Yannis Ritsos Among His Contemporaries

This volume brings together all of the English versions of modern Greek poems by the distinguished translator Marjorie Chambers. Some of these translated poems appear here for the first time; others appeared before in journals, especially The Charioteer, or were included in the book Yannis Ritsos: Prison Poems.

Five of the six poets whose work is featured here were born in the first two decades of the twentieth century: George Vafopoulos (1903), Yannis Ritsos (1909), Nikos Gatsos (1911), Nikoforos Vrettakos (1912) and Miltos Sachtouris (1919). Their sensibilities were shaped by the traumatic events afflicting Greece in the 1920s, 30s and 40s: dictatorship, the Axis occupation of the Second World War, and the Greek Civil War that followed - though such events are reflected for the most part only obliquely in their poetry. The sixth, a younger contemporary, Yannis Kondos (1943-1996), belongs to a later generation.

The first half of the book is devoted to the poetry of Ritsos and includes several of his longer poems in their entirety - among them the dramatic monologues The Moonlight Sonata, Ajax and Farewell, and the moving evocation of a disrupted childhood in My sister's song. In the second half are selections of mainly shorter poems by the other five poets, though it includes Gatsos' long poem Amorgos.

There is also a substantial introduction and the volume concludes with three essays on Ritsos by the translator.