Yannis Ritsos

Yiannis Ritsos ( ; 1 May 1909 – 11 November 1990) was a Greek poet and communist and an active member of the Greek Resistance during World War II. While he disliked being regarded as a political poet, he has been called "the great poet of the Greek left".

Early life Ritsos was born on 1 May 1909 to a well-to-do landowning family in Monemvasia. He suffered great losses as a child: his mother and eldest brother died early from tuberculosis, his father struggled with mental illness, and his famly was economically ruined. This marked Ritsos and affected his poetry. Ritsos himself was confined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis from 1927 to 1931.

Literary start In 1934, Ritsos joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He maintained a working-class circle of friends and published Tractor in 1934. Kostis Palamas, the well known and respected poet, impressed by his talent, praised him publicly.

In 1935, he published Pyramids; these two works sought to achieve a fragile balance between faith in the future, founded on the Communist ideal, and personal despair. Tractors and Pyramids initially were not well received by leftist critics, who found the language "too embellished" and Ritsos overly focused on form.

He was inspired for his landmark poem "Epitaphios" by a photo of a dead protester during a massive tobacco-workers demonstration in Thessaloniki in May 1936. Published the same year, it broke with the shape of the Greek traditional popular poetry and expressed in clear and simple language a message of the unity of all people. Ritsos also supported the Left in the subsequent Civil War (1946–1949); in 1948 he was arrested and spent four years in prison camps. In the 1950s Epitaphios, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, became the anthem of the Greek Left.

In 1967 he was arrested by the Papadopoulos dictatorship and sent to a prison camp in Gyaros, later to Samos and finally Lemnos.

Legacy Sculpture "Prisoner Stones 1" (1974) by Hans-Jürgen Breuste in Erlangen. Featuring a Yannis Ritsos poem. Today, Ritsos is considered one of the great Greek poets of the twentieth century, alongside Konstantinos Kavafis, Kostas Kariotakis, Angelos Sikelianos, Giorgos Seferis, and Odysseas Elytis. and was shortlisted as one of the final candidates at least once, in 1973. When he won the Lenin Peace Prize in 1975, he declared "this prize is more important for me than the Nobel." Stratis Haviaras also praised two poems (the one about Jesus and the one about Karl Marx) in his first collection Tractor (1934). and his best-known work.

Ritsos won the first Greek state poetry award for Moonlight Sonata:

Some offer more measured praise. In a review of Selected Poems: 1938-1988, James Erdman argued, To my ear, many of these selections are simply short prose works, lacking the concentration of the best poetry. The pieces of ancient history and mythology from Repetitions such as "The Graves of Our Ancestors," "Alcmene," "Philometa," and "Achilles After Death" seem among the better efforts. [...] he often uses dream imagery, which can be effective in small doses but soon grows monotonous: not all concepts can be expressed in images. [...] But Ritsos is also capable of writing with great power. His best poem is "Romiosini," a lengthy paean to the spirit of the Greek Resistance.Ted Sampson stated that Louis Aragon's declaration about Ritsos was "hyperbolic", but wrote that the poet still "excelled in brief epigrammatic utterances as well as in extended lyrics, sequences, and verse dramas of astonishing imagistic and thematic originality—to say nothing of their latent emotional intensity".

Ritsos is also a Golden Wreath Laureate of the Struga Poetry Evenings for 1985.

His daughter, Eri, was a candidate for the European Parliament with KKE in the elections of 25 May 2014.

Translations Subterranean Horses, tr. Minas Savvas, illustrations by the author (1980) Chronicle of Exile, tr. M. Savvas (1977) [select poems] Eighteen Short Songs of the Bitter Motherland, tr. A. Mims, illus. Y. Ritsos (1974) [Greek and English] Exile and Return, tr. E. Keeley (1985; repr. 1987, 1989) [select poems] Gestures and other poems, 1968-1970, tr. N. Stangos, illus. by the poet (1971) Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, tr. E. Keeley (1990) Selected Poems 1938-1988, tr. K. Friar, K. Myrsiades & others (1989) Selected Poems, tr. N. Stangos (1974) The Fourth Dimension, tr. P. Green, B. Bardsley (1993) Late Into the Night: The Last Poems of Yannis Ritsos, trans. Martin McKinsey (Oberlin College Press, 1995). Diaries of Exile, Archipelago Books, , (2012) Petrified Time: Poems from Makrónissos, trans. Martin McKinsey and Scott King (Red Dragonfly Press, 2014). . Twelve Poems About Cavafy, tr. Paul Merchant (Tavern Books, 2010) Monochords, tr. Paul Merchant (Tavern Books, 2017)