News

Dimitris Nollas, on the occasion of the publication of his book *Stories Are Always Foreign* (Short Stories 1974–2016), which brings together his entire body of short fiction to date in a single volume, gave an exclusive interview to Dimitris Fyssas for Athens Voice. Dimitris Fyssas notes, among other things: “Ikaros has produced yet another landmark book, and I, a long-time fan of Mr Nollas, was quick to secure the first interview he has given about ‘Stories Are Always Foreign’.” Enjoy the interview below:

The Greek poet and academic, Kiki Dimoula, on the occasion of the publication of her poetry collection ‘Ano Telia’, spoke with journalist Yiannis Hatzigeorgiou in the magazine ‘Filgood’ of the newspaper ‘Fileleftheros’ in Cyprus.The interview was published on Sunday 11 December and you can read it below: “Are there answers to ‘Must love be faithful? And if it isn’t, what should we do? Love with our arms crossed?”, Mrs Dimoula? I think the only one who would definitely answer “yes, we should love with our arms crossed” is Christ... As for mortals, they would answer according to the advice their endurance would give them... Please forgive me for prefacing every answer with ‘I think’. It is a polite, perhaps even prudent, cover for the honest ‘I don’t know’.What do you not know about life?… I do not know how it can be beautiful. Nor do I know how, whilst it is not beautiful – at least not constantly – it is constantly desirable and beloved. What is it that makes it so unpleasant at times? Whatever unpleasant things do. And above all, memory, the reminder that time is passing and so I will lose what I like or dislike. That’s no small thing – time is no small matter in life. Has the passing of time ever frightened you? When I was 16, it didn’t frighten me. When I was 20, it didn’t scare me. But after 35, I started to get the jitters… Now? Now I can’t even think about it. Now I’m really scared. Really, really scared. I’m not scared of anything else. And one way I found to combat that fear was to sit down and write a book. That takes time away from me a little… What is love to you? It’s an unknown thing… A completely unknown and uncertain thing. I don’t know what love is. Why do you say that? Because, my dear, we don’t know what the soul is. Just as we don’t know what feelings are either. We know nothing! Nothing is constant in this world and nothing has just one form all the time. So it is with love: it changes constantly. Think how great love can suddenly turn into no love at all! Therefore, I ask you too, what is love? Have you never had the certainty in your life that you were loved deeply? No. Now, if you mean whether my poems were loved, that is another story. I cannot say that I was loved deeply by many people. By my children, yes. By my mother, yes. By Athos Dimoulas, as much as I needed to be loved, because excesses aren’t nice. I, yes, loved very much. And Athos Dimoulas, and the days that passed, and the bad days that passed…In what way did you love the bad days too?… I loved those very much too. If I were told I had another five years of unpleasant days ahead, provided they didn’t involve the loss of people close to me, I would gladly live through five years of unpleasant days.How do you interpret the expression ‘I’m fine’? ‘I’m fine’ means I’m forgetting about death. Has something happened, has a little time passed—perhaps even three minutes—during which I’m not thinking about death? Then I’m fine! When I’m not thinking about it, I’m fine. How did you cope in the past with the loss of people very dear to you? Very badly. It was very hard. And I suffered from severe depression. My whole life changed. And when we talk about losses, I mean the loss of Athos Dimoulas. No other loss is as heavy as the loss of a person with whom you have lived for 35 years and who is suddenly gone. It’s not a simple thing; it’s nightmarish.Is there any way to ease this pain? Fortunately, time lends a hand and we no longer feel that acute pain that feels like madness – because we don’t forget. And it is madness, especially at first, because you cannot comprehend what has happened. How a person was lost. It’s not easy. It’s terrifying and impossible to describe the feeling that takes the place of this loss. Have you suffered many times in your life? I find that quite easy. It doesn’t take much for me to feel pain. Perhaps I get over the little things easily. But, in any case, I must say that I am sensitive; I am susceptible to pain. So what is joy? It is something entirely fleeting. Joy is being able to put your worries aside.Has happiness been a distant concept in your life? I have often, and with great regret, apologised for happy situations that I misinterpreted as sparse or even uncertain, when they were not. Is ‘happiness’, then, a difficult word for you?It isn’t difficult, no. Because happiness is, in any case, an unknown word. I don’t even know if such a thing exists in the world. Unless we’re fooling ourselves by saying ‘I’m happy’. What is this happiness which, if it exists, not everyone can have? So perhaps we all lead miserable lives? I don’t