From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Odysseas Elytis (Greek: Οδυσσέας
Ελύτης) (November 2, 1911—March 18, 1996) was a Greek poet regarded
as a major exponent of romantic
modernismin Greece and the world. In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
Biography
Descendant of the Alepoudhelis, an old industrial family from Lesbos,
he was born inHeraklion (Candia)
on the island of Crete,
2 November, 1911. His family later moved to Athens, where the poet graduated
from high school and later attended courses as an auditor at the Law School at University
of Athens. In 1935, Elytis published his first poem in the journal New
Letters (Νέα Γράμματα)
at the prompting of such friends asGeorge
Seferis. His entry with a distinctively earthy and original form assisted
to inaugurate a new era in Greek poetry and its subsequent reform after the
Second World War.
From 1969-1972, under the Greek
military junta of 1967–1974, Elytis exiled himself to Paris. Elytis was
romantically linked to the lyricist, musicologist and Mariannina
Kriezi, who subsequently produced and hosted the popular children's radio
broadcast "Here Lilliput". Elytis was intensely private and vehemently
solitary in pursuing his ideals of poetic truth and experience.