ODYSSEAS ELYTIS

Odysseas Elytis ( 1911-1996 )  was regarded as a major exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. In 1979 the Nobel Prize in Literature was bestowed on him. Elytis was born in Heraclion on the island of Crete. His family later moved to Athens, where the poet graduated from high school and later attended courses as an auditor at the Law School at University of Athens.

In 1935 Elytis published his first poem in the journal New Letters at the prompting of such friends as George Seferis and  inaugurated a new era in Greek poetry and its subsequent reform after the Second World War.

From 1969–1972,  Elytis exiled himself to Paris.Elytis was intensely private and vehemently solitary in pursuing his ideals of poetic truth and experience.

 During the war he was appointed Second Lieutenant, placed initially at the 1st Army Corps Headquarters, then transferred to the 24th Regiment, on the first-line of the battlefields. Elytis was sporadically publishing poetry and essays after his initial foray into the literary world.

He was a member of the Association of Greek Art Critics.  He was twice Programme Director of the Greek National Radio Foundation, Member of the Greek National Theatre's Administrative Council, President of the Administrative Council of the Greek Radio and Television as well as Member of the Consultative Committee of the Greek National Tourist's Organisation on the Athens Festival. In 1960 he was awarded the First State Poetry Prize, in 1965 the Order of the Phoenix and in 1975 he was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa in the Faculty of Philosophy at Thessaloniki University and received the Honorary Citizenship of the Town of Mytilini.

During the years 1948–1952 and 1969–1972 he settled in Paris. There, he audited philology and literature seminars at the Sorbonne and was well received by the pioneers of the world's avant- arde( Reverdy, Breton, Tzara, Ungaretti, Matisse, Picasso, Gilot, Changal, Giacometti ) as Teriade's most respected friend.  Starting from Paris he travelled το Switzerland, England, Italy and Spain. In 1948 he was the representative of Greece at the International Meetings of Geneva, in 1949 at the Founding Congress of the International Art Critics Union in Paris and in 1962 at the Incontro Romano della Cultura in Rome.

In 1961, upon an invitation of the State Department, he traveled through the U.S.A.; and —upon similar invitations— through the Soviet Unionin 1963 and Bulgaria.

Elytis' poetry has marked a broad spectrum of subject matter and stylistic touch with an emphasis on the expression of that which is rarefied and passionate. He borrowed certain elements from Ancient Greece and Byzantium but devoted himself exclusively to today's Hellenism. His main endeavour was to rid people's conscience from unjustifiable remorses and to complement natural elements through ethical powers, to achieve the highest possible transparency in expression and finally, to succeed in approaching the mystery of light, the metaphysics of the sun of which he was a "worshiper" -idolater by his own definition. A parallel manner concerning technique resulted in introducing the inner architecture, which is evident in a great many poems of his; mainly in the phenomenal landmark work It Is Truly Meet (Το Άξιον Εστί). This work due to its setting to music by Mikis Theodorakis as an oratorio, is a revered anthem whose verse is sung by all Greeks for all injustice, resistance and for its sheer beauty and musicality of form. Elytis' theoretical and philosophical ideas have been expressed in a series of essays under the title The Open Papers (Ανοιχτά Χαρτιά). Besides creating poetry he applied himself to translating poetry and theatre as well as a series of collage pictures. Translations of his poetry have been published as autonomous books, in anthologies or in periodicals in eleven languages .( Orientations, A Heroic And Funeral Chant For The Lieutenant Lost In Albania,To Axion Esti—It Is Worthy are some of his poems )

        AXION ESTI

1. Elytis was born in

a. Heraklion

b. Athens

c. Thessaloniki

d. Patra

2. He was a

a. humanist

b. mathematician

c. poet

d. journalist

3. In his poetry he borrowed elements from

a. latin

b. ancient Greek

c. ancient English

d. ancient Egyptian