know. The things that cause our mood to change suddenly are elusive and unpredictable. You can’t foresee them. Something that is extremely unpleasant might not affect me at all, whilst something that is only slightly unpleasant for others might completely break me. It is a matter of the soul as to what a soul can face heroically. When does the soul become a heroine? Every day.In what way? Because every day it loses. And it’s terrifying to know that this soul, which you’ve never seen, which you’ve never touched, will one day leave along with the whole body. Fortunately, though, that’s how it is. Because it would be terrifying for the body to die and the soul to live on. Do both leave together? Yes. And one is inside the other. I think the body is the soul’s hiding place. What, in the end, is poetry, Mrs Dimoula? Passion or love? Or simply work – just as a bank employee goes to work every day? I think it is both passion and love, but above all a tireless, hard-working perseverance. Have words ever become a threat to the routine of your existence? For your daily life – which involves cleaning, cooking, going for walks, chatting on the phone with friends – without knowing what inspiration means and moving to another level, beyond this world?I deeply appreciate everyday life for its fertility. It conceives days, and it is itself the skilful midwife who gives birth to itself. Every day. And it is this precious regularity that inspires repetition. We criticise it as tedious, forgetting that it prolongs our lives. For how long? As long as time sees fit. Have you ever felt you were reaching God whilst writing a poem? As if it were not your own? As if someone else were dictating it to you? No ambition of mine has ever troubled God by asking Him to fulfil it. His own great creation demands His constant protection. Simply, if a poem, whilst impossible to write despite my efforts, is suddenly written, I do not claim it as my own; I say that the mysterious wrote it, or perhaps chance, whose DNA I believe is akin to that of the mysterious.You mentioned the word ‘ambition’. Have you ever been ambitious? Is it possible for me not to be and yet sit here writing a book? Of course I am. The first stage is that I have something inside me and I want to bring it out, but there is also the expectation that people will like it, because if they don’t, I can’t take it back.Why is poetry, in most cases, identified with melancholy and silence? Is it forbidden to embrace the joy and bustle of the world? Of course not. It is neither forbidden nor does it turn it away. It simply does not convince it that they have the lasting value to be included in its inspirations. How are ‘melancholies derailed’, Ms Dimoula? But how else – poetic licence. This very verse was written with that same licence.When you finish a poem, how do you feel? Relief? Or does it ‘torment’ you, days later, over its perfection, over the ‘what if’—what if a word had been placed elsewhere, perhaps the result would have been better?I don’t have blind faith in my poems, and so I let myself be gnawed away by a persistent, nagging anxiety. What about you? Is it possible not to have faith in your poems? No faith at all! None whatsoever, ever. I have a constant sense of uncertainty, even when the poems are applauded. And I think it’s quite right that I feel this way. It makes me more careful, more restrained in general; my head doesn’t get carried away and I’m very down-to-earth. I often think, ‘If I like this poem, does that mean it’s any good?’ I don’t know what a good poem is! They say that everything in life is mathematical. Even the way you arrange the words in a sentence. What is poetry?In my own opinion, of course, poetry is a very reverent ‘I don’t know’. Is poetry logical? Or perhaps not? Poetry has a logic that can only be deciphered by its half-brother, known as inspired absurdity.Does poetry sometimes tell lies? They aren’t exactly lies. They are a noble veiling of the unbearably crude truth. Are there moments when you would prefer your mind not to create poetry? Where, at times, does all this become a torment? I did not choose my temperament and its symptoms. I found it ready-made and respected it, adhering to it to the letter.Do you believe you were born with the destiny to become a poet? I regard ‘poet’ simply as a nickname for ‘human being’. Your poetry grapples with immortality. It has almost been imposed upon it. Are you happy that your poems will still be read even when you have departed from this mortal world? Let me state in advance my indifference as to which of my traces will survive, when I shall be compelled to submit to a second mortal world after this one…What comforts you today, amidst humanity’s many problems – which are ever increasing? So far, no comfort has seemed capable of reassuring me. Nor have I received any auspicious sign from distant prophecies. I am simply adding my two cents to the collection organised by faint hope in favour of the instinct for self-preservation. Are dreams old-fashioned after all, Mrs Dimoula? (smiles) Old-fashioned, yes. In the sense that they do not