Poetry
Νεκρόδειπνος
Not translated into English
Takis Sinopoulos · 1970
Synopsis
A long poem in verses in which the speaker, over the course of years, revives lost faces. Like the priest at the commemoration of the dead, he calls by their first names thirty-three figures, twenty-eight men and five women: the nameless dead of the war, the Resistance and the civil war, about whom History will write nothing. The poem ends in a deserted church where the anonymous dead man is adorned and anointed.
Context
The poems of the collection were written for the most part in the sixties and were due to appear in 1967; the coup d'état, and the silence that writers then imposed on themselves, delayed the printing. The long poem that gives it its title was first printed separately in 1970, not for sale; the collection appeared in 1972, at the same time as Pierres, once prior censorship had been lifted. The names do not designate any particular person. Michel Volkovitch translated it, then with Jacques Lacarrière and Natalia Moreleón.
Who it is for
A long poem, funereal in construction, made of names and visions. The context of the Greek wars of the forties, up to the civil war, sheds light on the text.
Prizes and reception
Recognised from its publication as its author's major work, it has been counted by G. P. Savvídis among the five or ten great poems of modern Greek literature.