From the archive, 19 October 1979: The wanderings of Odysseus
YIVA WIGH IN ATHENS
Odysseus Elytis, 68, who was yesterday awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, can hardly be called a name to conjure with. Although critics have called him the foremost poet of Greece, he has, he says, spent most of the last 20 years turning down literary awards and honours.
"As time passes I become more frightened of the glare of publicity. I even get a strange feeling when I see my books in a shop-window. What do you want of me? I try to avoid the limelight. That's why many people think I have no ambition or aspirations. But that's not so. I do have some aspirations, it's just that I don't get any pleasure out of public applause. "My ambition is simply that young people be able to turn to my books when they feel lonely. This sort of indirect personal contact, provided it is lasting, is what I consider all-important. For me poetry is a war against time and decay. I wage this war alone in my flat, and that's how I find satisfaction whether or not I win. In a materialist age which values quantity above quality, I regard poetry as the only thing that can preserve man's spiritual integrity."
He received the Greek national prize for literature two decades ago: when he heard a few days ago that he might be offered the Nobel Prize he admitted that he would be neither able nor willing to turn it down: the award would be an honour not just for himself but for his country. The themes of his work are taken from aspects of Greek nature – the islands, the sea, the sky, the mountains, the flowers and above all the sunlight. He is the first Greek poet to make the sun a central theme of his poetry: hence his nickname Iliopolis Elytis – Elytis the sun-drinker.
But his poetry is much more than a homage to nature. Natural phenomena are the vehicles for other messages. Elytis has tried to distil the essence of what is truly and peculiarly Greek in Greek history and literature from Homer to the present day. He has taken a close interest in the Greek language itself.
Elytis was born on Crete, the youngest of six brothers and sisters (the family originally came from Lesbos). When he was three, they moved to Athens where his father and an uncle established a soap factory. Since the family name Alepoudelis was thereafter always associated with this factory, Odysseus changed his name to Elytis. He lives in a small two-roomed flat in the centre of Athens. He sleeps by day and works at night. It might seem strange that the poet whose nickname is Sun-drinker produces his work at night. But etched in his mind are the pictures which he brings back from his long summer voyages over the sun-drenched Aegean Sea.
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