Yannis Ritsos

Yannis Ritsos was one of the most prominent Greek poets of the 20th century, whose work was influenced by his personal and political struggles. He was born in Monemvasia, a medieval fortress town in southern Greece, to a wealthy landowning family. However, his family soon faced financial ruin, and he also suffered from the early deaths of his mother and brother from tuberculosis, and the mental illness of his father and sister. Ritsos himself contracted tuberculosis and was confined in a sanatorium for four years. During this time, he discovered his passion for poetry and joined the Communist Party of Greece. He published his first collection of poems, Tractor, in 1934, followed by Pyramids in 1935. His most famous work, Epitaphios, was inspired by the death of a worker during a strike in Thessaloniki in 1936. The poem was a lament for the fallen and a call for social justice, and it was burned publicly by the fascist regime of Ioannis Metaxas. Ritsos continued to write poetry that expressed his leftist ideals and his sympathy for the oppressed and the marginalized. He also experimented with surrealism and symbolism, and drew on Greek mythology and history for his themes and characters. He wrote several long poems, such as Romiosini, Moonlight Sonata, and The Fourth Dimension, as well as shorter lyric poems. He also translated works by Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Bertolt Brecht into Greek. Ritsos faced persecution and censorship for his political views throughout his life. He was arrested and exiled several times by the Metaxas regime, the Nazi occupation, the Greek Civil War, and the military junta of 1967-1974. He spent a total of twelve years in prison camps and under house arrest, where he wrote poems on cigarette papers, matchboxes, and stone fragments. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and he received several international awards, such as the Lenin Peace Prize and the Herder Prize. He died of cancer in Athens in 1990, and he was buried in his hometown of Monemvasia. His poems have been translated into more than fifty languages and have inspired many musicians, artists, and filmmakers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Greek left and a symbol of resistance and hope.