keep the promises they make to our naive slumber or our impoverished desires. What passions do you retain from your youth? Or have they all been ‘covered up’ over the years? You are almost asking me for an autobiography. But that has been taken over by secrecy. Christ lost ‘the delight of his all-holy love’. What have you gained from love? What have I gained? That I welcomed it without asking for a letter of introduction, and that I cared for it when it died… When does love die? That is very simple. It is no riddle at all. Love dies when it dies. We realise it immediately. Immediately! From a profound sadness that replaces that fragile feeling which is love. Are you lost to love? I am lost only to my obedience to my parent, fear. Does love have logic? Love is something completely illogical.Is it also an illusion? It is an illusion. It is also often something false. Love may not exist, but we may think we are in love because it elevates everything – everything soars when this happens; you are no longer earthly, you are heavenly.Is there no happiness in love? Of course there is. When? When you are the one in love and not the other way round, I think that is a state of happiness. Because the happiness of love is what you feel, not what the other person feels. Has it ever made us happy when someone is in love with us but we are completely indifferent to them? Things, you know, are very carefully balanced, with a certain wisdom, so that people can cope with conflicts and disappointments. Are there many such disappointments?Every minute. A minute ago I was different, and that is now contradicted by something else. What are you crying about, Mrs Dimoula? If you mean the reason I am crying, I won’t answer because tears are silent and their cause is introverted.Then how do you define your sensitivity? Where do you find it? I find it where it is called upon to ache. If someone asked you, ‘What kind of life have you lived, Mrs Dimoula?’, what would you answer? What kind of life have I lived? Well, the one that has passed. That is its most poignant feature. Was ‘this destiny of life’ that you have experienced so far a ‘long, tiring journey’? I shall answer that question of yours when I discover whether I am going or coming…What kind of life do you hope to live from now on? I don’t hope for anything. I only wish that certain things would not affect my children – health issues, because there are various such things that pose a threat. Beyond that, I’d like not to realise I’m dying – I wouldn’t want that. For it to happen simply, in my sleep, so that I never find out. What could be more terrifying than never knowing you’ve died! Quietly… Not just quietly. Not knowing that you are dead. Whereas you know when you are alive, that you are living. Is this not the ultimate rebellion of things? Do you still have unanswered ‘whys’?… Many. To which only fate is competent to answer. Which either turns a deaf ear or wonders itself who anointed it as inevitable. The ‘full stop’ at the end of your latest poetry collection suggests a continuation. And something unfinished. What have you not yet finished, Ms Dimoula? What remains unresolved in your life? The unknown remainder of my life, which is still unfolding…

The Greek poet and academic, Kiki Dimoula, on the occasion of the publication of her poetry collection ‘Anon Telia’, gave an in-depth interview to Giorgos Archimandritis for the magazine ‘K’ of the newspaper ‘Kathimerini’, speaking about time, death, love and the prevailing uncertainty. The interview was published on Sunday 6 November and you can read it below: Anapha. A metaphysical punctuation mark, embodying the end in its least definitive form. A punctuation mark synonymous with a temporary pause. On the occasion of her eponymous poetry collection, which encapsulates all the laws of her poetic world and offers a comprehensive portrayal of the human condition, the poet and academic Kiki Dimoula shares with us the thoughts, anxieties and questions of a person faced with the art of poetry and the human condition. Kiki Dimoula, in one of your poems you say: ‘A long, tiring journey / destiny / but the worst thing / is that you don’t know whether you’re going or coming’. Where are you coming from and where are you going? It is said that after this life there is another. I neither believe this, nor does it comfort me. That’s why I say ‘you don’t know’. Are you setting off for the next life, or are you coming from the other one and this is the new one? Destiny is unknown, yet certain at the same time. And I believe this without having any proof or argument. What strikes me, however, is that everything unfolds as if it were premeditated. And it unfolds with such precision that I cannot call it a coincidence. I cannot say ‘it just happened’. I do, of course, consider ‘chance’ to be responsible for many creations; I attach far greater importance to it than to the planned. But in our case, where there is life there is also death. No one will ever change that. Do you believe there is a guiding force? Yes. And it is rhythm. The rhythm of life. I see no other. And I cannot, of