Yannis Ritsos
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.
“I know that each one of us travels to love alone,alone to faith and to death.I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help.Let me come with you.”
“And look, my brother, we learned to talkvery quietly and simply.We understand each other now - there is no need for anything more.And I say tomorrow we will become still simpler;we’ll find those words that take on the same weight in all hearts, on all lips so that we can call figs figs, and a trough a trough, so that others will smile and say: ‘We’re making you a hundred poems an hour’. This is what we want too.Because we do not sing to separate ourselves from people, my brother,we sing to bring people together.”
“Bu pencere yalnız.Bu yıldız yalnız,masada unutulmuş bir cıgara gibi -tüten, mavi mavi tüten, tek başına.Ben de yalnızım, diyor adam.Cıgaramı yakıyorum, içiyorum.Cıgara içip düşünüyorum. Yalnız değilim.”
“When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;invisible hands draw back the curtains,a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dustof the piano...”
“… the fisherman’s daughter grinding serenity in her coffee grinder.”
“قال لى: لا وقت لى، لا وقت لىأشجارمنازلجبالطيورأنهارأضواءفراشة شقراءنافذة مغطاة بستارة صغيرة بيضاءحصان حزين على جسر خشبىصبى بان الذهول على رموش عينيهكل هذا يومىء لى للحظةثم يتركنى فى منتهى الوحدةأعمىأصمعلى حافة العالم”
“All the words are not enough to get anything said.”