Poetry by Yannis Ritsos
Translation by Manolis Aligizakis
Paperback, 592 Pages
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Emotions, senses, summer holidays, purple sunsets, rosy cheeks, the playful moon,
indifference, hurt, the lighted bedroom, loneliness, isolation, edge of a village, the stairs, her long
hair, the white shirt, ancient arrows, imagination, a caique, the rosy horizon, the lone cypress at
the cemetery, the fresh breeze, the open window, justice, are just a few from the innumerable
images we find in these books and they all work themselves out as the lexical instruments he
uses to compose his ethereal music for the ears of all listeners; indeed Ritsos sings to the ears of
his readers, to their viscera, to their souls, as he trumpets his ideals across pages upon pages that
constitute his poetic oeuvre. Often Ritsos uses the antonym he or she to underscore that his
anonymous hero is the center of attention, the one who enacts the dedicated deed the one who
scores the points the poet wants to convey to us; surely this anonymous hero is none other than
the reader who in the hero’s deed is identified with what he would had done in his place,
He too had his share of this merciless summer,
although he is aloof, uninvolved; although having
already decided to resist even the lightest insinuation
of a leaf…
…