviates toward the stars
*
Unguarded night was taken by memories
*
Summer was killed with the first drop of rain
Words that had given birth to starlight were drenched
All those words whose single goal was You.
Where will we stretch our hands now the weather no longer takes us into account?
[...]
No, it isn’t death we will confront
But the tiniest autumnal raindrop
An obscure feeling
The smell of wet earth in our souls that grow continually farther apart.
*
And the sea, so exquisite in her sleep, spread
unbleached gauze of sky
*
Words half-formed of waves or half-guessed in a rustling, and others
seemingly of the dead, words startled among the cypresses, like
strange Zodiacs circling her head, suddenly illuminated her.
[...]
"And that loneliness, from the time it became unendurable to the
heart of man, has scattered and sown stars!"
*
Suddenly the swallow's shadow reaped the glances of its nostalgia:
Noon.
Read
February 11, 2017Odisej Eliti se kod nas nikad nije zapatio kao npr. Kavafi. A šteta. Ima sve što volim u poeziji, i ljudsku toplinu, i začudne slike, i mnogo boja i sunca, i čulnost, i taman onoliko pritajene jeze i neshvatljivog koliko treba; i ima pesme poput one o malom zelenom trinaestogodišnjem moru, koja je sve to odjednom.
April 1, 2015
ODYSSEUS ELYTIS: THE SPLENDOR OF SURREALIST POETRY
At the beginning of his luminous career, the great Greek poet and Nobel Laureate Odysseus Elytis said: I write so that black does not have the last word.Black and light, sunshine and darkness, these were the two poles of Elytis’ poetry, a pendulum between passion and patience, a bewilderment stretching throughout the day. He is a poet of the sparkling Aegean. The best of his Poetry - such as The Mad Pomegranate Tree, Commemoration, Aegean Melancholy, Body of Summer, and Drinking the Sun of Corinth, distils vividly and evocatively the typical features of the Aegean scene: its closeness to the natural world, its startling colors, and its hints of the simple and the unsophisticated.
Born into a prosperous family from Lesbos, Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) abandoned the family name as a young man in order to dissociate his writing from the family soap business. Elytis studied law at Athens University. Later he became acquainted with French surrealist poetry in the '30s and was captivated by surrealism's affirmation of feeling and the subconscious self, its rejection of traditional forms and rigid modes of poetical expression. But he did not adopt surrealism's free associations and automatic writing as proclaimed by Andre Breton. His, is a mild and controlled surrealism, the syntax in his poems is not violated and, thanks to his talent, the juxtaposition of images is coherent and pleasurable. Modernism and tradition are fused seamlessly in his poetry.
Aegean seascape, sun, olives and many archetypal images of Greece recur in his poems. As the poet mentioned in an interview : If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her.. Elytis was perhaps the first modern great poet who embraced surrealism as a poetic inspiration. He felt that surrealism heralded a return to magical sources which rationalism had calcified; it represented a plunge into the wellsprings of fantasy and dream, a free-flowing clustering of images creating its own shapes.
All the poems in this book are magnificently translated by the best translator duo in Greek Poetry-Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Let me start with a poem that beautifully combines the elements of surrealism, eroticism, and lyricism .
BODY OF SUMMER
A long time has passed since the last rain was heard
Above the ants and lizards
Now the sun burns endlessly
The fruit paints its mouth
The pores in the earth open slowly
And beside the water that drips in syllables
A huge plant gaze into the eye of the sun.
Who is he that lies on the shores beyond
Stretched on his back, smoking silver-burnt olive leaves?
Cicadas grow warm in his ears
Ants are at work on his chest
Lizards slide in the grass of his armpits
And over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightly
Sent by the little siren that sang:
" O body o summer, naked, burnt
Eaten away by oil and salt
Body of rock and shudder of the heart
Great ruffling wind in the osier hair
Beneath of basil above the curly pubic mound
Full of stars and pine needles
Body , deep vessel of the day!
"Soft rains come, violent hail
The land passes lashed in the claws of snow-storm
Which darkens in the depths with furious waves
The hills plunge into the dense udders of the clouds
And yet behind all this you laugh carefree
And find your deathless moment again
And the sun finds you again in the sandy shores
As the sky finds you again in your naked health."
Through personification he molds the abstract into concrete forms and infuse spirit into the material world in the above poem Body of Summer. The animate inanimate is found in fruit which paint their mouths in summer heat and transform into earth's swelling pores. Summer itself is personified as a boy stretched out on the shore while " Cicadas grow warm in his ears/Ants are at work on his chest/Lizards slide in the grass of his armpits/And over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightly". Bathed in light and idyllic joy, these are images of hope, joy, and sensuality that have become the trademark of a poetry free of sentimentality.
The Greek landscape is perceived by the poet as archaically harsh and glaring—considering Elytis's birthplace, one is tempted to say "Cretan"—and man does not appear here as lord of creation, as the measure of all things. Human form is, to be sure, assumed by the forces of the landscape and of time: the summer, the earth, youth, and memory. But man, for his part, is scarcely anything other than a lens, in which the burning force of the landscape and of time is refracted—a reflection, and perhaps a deceptive one.
