SIGNED, Odysseas Elytis, The Light Tree, To Fotodendro, 1971, First Edition, Nobel Laureate

Description

Οδυσσέας Ελύτης

Το φωτόδεντρο και η δέκατη τέταρτη ομορφιά

To Fotodentro ke i Dekati Tetarti Omorfia

 

Odysseas Elytis

The Light Tree And The Fourteenth Beauty 

 

Printed by IKAROS in Athens in 1971

First Edition, First Printing

One of Elytis’ masterpieces

Clearly signed and dedicated by the Author on the first white page

Front Piece by Greek Artist Nikos Nikolaou

8vo, Pages 67+3

Fine Half Leather Binding with Front Covers well Preserved

Text: Greek

 

Odysseas Elytis pen name of Odysseas Alepoudellis, Greek: Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλλης; 1911 – 1996) was a Greek poet, man of letters, essayist and translator, regarded as the definitive exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. He is one of the most praised poets of the second half of the twentieth century, with his Axion Esti  regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry“. In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Source: Wikipedia

He has a romantic and lyrical mind, which deploys a metaphysic of complete intellectual sensuality-the rocks, the islands, the blue Greek sea, the winds; they are at once “real” and also “signatures” in the alchemical sense. He makes his magic with them, and it is peculiarly Greek magic that he makes. His poems are spells, and they conjure up that eternal Greek world which has haunted and continues to haunt the European consciousness with its hints of a perfection that always remains a possibility. The Greek poet aims his heart and his gift directly at the sublime – for nothing else will do. How lucky, too, that he has found in Kimon Friar a translator who can transplant his poetry into English, so that its freshness and spontaneity still shock and delight.’ – Lawrence Durrell