Inspirational Quotes by Odysseus Elytis (Greek Poet)

Odysseus Elytis (1911–96,) also spelled Odysseas Elytes, pseudonym of Odysseus Alepoudhelis, was a Greek poet. This winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature is regarded as a foremost exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world.

Born in Iráklion, Crete, into a prosperous family from Lesbos, Elytis was educated at Athens University and the Sorbonne, Paris. He and worked in broadcasting and as a critic of art and literature. His pseudonym combines the three most prevalent themes in his work: Greece, hope, and freedom. He was influenced by the Surrealists, both French and Greek, and his career as a poet dates from 1929.

Elytis’s early poems exude a love of Greece, the sun, and life. After the war experience in Albania, a natural joie de vivre is set against violence and the imminence of death. His most outstanding achievement was To Axion Esti (1959; The Axion Esti, 1974,) a long, optimistic poem that took 14 years to write.

Elytis’s later works include Ho helios ho heliatoras (1971; The Sovereign Sun,) Ta eterothale (1974; “The Stepchildren,”) Ho mikros nautilos (1986; The Little Mariner,) and Ta elegeia tis Oxopetras (1991; The Oxopetra Elegies.) His final poetic collection (‘West of Sadness’) was published in Greek in 1995.

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