The poem Marina of the Rocks is another beautiful poem about an enigmatic woman again set in surreal tone. I quote here two stanzas from the poem
From Marina of the Rocks
You have a taste of tempest on your lips - But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.
............................................................
You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
.......................................................
Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.
When Nazi Germany occupied Greece in 1941, Elytis fought against the Italians in Albania. He became something of a bard among young Greeks; one of his great poems, “Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign”, became an anthem to the cause of freedom. It is the story of a man who, in a world essentially good, is caught in the crossfire of evil and pays his life for his defense of what he regards as justice. Here is portion of the lament from Section V.
From Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign
Sun, were you not all-powerful?
Bird, were you not joy’s unresting moment?
Brightness, were you not the cloud’s audacity?
And you, garden, were you not a odium of flowers
And were you not, dark root, flute of the magnolia.
And a tree quivers in the rain
As the empty body is blackened by fate
As a madman lashes himself with snow
And two eyes give way to tears—
Why, ask the eagle, where is the young man?
And all the eaglets wonder where the young man is.
Why, asks the mother, sighing, where is my son?
And all mothers wonder where the child is.
Why, asks the friend, where is my brother?
And all his friends wonder where the youngest of them is.
They touch snow and fever burns
They touch a hand and it freezes
They bite into bread and it drips blood
They gaze deeply into the sky and it turns livid
Why why why why does death not give warmth
Why such unholy bread
Why a sky like that, there where the sun used to live.
During and after the Greek Civil War, he lapsed into literary silence for almost 15 years, returning to print in 1959 with The Axion Esti (Worthy it is), a long poem in which the speaker explores the essence of his being as well as the identity of his country and people. This poem became immensely popular and helped Elytis earn the Nobel Prize. As poems in this one are longer, I am constrained not to post it here.
When he finished “The Axion Esti”, the poet met Maria Nefeli , a young woman in real life, and he suddenly wanted to write something very different from “The Axion Esti”. Therefore he made the young woman speak in many poems in the book Maria Nefeli and express her world view. The poet is not against her, but tries to understand her viewpoint and that of her generation . Here are some eclectic quotes:
I live from day to day-who knows what tomorrow will bring
My one hand crumples up the money and the other smoothes it out
(from ‘The Cloud’)
My God, how much blue you spend to stop us from seeing you
(from ‘Discourse on Beauty’)
There is a radiating quality in many of his great poems. He is a poet of sunshine, vitality, color, and exuberance. It was endemic in his personality, his geographical setting and spiritual awareness. I have never experienced so much light, light, light, sun, sun, sun, fire, fire, fire as in the poems of Elytis. But his greatness lies in the fact that when engaging in simplicities of such elemental features, he interpolates also his unique ingredients of the inspirational and the spiritual; so that, in the end, all of it becomes universal in its significance, and enduring in its meaning. The sun can burn and kill as well as illuminate our earth. And the dark silence can be even greater than the light. But though aware of them, Elytis was never attracted by the darker aspects of the world. That is obvious by looking at the images he returns to again and again in his poems: the Aegean sea, young men and women, or boys and girls, often naked, poppies, pebbles, vineyards, cicadas, butterflies, branches, olive trees, almond trees, pomegranate tree etc.
Here is my favorite Elytis poem in this collection that illustrates the above aspects.
THE MAD POMEGRANATE TREE
In these all-white courtyards where the south wind blows
Whistling through vaulted arcades, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That leaps in the light, scattering its fruitful laughter
With windy willfulness and whispering, tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree
That quivers with foliage newly born at dawn
Raising high its colours in a shiver of triumph?
On plains where the naked girls awake,
When they harvest clover with their light brown arms
Roaming round the borders of their dreams-tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree,
Unsuspecting, that puts the lights in their verdant baskets
That floods their names with the singing of birds-tell me
Is it the mad pomegranate tree that combats the cloudy skies of the
world?
On the day that it adorns itself in jealousy with seven kinds of feathers,
Girding the eternal sun with a thousand blinding prisms
Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That seizes on the run a horse’s mane of a hundred lashes,
Never sad and never grumbling–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That cries out the new hope now dawning?
Tell me, is that the pomegranate tree waving in the distance,
Fluttering a handkerchief of leaves of cool flame,
A sea near birth with a thousand ships and more,
With waves that a thousand times and more set out and go
To unscented shores-tell me, is it the pomegranate tree
That creaks the rigging aloft in the lucid air?
High as can be, with the blue bunch of grapes that flares and celebrates
Arrogant, full of danger–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That shatters with light the demon’s tempest in the middle of the world
That spreads far as can be the saffron ruffle of day
Richly embroider with scattered songs-tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree
That hastily unfastens the silk apparel of day?
In petticoats of April first and cicadas of the feast of mid-August
Tell me, that which plays, that which rages, that which can entice
Shaking out of threats their evil black darkness
Spilling in the sun’s embrace intoxicating birds
Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things
On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?