course, blame any God. If there were one, and if there is one, I believe he is not as cruel as fate. For fate is cruel. From the moment death is foreseen at a time when you have learnt to live, at a time when you have grown accustomed to this terrible thing, or if you like, this meaningless thing – because in old age life doesn’t have much meaning – yet you prefer it to dying, to heading towards the unknown. But it is not so much that you do not want the unknown. It’s that you don’t want to lose the familiar. Because that is what we have come to know. We came here through life, we didn’t come through death. And that is nature’s great trick: that it sent us here unprepared to face what is to come.Are you afraid of death? I tremble at the thought of it. I really do tremble. Because I know that then none of the things that are happening now will be happening. He is the almighty one, after all, and no one else. Just think that from the moment you are born, you are on the verge of death. Because that is what it is all about. I have not got used to that, and I have not forgiven it. And I am still hungry for life. Perhaps even the fact that I am still writing poems at eighty-five is an expression of this reluctance of mine to die, of my inability to imagine what might exist when a body dies. Because, let’s be honest, what is a soul without a body? Without a body, what is a soul? The body is the soul’s justification for existing. Its justification and its home. Yes. Within this body, it is nurtured and it nurtures. Of course, it’s not impossible that it has created everything in wisdom; I’m not in a position to rule that out. I’m simply not an enthusiastic devotee of all this business and all this uncertainty where you don’t know who our creator is. That is what I would like to know. Unless I shouldn’t or mustn’t know. Ultimately, life itself is cautious towards us. It neither betrays us, nor foretells us anything, nor reveals anything to us. Whatever comes is as if we are experiencing it for the first time, even though we may have lived it before. Does it promise us anything? No. Our desire promises us. Our desire pretends to be the voice of life. Life itself is detached and moral. And not at all a liar. Life makes no promises. We imagine. Life simply exists and lets you see it as you wish. That is why some people are very happy with the way the world is, whilst others are disappointed and unhappy. The point is to analyse and evaluate what cannot be otherwise. That is why we write poems under the illusion that we will change what is happening or describe it in a different way.How certain have you ever felt about poetry? I have never felt certain about anything. Never. Only that I will die. And I consider poetry to be an extremely treacherous and deadly state of affairs. It doesn’t tell you that you’ve been had. It doesn’t tell you that you’ve said this before. It doesn’t tell you that you’re repeating yourself. Nothing. It lures you in, traps you, and you think that this time you’ve said it a bit differently from last time, when in fact you’ve said it exactly the same way.So she’s a bit of a deceiver too, just like life? Yes. We help her with that, of course. We give her a face that the poor thing might not have. Ever since poetry has existed, pretence has existed too. Poetry is a form of acting. You’re playing a part whilst you write; you’re creating certain roles. I can’t think of any other way to explain this persistence or even this ambition – because it promises you that some people will talk about you, that you’ll occupy their minds, that you’ll influence them. But that’s not it. It’s a force I can’t stop. And the fact that I’m still writing is perhaps a desperate move to ward off old age. Because poetry is a way of not understanding time. To spend it, trying to write and thinking that this is ultimately a saving rather than an expense. But isn’t a truth ultimately revealed through this pretence? We don’t know if it’s the truth. It’s another mask. I believe that everything that circulates, everything we present, everything we use, is a mask. What and who we really are, we either do not know or do not want to know. Because poetry, too, is the result of a sense of inadequacy. Why else would you create the world? Because that is what poetry is: you attempt to create a new world. But who will believe in this world, and who will inhabit it? Is it not enough for its creator to inhabit it? Isn’t poetry a way of magnifying life? It is rather an illusion that in this way you are fighting against the death of leaving and being forgotten entirely. Herein lies the delusion: that you will not be forgotten. And so what if someone momentarily remembers the great Tassos Leivaditis, Seferis, Elytis or my own Cavafy, me, my own? What does it change? I know that we each have a different character, which we serve at all costs. So, a person who is pessimistic isn’t just being fussy. It’s their hormones that make them that way. Nor is it because they deserve a different life – they don’t even know what life they want. They are simply born to worry. And they must