Fifteen Tristichs by Yannis Ritsos
Yannis Ritsos (1909–1990) was, and remains, one of the most
significant voices in world poetry. A prolific writer, he published well
over a hundred collections in a lifetime that was, by any standards,
turbulent. His childhood was marked by the financial ruin of his family, the early deaths of his mother and brother from tuberculosis and the confinement of his father in a mental hospital. Later, Ritsos was to spend four years in a sanatorium, having also contracted tuberculosis.
He was a declared Communist, one of the reasons that he was
obliged to go into hiding during the mid-1930s, when the Metaxas
dictatorship publicly burned his books. Later arrested, he was interned in brutal detention camps, first on Lemnos, then on Makronisos and Ayios Stratis. While at the infamous ‘Institute for National Re-education’ on Makronisos, Ritsos wrote poems, then put them in a jar and buried them. When, in 1967, a coup was staged by a group of Colonels, Ritsos was again arrested and once more sent into prison exile, ending up under house arrest on Samos.
His poetry has sometimes been overtly political, sometimes epic in
length, though non-Greek readers might well know him best for short, intensely lyrical, oblique poems that both startle and compel. They use, for the most part, an unadorned vocabulary to construct an imaginative world that is all the more powerful for being understated. His 3x111 Tristichs, is a unique event. The three-liners have a cumulative effect: tense, bitten-back, and so effectively compressed that an entire narrative seems to reside in each. They are a major achievement.
significant voices in world poetry. A prolific writer, he published well
over a hundred collections in a lifetime that was, by any standards,
turbulent. His childhood was marked by the financial ruin of his family, the early deaths of his mother and brother from tuberculosis and the confinement of his father in a mental hospital. Later, Ritsos was to spend four years in a sanatorium, having also contracted tuberculosis.
He was a declared Communist, one of the reasons that he was
obliged to go into hiding during the mid-1930s, when the Metaxas
dictatorship publicly burned his books. Later arrested, he was interned in brutal detention camps, first on Lemnos, then on Makronisos and Ayios Stratis. While at the infamous ‘Institute for National Re-education’ on Makronisos, Ritsos wrote poems, then put them in a jar and buried them. When, in 1967, a coup was staged by a group of Colonels, Ritsos was again arrested and once more sent into prison exile, ending up under house arrest on Samos.
His poetry has sometimes been overtly political, sometimes epic in
length, though non-Greek readers might well know him best for short, intensely lyrical, oblique poems that both startle and compel. They use, for the most part, an unadorned vocabulary to construct an imaginative world that is all the more powerful for being understated. His 3x111 Tristichs, is a unique event. The three-liners have a cumulative effect: tense, bitten-back, and so effectively compressed that an entire narrative seems to reside in each. They are a major achievement.
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