In “The Mad Pomegranate Tree”, the poet answers to the difficult questions hanging from its branches (”Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things / On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?”).One has the feeling that it is the mad pomegranate tree that drives the world. The unabashed pomegranate tree dances and dances in the ear. It sings and stuns the mind with extravagant repetitions.( ‘Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree’). The sound of joy repeating and rushing seems to careen wildly ahead of our thought with tickling uncontrolled energy.
Also, there is something of the frenzy of a Van Gogh painting in this - an urgency to capture the beauty of the various images, as if it would slip away if not grasped at immediately. The poem is intoxicating and invigorating at the same time, lulls you into a trance with its rhythm and repetitions but awakens you to a different world.
I simply love the lyrical surrealism that lingers in this poem. Whenever I read this poem, I gain a rare ‘Elan vital ‘ (the current of life, the way Bergson used it). I feel I have the heart of Bacchus to revel and rejoice; I am charged with 440 V to recklessly rush forward, to dance, to fly, to laugh around and do all the naughty things I had dreamed of. Poetry is Viagra!
The mad pomegranate tree will continue to toss in the wind and “scatter its fruit-laden laughter” lifting up my spirits with buoyancy and bliss in my ritual for renewal.
Odysseus Elytis’s poetry depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativeness. , as the Nobel Prize citation endorses. His lyrical power, scintillating imageries, classicism, historical and mythical sense and above all the brilliance and novelty of poetic diction elevate him as one of the greatest experimental modern romantic poets of all time.
At the beginning of his luminous career, the great Greek poet and Nobel Laureate Odysseus Elytis said: I write so that black does not have the last word.Black and light, sunshine and darkness, these were the two poles of Elytis’ poetry, a pendulum between passion and patience, a bewilderment stretching throughout the day. He is a poet of the sparkling Aegean. The best of his Poetry - such as The Mad Pomegranate Tree, Commemoration, Aegean Melancholy, Body of Summer, and Drinking the Sun of Corinth, distils vividly and evocatively the typical features of the Aegean scene: its closeness to the natural world, its startling colors, and its hints of the simple and the unsophisticated.
Born into a prosperous family from Lesbos, Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) abandoned the family name as a young man in order to dissociate his writing from the family soap business. Elytis studied law at Athens University. Later he became acquainted with French surrealist poetry in the '30s and was captivated by surrealism's affirmation of feeling and the subconscious self, its rejection of traditional forms and rigid modes of poetical expression. But he did not adopt surrealism's free associations and automatic writing as proclaimed by Andre Breton. His, is a mild and controlled surrealism, the syntax in his poems is not violated and, thanks to his talent, the juxtaposition of images is coherent and pleasurable. Modernism and tradition are fused seamlessly in his poetry.
Aegean seascape, sun, olives and many archetypal images of Greece recur in his poems. As the poet mentioned in an interview : If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her.. Elytis was perhaps the first modern great poet who embraced surrealism as a poetic inspiration. He felt that surrealism heralded a return to magical sources which rationalism had calcified; it represented a plunge into the wellsprings of fantasy and dream, a free-flowing clustering of images creating its own shapes.
All the poems in this book are magnificently translated by the best translator duo in Greek Poetry-Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Let me start with a poem that beautifully combines the elements of surrealism, eroticism, and lyricism .
BODY OF SUMMER
A long time has passed since the last rain was heard
Above the ants and lizards
Now the sun burns endlessly
The fruit paints its mouth
The pores in the earth open slowly
And beside the water that drips in syllables
A huge plant gaze into the eye of the sun.
Who is he that lies on the shores beyond
Stretched on his back, smoking silver-burnt olive leaves?
Cicadas grow warm in his ears
Ants are at work on his chest
Lizards slide in the grass of his armpits
And over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightly
Sent by the little siren that sang:
" O body o summer, naked, burnt
Eaten away by oil and salt
Body of rock and shudder of the heart
Great ruffling wind in the osier hair
Beneath of basil above the curly pubic mound
Full of stars and pine needles
Body , deep vessel of the day!
"Soft rains come, violent hail
The land passes lashed in the claws of snow-storm
Which darkens in the depths with furious waves
The hills plunge into the dense udders of the clouds
And yet behind all this you laugh carefree
And find your deathless moment again
And the sun finds you again in the sandy shores
As the sky finds you again in your naked health."
Through personification he molds the abstract into concrete forms and infuse spirit into the material world in the above poem Body of Summer. The animate inanimate is found in fruit which paint their mouths in summer heat and transform into earth's swelling pores. Summer itself is personified as a boy stretched out on the shore while " Cicadas grow warm in his ears/Ants are at work on his chest/Lizards slide in the grass of his armpits/And over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightly". Bathed in light and idyllic joy, these are images of hope, joy, and sensuality that have become the trademark of a poetry free of sentimentality.
The Greek landscape is perceived by the poet as archaically harsh and glaring—considering Elytis's birthplace, one is tempted to say "Cretan"—and man does not appear here as lord of creation, as the measure of all things. Human form is, to be sure, assumed by the forces of the landscape and of time: the summer, the earth, youth, and memory. But man, for his part, is scarcely anything other than a lens, in which the burning force of the landscape and of time is refracted—a reflection, and perhaps a deceptive one.