entrust this worry to something. And they entrust it, I think, to poems. Tell me about the first word of a poem. How important is that first word? That word is ‘You’. ‘You’, my interlocutor or the one I dream of and wish to move or cause pain to. For the target is always the Other. Your ‘I’ cannot be unframed, however much it serves you. Is it possible to want to be alone? Besides, I don’t think the poet himself is in a position to analyse his own poems, because he inevitably becomes too lenient towards them. Although I am happy to decapitate them. The reader, however, I would not want to decapitate them for me. Anyway. There is but one deity here: uncertainty. Not just in the poems. Everywhere. That is the driving force. That is the goddess. She may be a tormenting goddess, but, on the other hand, she lends such charm to that which offers you no certainty, that in the end you love her. She is wise. She protects you from boredom. Because it is a bore to know what will happen. You mustn’t know. Because you can’t explain it? Exactly. That’s why I say ‘the inexplicable silences you / and go on, try to grasp it’. Isn’t that what we do? Don’t we struggle to grasp something that is inexplicable? And the inexplicable hurts you, kills you. All the inexplicable things that happen in our lives, however much they carry the weight and significance of a new garment, are variations. Only death makes a difference. If you think about it, love is also a death – its own – which is bound to happen. So I ask the Almighty, and I ask you too: ‘Why do we die?’. How on earth did this happen? Someone tell me. The agony of death ought not to be part of man’s destiny. And yet it is. It is an agony he has never experienced before. Not even in loves that die. These are grand words. A painful death is merely the end of life. You can recreate love – for love too is artificial; we create it ourselves. But you cannot recreate life. ‘Dreams and love’, however, as you say in one of your poems, are part of this life. They are very fragile, of very short duration. If only life were all love, that is what I wanted. All of life. It would end at some point, of course, but the fleeting nature of our intense moments causes us pain. The possibility of losing them fills us with fear. And I think that, in the end, the way all this is put together, there is a wisdom to it. Because, if it weren’t like that, perhaps weariness would eventually prevail, which now doesn’t have time to take hold. The new being arrives, rested, thirsty to live out this whole lie that is our life. Because it is a lie, a lie that sometimes lasts many years, sometimes few. Of course, if they asked me, would you now like to be reborn and not be entangled in this lie? Now, yes, I wouldn’t, because I am bound to everything that has been. Did you love what has been? Certainly. And first and foremost, my actions. And my actions are that I have given birth to children and raised them as I did. Is there one action of mine I do not love? That I grew up myself. Ultimately, I believe that the only thing that is truly ours, and not entirely so, is ourselves. Ourselves and our mistakes. That is why I say somewhere: ‘Wisdom is not experience; it has simply lost the power to err’. Because when you err, you care about nothing. You dare. But how can I err now? What temptations do I have left to face? The temptation to believe, despite everything, in life. But if I fear death, it is because I believe in it. And ‘I believe’ does not mean ‘I trust it’. It means ‘I love it’. We believe in someone we love. I would like to know, I would like to have seen the face of God. And, you might say, is faith of any value when it is based on certainty? But I cannot understand how anyone can be faithful in the face of uncertainty. Generally, life teaches you to want to put your finger ‘on the pulse’; you didn’t come up with that yourself out of your own imperfections. Life tells you: ‘I want to grasp that which rules over me.’ Because supposedly, the whole of the heavens above is authority. And time? How would you describe your relationship with time today? Bad. Very bad. I don’t look at my watch, but I’ll tell you this. If I had an old watch that was always two seconds slow, I’d wear that one. Precisely because, if you multiply two seconds behind every day, think how much time you gain. Time is something that cannot be gained by any means other than forgetting. Because along with that, you will have forgotten that it is slipping away too. The best method is to forget. If you forget again, you are an empty vessel that doesn’t know what it’s for. That is, things are never just like that and only like that. They are like that and otherwise. And whatever draws you in, the full or the empty. And you’re not to blame for that choice. Nature makes you that way, the thousands of cells that came before, that programmed you, that changed and shaped you. All this mysterious thing. Which we call destiny. And where, let me emphasise again, ‘whether you go or come, you do not know’. And that is far more tiring than the word itself, which is in itself very tiring.

