Description

Book Synopsis

On 10 May 1936 the 27-year old Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos saw a newspaper photograph of a woman weeping over the body of her son, a Salonica tobacco-factory worker killed by police during a strike. Two days later the Communist Party newspaper Rizospastis published a long poem by Ritsos. Dedicated ''to the heroic workers of Salonika'' and drawing on the fourteenth-century Greek Orthodox Epitaphios Thrinos, the poem combines Mary''s lament at Christ''s tomb with popular Greek folk traditions of resurrection and Spring to create a universal lament sung by every bereaved mother ''who sits and mourns on the blood-stained street with her heart flayed, her wing broken.''

Epitaphios

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    A Paperback / softback by Yiannis Ritsos

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      Publisher: Smokestack Books
      Publication Date: 10/10/2014
      ISBN13: 9780992740962, 978-0992740962
      ISBN10: 0992740967
      Also in:
      Poetry

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      On 10 May 1936 the 27-year old Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos saw a newspaper photograph of a woman weeping over the body of her son, a Salonica tobacco-factory worker killed by police during a strike. Two days later the Communist Party newspaper Rizospastis published a long poem by Ritsos. Dedicated ''to the heroic workers of Salonika'' and drawing on the fourteenth-century Greek Orthodox Epitaphios Thrinos, the poem combines Mary''s lament at Christ''s tomb with popular Greek folk traditions of resurrection and Spring to create a universal lament sung by every bereaved mother ''who sits and mourns on the blood-stained street with her heart flayed, her wing broken.''

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