The poem Marina of the Rocks is another beautiful poem about an enigmatic woman again set in surreal tone. I quote here two stanzas from the poem
From Marina of the Rocks
You have a taste of tempest on your lips - But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.
............................................................
You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
.......................................................
Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.
When Nazi Germany occupied Greece in 1941, Elytis fought against the Italians in Albania. He became something of a bard among young Greeks; one of his great poems, “Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign”, became an anthem to the cause of freedom. It is the story of a man who, in a world essentially good, is caught in the crossfire of evil and pays his life for his defense of what he regards as justice. Here is portion of the lament from Section V.
From Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign
Sun, were you not all-powerful?
Bird, were you not joy’s unresting moment?
Brightness, were you not the cloud’s audacity?
And you, garden, were you not a odium of flowers
And were you not, dark root, flute of the magnolia.
And a tree quivers in the rain
As the empty body is blackened by fate
As a madman lashes himself with snow
And two eyes give way to tears—
Why, ask the eagle, where is the young man?
And all the eaglets wonder where the young man is.
Why, asks the mother, sighing, where is my son?
And all mothers wonder where the child is.
Why, asks the friend, where is my brother?
And all his friends wonder where the youngest of them is.
They touch snow and fever burns
They touch a hand and it freezes
They bite into bread and it drips blood
They gaze deeply into the sky and it turns livid
Why why why why does death not give warmth
Why such unholy bread
Why a sky like that, there where the sun used to live.
During and after the Greek Civil War, he lapsed into literary silence for almost 15 years, returning to print in 1959 with The Axion Esti (Worthy it is), a long poem in which the speaker explores the essence of his being as well as the identity of his country and people. This poem became immensely popular and helped Elytis earn the Nobel Prize. As poems in this one are longer, I am constrained not to post it here.
When he finished “The Axion Esti”, the poet met Maria Nefeli , a young woman in real life, and he suddenly wanted to write something very different from “The Axion Esti”. Therefore he made the young woman speak in many poems in the book Maria Nefeli and express her world view. The poet is not against her, but tries to understand her viewpoint and that of her generation . Here are some eclectic quotes:
I live from day to day-who knows what tomorrow will bring
My one hand crumples up the money and the other smoothes it out
(from ‘The Cloud’)
My God, how much blue you spend to stop us from seeing you
(from ‘Discourse on Beauty’)
There is a radiating quality in many of his great poems. He is a poet of sunshine, vitality, color, and exuberance. It was endemic in his personality, his geographical setting and spiritual awareness. I have never experienced so much light, light, light, sun, sun, sun, fire, fire, fire as in the poems of Elytis. But his greatness lies in the fact that when engaging in simplicities of such elemental features, he interpolates also his unique ingredients of the inspirational and the spiritual; so that, in the end, all of it becomes universal in its significance, and enduring in its meaning. The sun can burn and kill as well as illuminate our earth. And the dark silence can be even greater than the light. But though aware of them, Elytis was never attracted by the darker aspects of the world. That is obvious by looking at the images he returns to again and again in his poems: the Aegean sea, young men and women, or boys and girls, often naked, poppies, pebbles, vineyards, cicadas, butterflies, branches, olive trees, almond trees, pomegranate tree etc.
Here is my favorite Elytis poem in this collection that illustrates the above aspects.
THE MAD POMEGRANATE TREE
In these all-white courtyards where the south wind blows
Whistling through vaulted arcades, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That leaps in the light, scattering its fruitful laughter
With windy willfulness and whispering, tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree
That quivers with foliage newly born at dawn
Raising high its colours in a shiver of triumph?
On plains where the naked girls awake,
When they harvest clover with their light brown arms
Roaming round the borders of their dreams-tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree,
Unsuspecting, that puts the lights in their verdant baskets
That floods their names with the singing of birds-tell me
Is it the mad pomegranate tree that combats the cloudy skies of the
world?
On the day that it adorns itself in jealousy with seven kinds of feathers,
Girding the eternal sun with a thousand blinding prisms
Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That seizes on the run a horse’s mane of a hundred lashes,
Never sad and never grumbling–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That cries out the new hope now dawning?
Tell me, is that the pomegranate tree waving in the distance,
Fluttering a handkerchief of leaves of cool flame,
A sea near birth with a thousand ships and more,
With waves that a thousand times and more set out and go
To unscented shores-tell me, is it the pomegranate tree
That creaks the rigging aloft in the lucid air?
High as can be, with the blue bunch of grapes that flares and celebrates
Arrogant, full of danger–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That shatters with light the demon’s tempest in the middle of the world
That spreads far as can be the saffron ruffle of day
Richly embroider with scattered songs-tell me, is it the mad
pomegranate tree
That hastily unfastens the silk apparel of day?
In petticoats of April first and cicadas of the feast of mid-August
Tell me, that which plays, that which rages, that which can entice
Shaking out of threats their evil black darkness
Spilling in the sun’s embrace intoxicating birds
Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things
On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?