Ioulita Iliopoulou, on the occasion of the five-language anthology ‘The Small World, the Great World!’ by Odysseas Elytis, set to music by Giorgos Kouroupos, spoke with Manolis Pimblis about this publication and the work of Odysseas Elytis.Read below the excellent article published on Saturday 5 November in the newspaper Ta Nea, in the ‘Bibliodromio’ supplement: A five-language anthology, a wealth of photographic material and two CDs make up an anniversary edition dedicated to the Nobel Prize-winning poet, twenty years after his death.A new publication on Odysseas Elytis is set to appear in bookshop windows in the coming days. It comprises excerpts from his work, anthologised by the person to whom the poet himself entrusted his posthumous care: the poet Ioulita Iliopoulou. What makes it unique is that it is in five languages! The anthology itself is available, in addition to Greek, in Italian, Spanish, French and English. It contains a wealth of photographic material, some of it rare, including both captured moments from Elytis’s youth – even his childhood – and his visual artworks. Indeed, the works are not repeated, but each translation is accompanied by different material. At the same time, the publication is accompanied by two CDs containing Elytis’s poems set to music by Giorgos Kouroupos, as well as readings of the poems. These range from longer compositions to songs, performed by Tassis Christoyannopoulos and Theodora Baka. There are four musical instruments, with soloists Thanasis Apostolopoulos (piano), Stella Tsani (violin), Ilias Sdoukos (viola) and Lefki Kolovou (cello). The readings are performed by Dimitris Kataleifos and the anthologist herself. It is a lavish edition by Ikaros, which will, however, be sold at an attractive price thanks to sponsorship from Alpha Bank and the willingness of all involved to contribute, so that such a book may be published in honour of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, who has been absent for twenty years this year. It is noteworthy that the book contains the work of thirty-seven different translators. Given that the anthology does not vary according to language—a feature that allows a multilingual reader to appreciate the translators’ different approaches to Elytis’s work— in several cases it was necessary for certain pieces of the anthology to be translated from scratch, and indeed these pieces differed in each language, depending on what had already been translated or not. Where there was more than one translation, Ioulita Iliopoulou chose to include a variety of translational styles, incorporating translations from different periods. Consequently, the project faced several organisational challenges and required a considerable amount of time to ensure proper coordination and achieve the desired result. Four translators were particularly helpful: David Connolly, Beatrice Stelios-Connolly, Paola Minouchi and Nina Angelidou. Processed with VSCO using the c3 presetThe book, entitled ‘The Small World, the Great World!’ by Odysseas Elytis, with music by Giorgos Kouroupos, includes poems and prose from the works Maria Nefeli, Open Papers, The Rows of Love, Orientations, The First Sun, The Sun the Sun-Bearer, Axion Esti, The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty, The Monogram, The Elegies of Oxopetra, Three Poems with a Flag of Opportunity, West of Sorrow, The Half-Siblings, Sematologion. The aim is to appeal to an international audience – and whilst the songs are in Greek, foreign listeners will be able to follow the lyrics translated into their own language at the same time. ‘Through my choices, I have sought to convey a sense of joy, in contrast to our gloomy times,’ Ioulita Iliopoulou tells ‘ViblioDromio’. “These selections also aim to remind us of Elytis’s value system, which includes concepts that have been lost in our daily lives today.” How would she herself describe this value system? “Elytis’s poetry is governed by enduring values; to give a few examples: innocence as a primary spiritual value, opposition to the prevailing