Poetry
Ελεγεία και Σάτιρες
Not translated into English
Kostas Karyotakis · 1927
Opening lines
Τὸ θάνατό μας χρειάζεται ἡ ἄμετρη γύρω φύση
καὶ τὸν ζητοῦν τὰ πορφυρὰ στόματα τῶν ἀνθῶν.
Ἄν ἔρθη πάλιν ἡ ἄνοιξη, πάλι θὰ μᾶς ἀφίση,
κ' ὕστερα πιὰ μήτε σκιὲς δὲν εἴμεθα σκιῶν.
The boundless nature around us needs our death,
and the purple mouths of the flowers ask for it.
If spring comes again, again it will leave us,
and afterwards we shall not even be shadows of shadows.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from el.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Elegies and satires, mixed in a single volume. On one side, the boredom of a prefecture office, the mediocrity of the bosses, civil servants lined up like figures; on the other, a lower lament, on broken wings and the provincial town where the boat arrives without anyone getting off.
Context
The collection appeared in Athens in December 1927, at the author's own expense; it is the third and last of its author, who reused several pieces already published in reviews, one of them dedicated to the poet Maria Polydoúri. The title names the two sides of a body of work that never stopped moving from spleen to derision, and from derision to spleen. Tellos Ágras wrote that with this book the poet had surpassed them all, at one stroke and for good. Michel Volkovitch translated almost all of his poems and prose for Le Miel des anges, in 2017.
Who it is for
Fewer than a hundred and fifty pages for the whole oeuvre, available in French in a single volume. Very dark verse, in which irony serves as composure.
Prizes and reception
The book was so influential that the manner of those who followed it is called Karyotakism; his verse has been translated into more than thirty languages.