In “The Mad Pomegranate Tree”, the poet answers to the difficult questions hanging from its branches (”Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things / On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?”).One has the feeling that it is the mad pomegranate tree that drives the world. The unabashed pomegranate tree dances and dances in the ear. It sings and stuns the mind with extravagant repetitions.( ‘Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree’). The sound of joy repeating and rushing seems to careen wildly ahead of our thought with tickling uncontrolled energy.
Also, there is something of the frenzy of a Van Gogh painting in this - an urgency to capture the beauty of the various images, as if it would slip away if not grasped at immediately. The poem is intoxicating and invigorating at the same time, lulls you into a trance with its rhythm and repetitions but awakens you to a different world.
I simply love the lyrical surrealism that lingers in this poem. Whenever I read this poem, I gain a rare ‘Elan vital ‘ (the current of life, the way Bergson used it). I feel I have the heart of Bacchus to revel and rejoice; I am charged with 440 V to recklessly rush forward, to dance, to fly, to laugh around and do all the naughty things I had dreamed of. Poetry is Viagra!
The mad pomegranate tree will continue to toss in the wind and “scatter its fruit-laden laughter” lifting up my spirits with buoyancy and bliss in my ritual for renewal.
Odysseus Elytis’s poetry depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativeness. , as the Nobel Prize citation endorses. His lyrical power, scintillating imageries, classicism, historical and mythical sense and above all the brilliance and novelty of poetic diction elevate him as one of the greatest experimental modern romantic poets of all time.
September 2, 2025
Very soothing and beautiful collection! I have to admit that I’m still quite new to poetry, but I can definitely say that I enjoyed it, despite it being a translation.
“All the cypress trees point toward midnight
All the fingers
Toward silence”
“I wish nostalgia had a body so that I could push it out of the window!
I want to shatter what cannot come about!”
“And I, far from the pestilence of the city, imagined a desert at her side, where tears would have no meaning and where the only light would be that of the fire which devoured all my possessions
“The two of us shoulder to shoulder would sustain the weight of the future, sworn to utter silence and to a condominion of the stars
“As though I did not know, illiterate as I am, that it is exactly there, in utter silence, where the most appalling noises are heard
“And that loneliness, from the time it became unendurable to the heart of man, has scattered and sown stars!”
“All the cypress trees point toward midnight
All the fingers
Toward silence”
“I wish nostalgia had a body so that I could push it out of the window!
I want to shatter what cannot come about!”
“And I, far from the pestilence of the city, imagined a desert at her side, where tears would have no meaning and where the only light would be that of the fire which devoured all my possessions
“The two of us shoulder to shoulder would sustain the weight of the future, sworn to utter silence and to a condominion of the stars
“As though I did not know, illiterate as I am, that it is exactly there, in utter silence, where the most appalling noises are heard
“And that loneliness, from the time it became unendurable to the heart of man, has scattered and sown stars!”
January 21, 2022
This selection includes poems from: Orientations, Sun the First, Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, The Axion Esti, Six and One Pangs of Conscience for the Sky, Death and Resurrection of Constantine Palaiologos, The Monogram, The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty, The Siblings, and Maria Nefeli...
From Orientations (1940)...
From Sun the First (1943)...
From Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign (1945)...
From The Axion Esti (1959)...
From Six and One Pangs of Conscience for the Sky (1960)...
From The Monogram (1971)...
From The Siblings (1977)...
From Maria Nefeli (1979)...
From Orientations (1940)...
Adolescence of day, joy's springhead
The ancient myrtle waves its banner
The breast of the larks will open to the light
And a song will hand suspended in mid-air
Sowing the four winds
With golden grains of fire
Liberating earth's beauty.- Adolescence of Day, pg. 11
From Sun the First (1943)...
Drinking the sun of Corinth
Reading the marble ruins
Striding across vineyards and seas
Sighting along the harpoon
A votive fish that slips away
I found the leaves that the sun's psalm memorizes
The living land that passion joys in opening.
I drink water, cut fruit,
Thrust my hand into the wind's foliage
The lemon trees water the summer pollen
The green bids tear my dreams
I leave with a glance
A wide glance in which the world is recreated
Beautiful from the beginning to the dimensions of the heart!- "Drinking the Sun of Corinth...", pg. 27
From Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign (1945)...
There where the sun first dwelt
Where time opened like a virgin's eyes
As the wind snowed flakes of almond blossom
And horsemen lit up the tips of the grass
There where the hoof of a gallant plane tree beat
and high up a banner waved to earth and water
Where no back ever bent under a gun's weight
But all the sky's labour,
All the world, shone like a waterdrop
In early morning, at the mountain's foot
Now, as though God were sighing, a shadow lengthens
Now agony stoops and with bony hands
Plucks and crushes the flowers one by one;
In gullies where the water has stopped flowing
Songs die from the death of joy;
Rocks like monks with chill hair
Cut the bread of wilderness in silence.
Winter penetrates to the mind. Something evil
Will strike. Hair of the horse-mountain bristles.
High overhead vultures share out the sky's crumbs.- I, pg. 34
From The Axion Esti (1959)...
