Ritsos in Parentheses

by Yiannis Ritsos, Edmund Keeley (Translator)

Perhaps Greece's most important poet, Yannis Ritsos follows such eminent predecessors as Cavafy, Sikelianos, and Seferis in the dramatic and symbolic expression of a tragic sense of life. The three volumes of Ritsos's poetry translated here--Parentheses, 1946-47, Parentheses, 1950-61, and The Distant, 1975--represent a thirty year poetic journey and a developing sensibility that link the poet's subtler perceptions at different moments of his maturity.



In his introduction to the poems, and as an explanation of the book's title, Edmund Keeley writes: The two signs of the parenthesis are like cupped hands facing each other across a distance, hands that are straining to come together, to achieve a meeting that would serve to reaffirm human contact between isolated presences; but though there are obvious gestures toward closing the gap between the hands, the gestures seem inevitably to fail, and the meeting never quite occurs.

In terms of the development of Ritsos's poetic vision, the distance within the parenthesis is shorter in each of the two earlier volumes than in the most recent volume. There the space has become almost infinite, yet Ritsos's powerfully evocative if stark landscape reveals a stylistic purity that is the latest mark of his greatness.

Originally published in 1979.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Genres: Poetry

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

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

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiet night. Quiet. And you had stopped
waiting. It was peaceful almost.
And suddenly on your face the touch, so vivid,
of the one who is absent. He’ll come. Then
the sound of shutters banging on their own.
Now the wind has come up. And a little farther, the sea
was drowning in its own voice.
*
We spent glances, words, movement.
At noon we would gaze toward the sea somehow at a loss
among the sounds of cicadas, among the leaves—
scattered looks so that we wouldn’t see what we’d already seen.
In the evening the shade hid our separate shadows.
[…]
The night smelled of extinguished candles.
*
How can you choose between the already chosen?
*
As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels his pencil trembling at the very tip—
it’s the moment when the lighthouses light up.

[Emre]

İÇİN

Otobüsler parmaklıkların önünde durduğu için
ışıklı vitrinlerdeki mankenler kıpır kıpır oynaştığı için
bisikletli kız eczanenin önünde hala beklediği için
marangoz bira evinin cam kapısını kırdığı için
çocuk asansörde yürüttüğü kalemle yalnız kaldığı için
köpekler sahildeki villaları bıraktıkları için
paslı rende ısırganlarla kaplandığı için
gökyüzü kırmızı bir balıkla kül rengine döndüğü için
dağdaki at yıldızdan daha yalnız olduğu için
onlar ve diğerleri ava çıktığı için
işte bunun için; yalnızca bunun için sana yalan söyledim. Sf:90

YENİDEN YAPMA

Bir ya da birden çok ölüm, sırtında her birinin.
Yollar, taşlar, çatı kirişleri, yanmış bir ağaç.
Lambayı yere, ekmeği bir kütüğün üstüne koydu biri.
Nereye taşıyorsunuz ölüleri?
Toprak yok bu yolda. Ot büyümüyor.
Üç aydır keçiboynuzu yiyoruz yalnızca; ve boşalıyor bellekler.
Toprağı yoksa ölülerin, bizim de toprağımız yok, üzerinde duracağımız.
Büyük ateşler yaktık sonra, kayanın üstüne oturttuk yaşlı adamı;
çizmelerimizi çıkardık; ikişer ikişer oturarak toprağa
ayaklarımızı ölçtük karşılıklı dayayıp tabanlarımızı.
En büyük ayaklı küçük Konstandis yaptı ilk dansı. Sf: 107

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains essential shorter poems of Ritsos.

[Jane Marga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Yiannis Ritsos is like solving a puzzle with its minimal exposition of words. There's always this feeling of absence and longing for something that was once there or never been there.

[Peter King · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems are worth five stars; the translation, though considerably better than Keeley's translations with Sherrard (who might, therefore, be taken to be the weal link of the pair), brings it down to four.

[Rachel]

Essential.