His love for Greece changed the Greek poetry
Born Odysseus Alepoudelis on November 2nd, 1911, in Heraklion on the island of Crete, with origins in Mytilene, Odysseus Elytis is his literary alias.
Some of his famous poems are Worthy it Is, Sun the First, Orientations and many more. He’s acknowledged as
one of the poets that revived Greek poetry. Several of his poems were set to music and his poetry collections were translated in tens of languages.
When Elytis was 3, his family relocated to Athens. In the autumn of 1924, he started writing for the magazine The Children’s Formation under various aliases. He loved nature, travelling, sports and literature.
His family pushed him into studying chemistry, but in 1930 he finally enrolled in Law School. In 1935, Elytis met Seferis, Katsimbalis, Theotokas and Karantonis, who were publishing their work in the journal New Letters at that time. In November of the same year, he published a series of poems under his life alias Elytis.
When the war began, Elytis joined the army. On December 13th 1940, he was transferred on the advanced fire line and on February 26th of the next year, he was urgently transported to the Hospital of Ioannina suffering from severe abdominal typhus, where he eventually survived by miracle.
During the occupation years he was one of the original members of the Palamas Circle founded on May 30th, 1943. In 1945, following Seferis’s advice
Read more www.ellines.com
