Dytika tis Lypis (West of Sadness)

Οδυσσέας Ελύτης

Δυτικά της Λύπης - Dytika tis Lypis

Odysseas Elytis

΅West of Sadness

Printed by IKAROS in Athens in 1995

First Edition, First Printing

One of Elytis' masterpieces

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

(To Kostas Stamiou with love....).

8vo, Pages 28+4

Uncut Copy

In original soft binding.

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