Odysseus Elytis, Nobel laureate in 1979, was one of the most powerful lyrical voices of the twentieth century. A “classical” poet in the painstaking care he took with form, he was at the same time an expert practitioner of surrealist poetic magic. Painting, especially collage, was his second artistic form of expression, and he also published translations and influential essays.

(

, 1959) was a turning point concerning his wider reputation as the poet “bound up with the Greek seas and the rhythms of our age” (title of a 1961 newspaper interview; Elytis 2011: 51). Indeed, the sun and the sea of the Aegean, where freedom, purity and

reign, are some of his most conspicuous themes. But beyond the easily accessible symbols, Elytis was a complex…

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Citation: Tambakaki, Polina. "Odysseus Elytis". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 April 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12876, accessed 22 November 2024.]