- , pg.
From Six and One Pangs of Conscience for the Sky (1960)...
And so they found that the gold of the olive root had dripped in the recesses of his heart.
And from the many times that he had lain away by candlelight waiting for the dawn, a strange heat had seized his entrails.
A little below the skin, the blue line of the horizon sharply painted. And ample traces of blue throughout his blood.
The cried of birds which he had some to memorize in hours of great loneliness apparently spilled out all at once, so that it was impossible for the knife to enter deeply.
Probably the intention sufficed for the evil
Which he met - it is obvious - in the terrifying posture of the innocent.
His eyes open, proud, the whole forest moving still on the unblemished retina
Nothing in the brain but a dead echo of the sky.
Only in the hollow of his left ear some light fine sand, as though in a shell. Which means that often he had walked by the sea alone with the pain of love and the roar of the wind.
As for those particles of fire on his groin, they show that he moved time hours ahead whenever he embraced a woman.
We shall have early fruit this year.- The Autopsy, pg. 66
From The Monogram (1971)...
In Paradise I have marked out an island
You all over - and a house on the sea
With a large bed and a small door
And I have thrown into the unfathomable deep an echo
To mirror myself every morning when I wake up
To see you going by half immersed in the water
And to lament the other half of you in Paradise.- Section VII, pg. 80
From The Siblings (1977)...
For just so long
As the surf needs to polish a pebble
Or the sky's chill at dawn to mark
The surface of a purple fig
There too
Far in Time's freezing depths
Where the black desert isle is lashed by the south wind
There too for just so long: the Invisible flourishes!
Yet we build and cultivate it
Yet we speak of it day and night
And often as he looks upon the holy and maternal land
Rising
From out of the continent's leprosy
We offer him again as in a dream
The stone the dew or the celestial mortar
O man of clay
See where night's birth pangs have brought forth
Cyan and cinnabar ochre and porphyry
Turn you sight high as acute thought
To cross the embattled firmament
And say we awkward ones are but
The tracks you follow, left
By the wild bee and the mourning sheep.- Small Analogue, pg. 95
From Maria Nefeli (1979)...
What can I do my dears with you Poets
for years you have been impersonating invincible souls
And for years you expected what I didn't expect
standing in line like unwanted objects . . .
If they call upon you - none of you answers
outside all hell has broken loose and everything is on fire
But you, you claim imperviously - I'd like to know with what in mind -
your rights over the void!
Now at a time when wealth is a cult oh with what insouciance
you exude the vanity of ownership
You walk on holding the unfortunate black-clad
Globe wrapped up in Palm Sunday's leaves
And among the fumes of human sulphuric acid
you become the willing guinea pigs of the Sacred.- The Poets, pg. 110
December 31, 2025
No es exactamente este el que me he leído, sino una edición que también incluía prosa, pero soy incapaz de encontrarlo en el catálogo porque casi todos los títulos vienen en griego.
Bastante original, me han gustado tanto la poesía como los textos.
Sacado de la biblioteca.
Bastante original, me han gustado tanto la poesía como los textos.
Sacado de la biblioteca.
July 30, 2019
Laconic:
Longing for death so scorched me that my brightness returned to the sun.
Who now sends me into the perfect syntax of stone and air,
So he whom I sought, I am.
O flaxen summer, discreet autumn,
Most humble winter,
Life contributes its mite, the leaf of the olive tree,
And in the night of stupidities with a small cricket again vindicates the claim of the Unexpected.
Longing for death so scorched me that my brightness returned to the sun.
Who now sends me into the perfect syntax of stone and air,
So he whom I sought, I am.
O flaxen summer, discreet autumn,
Most humble winter,
Life contributes its mite, the leaf of the olive tree,
And in the night of stupidities with a small cricket again vindicates the claim of the Unexpected.
April 15, 2023
Hi,
I hope all is progressing well.
Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems (Chosen and Introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) is a poetry collection from different bodies of Odysseus Elytis's work(s). In Long Beach, California, 2021, I remember having a conversation with a woman of Greek descent in a grocery store about reading; she tells me the greatest poet is Elytis. At the time, I read a poem or so she recommends then let the idea go barely regarding the poet thereafter. During a visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, 2023, I find myself visiting Blue Whale Books. Upon entering the establishment, after greeting an employee, I immediately recognize the "Elytis" of "Odysseus Elytis" then decide to buy then read the poetry collection. The "Introduction" of the text can be very helpful for any unaware of Greece's cultural history through literature especially since many of the poems revolve around a breaking away from Greece's cultural history popularly familiar by non-Greeks unaware of Greece's cultural history through inquiry as well as establishments of other ideals to consider which one may not be considering in relation to Greece's cultural history. I find value in poetry though I'm finding more value in poetry after reading Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems because of the different mental processing one must undergo engaging poetry as well as stylistic touches which flow so well in poetical contexts. Here are a few poems from Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems that I enjoy enough to share (though I enjoy the entire collection in its entirety): "Marina of the Rocks," "Form of Boeotia," "The Mad Pomegranate Tree," ""I Lived the Beloved Name...,""Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign," an excerpt from "The Genesis," an excerpt from "The Passion," (from the Axion Esti) "First Reading: The March Toward the Front," (from the Axion Esti) "Second Reading: The Mule Drivers," (from the Axion Esti) "d," "Beauty and the Illiterate," "The Origin of Landscape or the End of Mercy," "What Cannot Come About," and "The Leaf Diviner."