conception of life, a powerful revolutionary force, the dream, and a combinatory and exploratory imagination that leads, on the one hand, to the discovery of a deeper reality and, on the other, to the reconstruction of the surrounding reality, but also a belief in freedom, in justice, in the grandeur of humble elements, in the greatness of humanity, in the powers of the spirit. A projection of transparency on a spiritual level, of magic within the poetic function. Every image, every interplay of words produces, literally or allegorically, proclamations, affirmations, exhortations to life.Transcendence, geometrisation, the reordering of reality, faith in duration, a graceful perception of life, an erotic conception of the world, the sanctification of the senses, solar metaphysics as a method of deciphering the mystery of existence are some of the constant tenets of the poet’s thought,” she tells us. Ioulita Iliopoulou notes that international interest in Elytis’s poetry remains undiminished. “A major anthology of his poetry was recently published in Chile. In Italy, books are constantly being published and there are many translators of Elytis, foremost among them Paola Minucci. Recently, I have been contacted by translators who wish to translate Elytis in Armenia, Serbia and Japan. Last year, Angeliki Ionatos compiled an anthology and translated it into French. In France, too, the ‘Elegies of Oxopetra’ were published in a collector’s edition with engravings. Despite the fact, however, that the language Elytis knew and to which he attached particular importance was French, the languages that seemed to love him most are Spanish and Italian. The fact, however, that his work is translated in very different countries, such as China and Japan or Russia and Armenia, shows that beyond the symbols of his language—which in many cases can be fully understood only by a Greek (even the word “thalassa” sounds different to a Greek than it does to someone living in a landlocked country), the principles and values that characterise his poetry have a universal dimension. I therefore view the proposals of foreign translators, particularly young ones, with interest. I am in favour of multiple translations and against exclusivity. Elytis himself, after all, said that in poetry, translation preserves no more than 20% of the work.The importance of artistic collaborationTaking Giorgos Kouroupos’s musical compositions as her starting point, Ioulita Iliopoulou emphasises the importance of artistic collaboration. ‘The magic of the word is effortlessly brought to the fore by music, when the latter also seeks to engage in an equal dialogue with it. I believe that often an interpretation of a work can be better provided by another art form than by science. In ‘Monogram’, for example, Kouroupos reveals hidden aspects of it, a social element that is not usually highlighted. Through music, the listener often feels what we forget to bring to the fore.” Giorgos Kouroupos has, moreover, repeatedly set Elytis’s poetry to music. In 1989 he set ‘The Little Sailor’ to music for Manos Hadjidakis’s Orchestra of Colours, and shortly afterwards ‘Akindynou, Elpidoforou, Anempodistou’ from the ‘Elegies of Oxopetra’; in the late 1990s he set ten more poems to music for voice and piano; and in 2004 he presented ‘Monogram’, a symphonic suite for voices, choir and orchestra. In this particular project, due to the great variety in the form and content of the selected poems, he too adopted very different approaches, creating everything from simple songs sung in the street to demanding compositions. As he himself says in his short note specifically for this edition: ‘Knowing that music has the power to emphasise, highlight and amplify the emotional weight of words and lyrics, my personal aim is to evoke an emotional response capable of leading the listener to a deeper – or at least different! —understanding of the poet’s work, but also, through the puzzle of phrases, sounds and images, to bring forth effortlessly, clearly and unadorned the figure of Odysseas Elytis.”