Description

Book Synopsis
The poetry of Odysseus Elytis owes as much to the ancients and Byzantium, as to the surrealists of the 1930s and the architecture of the Cyclades, bringing romantic modernism and structural experimentation to Greece. Collected here are the two speeches Elytis gave on his acceptance of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature, which are still strikingly relevant today. He addresses a hypertrophic and atrophic Europe in moral chaos, with as many coexisting values as languages-and to this he offers the "common language" that is found in poetry, in art, and in their base materials of sense, aesthetic, intuition. Ultimately, his is a powerful ode to beauty amid utilitarianism, and the need for poetry as "the art of approaching that which surpasses us" and "puts us at the threshold of the deepest truth".

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Poet Odysseus Elytis; A Thirst for Miracles; In the Name of Luminosity and Transparency; Chronology of Elytis Life; Book-length Translations of Elytis Work in English

In the Name of Luminosity and Transparency

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    A Paperback / softback by Odysseus Elytis

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      Book details

      Publisher Aiora Press
      Published 27 June 2016
      ISBN-13 9786185048518
      978-6185048518
      ISBN-10 6185048515
      Also in:
      Biography Speeches

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      The poetry of Odysseus Elytis owes as much to the ancients and Byzantium, as to the surrealists of the 1930s and the architecture of the Cyclades, bringing romantic modernism and structural experimentation to Greece. Collected here are the two speeches Elytis gave on his acceptance of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature, which are still strikingly relevant today. He addresses a hypertrophic and atrophic Europe in moral chaos, with as many coexisting values as languages-and to this he offers the "common language" that is found in poetry, in art, and in their base materials of sense, aesthetic, intuition. Ultimately, his is a powerful ode to beauty amid utilitarianism, and the need for poetry as "the art of approaching that which surpasses us" and "puts us at the threshold of the deepest truth".

      Table of Contents
      Introduction: The Poet Odysseus Elytis; A Thirst for Miracles; In the Name of Luminosity and Transparency; Chronology of Elytis Life; Book-length Translations of Elytis Work in English

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