Onward and Upward,
Kevin Dufresne
www.Piatures.com
IG: @Dufreshest
I hope all is progressing well.
Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems (Chosen and Introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) is a poetry collection from different bodies of Odysseus Elytis's work(s). In Long Beach, California, 2021, I remember having a conversation with a woman of Greek descent in a grocery store about reading; she tells me the greatest poet is Elytis. At the time, I read a poem or so she recommends then let the idea go barely regarding the poet thereafter. During a visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, 2023, I find myself visiting Blue Whale Books. Upon entering the establishment, after greeting an employee, I immediately recognize the "Elytis" of "Odysseus Elytis" then decide to buy then read the poetry collection. The "Introduction" of the text can be very helpful for any unaware of Greece's cultural history through literature especially since many of the poems revolve around a breaking away from Greece's cultural history popularly familiar by non-Greeks unaware of Greece's cultural history through inquiry as well as establishments of other ideals to consider which one may not be considering in relation to Greece's cultural history. I find value in poetry though I'm finding more value in poetry after reading Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems because of the different mental processing one must undergo engaging poetry as well as stylistic touches which flow so well in poetical contexts. Here are a few poems from Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems that I enjoy enough to share (though I enjoy the entire collection in its entirety): "Marina of the Rocks," "Form of Boeotia," "The Mad Pomegranate Tree," ""I Lived the Beloved Name...,""Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign," an excerpt from "The Genesis," an excerpt from "The Passion," (from the Axion Esti) "First Reading: The March Toward the Front," (from the Axion Esti) "Second Reading: The Mule Drivers," (from the Axion Esti) "d," "Beauty and the Illiterate," "The Origin of Landscape or the End of Mercy," "What Cannot Come About," and "The Leaf Diviner."
Onward and Upward,
Kevin Dufresne
www.Piatures.com
IG: @Dufreshest
March 15, 2018
Odysseas Elytis es un poeta fundamental del siglo XX, más allá de haber recibido el Nobel en 1979. Es un poeta eterno. Su obra es refulgente, luminosa, ascendente. Tajamar Ediciones tuvo la genial idea de publicar esta antología el año 2015. Recuerdo haber leído en la remota juventud Seis y un remordimientos por el cielo y haberme encandilado con ese verso que hasta el día de hoy atesoro en mi precaria memoria: "solo la intención le bastó al Mal". Elytis crea y recrea incesantemente con materiales diversos, disolviendo las fronteras entre lo pagano y lo cristiano, lo antiguo y lo moderno, lo clásico y lo vanguardista, su palabra remueve el barro, disipa las nubes, aquieta las aguas y nos revela realidades esenciales y perdurables. Construye una poesía exigente, pero generosa. Poeta absolutamente griego. Poeta absolutamente universal. Su obra, sin duda, es de arte mayor y absolutamente imprescindible. Honor y gloria.
October 24, 2024
The poetry of Odysseas Elytis enters our psyche with breathtaking aching passion. His metaphors surprise our perception with disarming complexity that wrap the truth of the universe in delicate leaves flourishing in springtime. His pain scars our souls with the intensity of a bullet slowly penetrating a decaying skull. His love seduces us with raucous sensuality.
In 1981, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard collected some of the best translations into English of the poet’s works in “Selected Poems 1940-1979”. We first encounter a young Elytis in wartime, with selections from “Orientations” (1940) and “Sun the First” (1943), and his outstanding masterpiece “Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign” (1945). Excerpts from his celebrated “The Axion Esti” (1959) follow together with the full translation of “Six and One Pangs of Conscience for the Sky” (1960). In the last chapter, we discover poems from his exile years, which include pieces from “The Sovereign Sun” (1971), “The Monogram” (1971), and “The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty” (1971). Finally, we reach selections from “The Siblings” (1977) and “Maria Nefeli” (1979), published prior to him receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979.
For an English reader, this collection makes us want more, as each poem reveals a poet intimately in love with nature, a poet that punches with powerful blows against the injustice of history, a poet that arouses with tactile innocence, a poet that displays his intellectual depth in trying to dissect human nature. His interests are so vast that from a mere sixty-two poems we get just a glimpse of his great literary ability. Hungry we may still be, critically we don’t feel cheated at any point. Elytis is a bard that deserves to be among the most celebrated European writers. No critical analysis can substitute the beauty emanating from his verses, even in translation. The depth of feeling transpires in every juxtaposition of words, leaving us to delight in the heights towards which only poetry can elevate us.
