Search results for ""Author David Connolly""

This volume contains translations of two late collections by Odysseas Elytis (Nobel Prize for literature, 1979). According to the official announcement of the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Elytis “for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness.” The Oxopetra Elegies, which he published in November 1991 at the age of eighty, was immediately hailed as one of his finest works. Far from being a dialogue with death, as many critics hastily concluded, these elegies are laments for what is seen and perceived in certain “timeless moments” that, like the Oxopetra headland, project into the beyond, into another reality, revealing truths that, to the poet’s constant dismay, remain “unverifiable” and “unutterable.” The poems here function as a “contemporary form of magic,” a key opening the portals to this other reality, at least for those who speak Elytis’ language: the language of the Secret Sun. In West of Sorrow, published in November 1995, only months before his death, it becomes even clearer that his poetry remains, as it always was, a paean to life and love and beauty.

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Yannis Loukas is editing his father's autobiography. Going through the family archives, he discovers the manuscript of an aspiring novelist named Loukas Matthaiou. While reading it, Yannis feels as if someone has put to paper his innermost thoughts. But who was the writer of this amazing story and what happened to him? Following in the tracks of this elusive stranger, Yannis' life takes an unforseen turn. He finds that everyone who met Matthaiou was profoundly affected by his charismatic personality. Driven by his quest to find Matthaiou, Yannis must first unravel the codes in his writing.

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Clutching his vodka and his memories, he seeks refuge on an island in the Cyclades. There by chance he meets a young woman who reactivates love's vocabulary. His survival instinct faintly reappears through the distorting mirror of alcohol. Yet the craving is an irresistible, clever adversary that shows no mercy. He is drawn by his love to places that affect his emotional world ever more forcefully. Moving from Paris and Munich to London and a mountain village in central Greece, he meets a young woman and it becomes clear that the greatest magic is to be found in reality, not the bottle.

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Nikos Engonopoulos (1907–1985) was one of the most prominent representatives of Greek Surrealist poetry and painting. Closely associated with Andreas Embeirikos, the “patriarch” of Surrealism in Greece, and with Nicolas Calas, an influential figure of the European and American avant-garde, Engonopoulos developed highly experimental pictorial and poetic aesthetics. In both his paintings and poems, he engaged in a critical, often ironic dialogue with Greek history and cultural traditions and their ideological appropriations in established cultural and political discourses. Engonopoulos was arguably the keenest advocate of Surrealist black humor and irony in Greece. His overall approach to the Greek past, informed as it was by the socio-aesthetic principles of French Surrealism, constitutes one of the most ingenious and provocative cases of artistic mythogenesis in the European avant-garde.This volume offers a collection of his most representative poems, including his long poem Bolivár, which was written in the winter of 1942–1943 and soon acquired the status of an emblematic act of resistance against the Nazis and their allies (Italians and Bulgarians), who had occupied Greece in 1941.

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Derided and maligned more than any other Greek artist for his innovative and, at the time, often incomprehensible modernist experiments, Engonopoulos is today justifiably regarded as one of the most original artists of his generation and as a unique figure in Greek letters. Though he considered himself first a painter and only afterwards a poet, his poetry is widely read and admired, with many critical studies of his work appearing in recent years and with a growing recognition of its value and of its creative use of the Greek tradition and language. He enriched post-war Greek poetry with a host of poetic expressions, figures and images that have come to constitute part of the Greek poetic consciousness. In both his painting and poetry, he created a peculiarly Greek surrealism, a blending of the Dionysian and Apollonian, though always in keeping with basic surrealist tenets and, as such, his work is an important and original contribution not only to Modern Greek art and poetry but also to modern art and poetry worldwide.

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Fey Folk is characteristic of Papadiamandiss work. Its characters are quaint, simple-hearted folk living their humble lives in accordance with centuries-old traditions and customs, delightfully described by Papadiamandis with both reverence and humour. The setting is the hinterland of his native island of Skiathos with its intoxicating vegetation, its hillsides, springs and ravines, where the belief in spirits and the supernatural is deeply rooted in the consciousness of the otherwise God-fearing and devout inhabitants. Generally recognized as one of the foremost Greek prose writers of the modern period, Alexandros Papadiamandis holds a special place in the history of modern Greek letters, but also in the heart of the ordinary Greek reader.

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A stunning collection that draws from four decades of verse by one of modern Greece’s most lauded poets “Ganás skillfully melds loss with love. . . . A rich, rare view of a life spent in, or hoping to return, to Greece.”—Publishers Weekly This is the first English-language collection of work by the renowned Greek poet Michális Ganás. Originally from a remote village on the northwest border of Greece, Ganás witnessed the Greek Civil War as a young child and was taken into enforced exile in Eastern Europe with his family. Weaving together subtle references to the events and places that have defined his life’s story, Ganás’s terse and technically accomplished poems are a combination of folklore, autobiography, and recent history. Whether describing the mountains of his youth or the difficulties of acclimation in Athens of the 1960s and 1970s, Ganás’s writing is infused with striking and original imagery inspired by love, memory, and loss. Featuring expert translations—made in collaboration with Ganás himself—by David Connolly and Joshua Barley, this volume also includes a scholarly introduction to the poet’s life and work.

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Roïdes' irreverent, witty and delightful novel tells the story of Joan who, according to a popular medieval legend, ascended to the Papal Throne as Pope John VIII. The truth of the legend is of little importance as the book is far more than a historical novel and, in fact, parodies the popular historical romances of the time. In Joan, Roïdes has created one of the most remarkable characters in modern Greek literature and in so doing has assured his place as one of its classic authors.

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Cavafy is by far the most translated and most well-known Greek poet internationally. His work exists in multiple translations in a wide range of languages and major 20th-century poets as diverse as Auden, Brecht, Brodsky, Durrell, Milosz and Montale have all paid tribute to Cavafy, either by writing poems in the style of Cavafy, or by openly admitting their debt to his poetry in their own work. Whether his subject matter is historical, philosophical or sensual, Cavafys unique poetic voice is always recognizable by its ironical, suave, witty, world-weary and aesthetic tones. It is a voice which lends itself to translation. Indeed, translations of Cavafys poetry are the best possible counter to the often quoted platitude that poetry is what is lost in translation. Cavafys is a poetry that not only survives but actually thrives in translation.

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