Surrealism in Greece: An Anthology

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Odysseus Elytis (1911–1996) ​F o u r ​ B orn in Crete. One of surrealism’s earliest champions in Greece, he later kept his distance from the surrealist movement, although his mature work is still marked by it (this selection includes excerpts from only one late text, “The Dreams,” one of his best and least discussed). Most, if not all, of his poetry has been translated into English, repeatedly in some cases, especially after he won the Nobel Prize in 1979. His numerous books not represented here include Sun the First (1943), Axion Esti (1959), Six and One Qualms for the Sky (1960), The Light-tree and the Fourteenth Beauty (1971), The Monogram (1972), Mary Cloud (1979), Diary of an Unseen April (1985), Little Nautilus (1986), The Elegies of Oxopetra (1991).Translator of Éluard, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Lorca, Mayakovsky, and others. “Elytis wishes to make [language] sound as in ancient Greek poetry—with pieces of pure gold” (Nanos Valaoritis). I. From Cards on the Table (1974) (collection of essays and letters, 1936–1974) Contemporary Problems in Poetry and Art (excerpt) (1944 speech) Before we say anything about surrealism, it is necessary to dispel three great and fundamental errors, which have so far resulted in its complete misunderstanding on the part of its Greek analysts. 1 3 2    The Founders (1) Surrealism is not a mere School, like any other; it is not a group of people acting at a particular time and place, and which is consequently condemned to pass away and into historyas soon as the times pose novel demands; much more than that, it is a certain perception of life, theworld and its objects, one that always did, and always will, exist, more or less consciously apparent in people’s acts and poetic expressions, one that Breton’s “School” merely systematized, organized, and invested with a distinctive name.This perception is endowed with the quality of observing closely life’s demands at each stage of its development, and avoiding death, operating as it does with an admirable adaptability, at the very point where the human heart always appears to throb more ardently. Surrealism is a spirit that believes in life, believes in the perpetual transformation of life within its own eternity; its ambition for itself is to undergo an equal number of transformations in order to observe life incessantly. From that perspective, and as a general theoretical outlook, we may say that it is very close to the spirit of the Ionian pre-Socratics; it is for this reason that it attaches special importance to the works of the preclassical Greek era, which are marked by a physiocratic disposition and a constant tendency toward change. (2) Surrealism is more than just a new romantic School, as some have wished to suggest, thereby oversimplifying things. It is an entire world in movement, which opposes itself to all static phenomena, and which may have its own classical and romantic, Apollonian and Dionysian, materialist and idealist poets. Perhaps this expression, which I am using to present things more schematically, is not entirely correct. To be more precise, we might say that surrealist poets may, according to their respective temperaments, be more or less romantic or classical, Apollonian or Dionysian etc. Yet they can never be this or that alone. For surrealism’s most profound ambition—as well as its supreme ideal—is to perform a synthetic, conciliatory role over the apparent, as it argues, antitheses of earthly life; in other words, to stand at the very point where man continues to be integral and undivided, with his body, nature, and dreams inseparably condensed to form a superior reality. I place particular emphasis on this aspect, for it constitutes a fine distinction, upon whose comprehension one perceives the extent to which normal criteria are rendered useless ; and also the reason why this theory finds points of interest in Orphism or in the Pythagoreans. (3) The term “surrealism” does not signify the poet’s wish to overcome objects, to create immaterial worlds, unrelated to earthly things, and stand above what certain fools name “humble reality.” On the contrary—and I am saying this based on surrealism’s most celebrated texts—its greatest desire, its most profound and at the same time most distressing ambition, is to delve straight into what we call “real,” to attain a more and more clear consciousness of the sensible world. Yet at this point, Odysseus Elytis...