In 1981, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard collected some of the best translations into English of the poet’s works in “Selected Poems 1940-1979”. We first encounter a young Elytis in wartime, with selections from “Orientations” (1940) and “Sun the First” (1943), and his outstanding masterpiece “Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign” (1945). Excerpts from his celebrated “The Axion Esti” (1959) follow together with the full translation of “Six and One Pangs of Conscience for the Sky” (1960). In the last chapter, we discover poems from his exile years, which include pieces from “The Sovereign Sun” (1971), “The Monogram” (1971), and “The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty” (1971). Finally, we reach selections from “The Siblings” (1977) and “Maria Nefeli” (1979), published prior to him receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979.
For an English reader, this collection makes us want more, as each poem reveals a poet intimately in love with nature, a poet that punches with powerful blows against the injustice of history, a poet that arouses with tactile innocence, a poet that displays his intellectual depth in trying to dissect human nature. His interests are so vast that from a mere sixty-two poems we get just a glimpse of his great literary ability. Hungry we may still be, critically we don’t feel cheated at any point. Elytis is a bard that deserves to be among the most celebrated European writers. No critical analysis can substitute the beauty emanating from his verses, even in translation. The depth of feeling transpires in every juxtaposition of words, leaving us to delight in the heights towards which only poetry can elevate us.
Read
August 15, 2025this book should be read while on the aegean coast
my favourite part:
The wolf with the round eye howling everything seems likely and particularly the mountains of Crete which I kept in snow when I was little and I found them again just as fresh but what does this mean
Even if you remain free or victorious the sun will set once more around you
There is a silence full of destroyed shores where the clouds still come down to gaze shortly before darkness falls forever
As if humanity had come to an end and nothing timely remained to be said.
my favourite part:
The wolf with the round eye howling everything seems likely and particularly the mountains of Crete which I kept in snow when I was little and I found them again just as fresh but what does this mean
Even if you remain free or victorious the sun will set once more around you
There is a silence full of destroyed shores where the clouds still come down to gaze shortly before darkness falls forever
As if humanity had come to an end and nothing timely remained to be said.
August 23, 2021
Muy desigual para mi gusto. Había poemas extraordinarios, pero por lo general me ha dejado un poco indiferente. Obviamente el hecho de leer sobre traducción le resta seguro ritmo y belleza. Pero en todo caso, los fragmentos más experimentales parecen geniales. A ver si aprendo griego bien y vuelvo…
October 17, 2025
"I dream of a revolution against evil and wars
like the one Matisse made against chiaroscuro and tones."
"Be afraid,
if you want the instinct of Beauty to wake up."
"Inscribe yourself somewhere as well as you can,
and then again generously
erase yourself."
like the one Matisse made against chiaroscuro and tones."
"Be afraid,
if you want the instinct of Beauty to wake up."
"Inscribe yourself somewhere as well as you can,
and then again generously
erase yourself."
August 9, 2020
Un poète grec contemporain 20e s qui traduit en poésie les merveilles de la nature.
Une révolution littéraire et une très belle surprise
Une révolution littéraire et une très belle surprise
February 8, 2021
Très belle anthologie de poèmes sur les paysages de Grèce, l’amour d’Elytis pour sa langue, la beauté d’une femme, la douceur d’une volonté véritable d’accéder à un Paradis terrestre.
July 7, 2012
Ich habe von Elytis eine zweisprachige, deutsch/griechische Version, das L der Liebe, το ρ του εροτα, gelesen und die Gedichte sind sehr gut zu verstehen, sehr bewegende, wenn auch meist etwas traurige und melancholische Bilder. Nicht umsonst hat Elytis einen Nobelpreis erhalten! Ich bin kein Gedichteleser, aber diese sind es wirklich wert!
February 23, 2015
Elytis was a Nobel Prize winner, and this particular book is said to contain the best English translations of his poetry (i.e. closest to their original meaning and atmosphere).
I find his earlier poems too modern and abstract, but I like the later ones (especially Axion Esti, Siblings, Maria Nefeli).
I find his earlier poems too modern and abstract, but I like the later ones (especially Axion Esti, Siblings, Maria Nefeli).
March 31, 2015
I recommend this excellent online booklet very beautifully illustrated, published by Greece' Embassy in China as a special edition of its cultural review "communication".
A panoramic review of a wide selection of Odysseus Elytis' poems and an analysis of his influences and psyche.
http://www.minpress.gr/minpress/cultu...
A panoramic review of a wide selection of Odysseus Elytis' poems and an analysis of his influences and psyche.
http://www.minpress.gr/minpress/cultu...
December 6, 2015
Maybe 2.5? This is very much not my favorite sort of poetry, so I think the fact that there were a few poems I really liked says something about Elytis' skill. Unfortunately, that doesn't change that this is not the sort of poetry for me.
December 8, 2007
The Sherrard and Keeley translation of Elytis's Selected is still the definitive Elytis, even after all these years. This is a book of Aegean light.
July 4, 2009
i know its not strictley surrealist; but i always like to go back to surrealism thats not under the yoke of breton. surrealism at the fringes (not paris centerd).
September 1, 2016
No me emocionó. Soy de piedra para la poesía. Seguiré tratando.
April 22, 2012
Odysseus Elytis is my favorite poet.
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