Late Into the Night (review)

The prolificness of Yannis Ritsos in Greek (about 120 volumes of poetry) has resulted in his being the most translated modern Greek poet in English as well. As far as I know, there are about twenty volumes of Ritsos translations in English (three by this reviewer), five or six more than there are Cavafy translations and even more than of Seferis and Elytis. Martin McKinsey’s latest addition is from ArgŒ, pol′ argŒ mªsa sthn n′xta (1991), a posthumously published volume of poems that Ritsos composed from 1987 to 1989.

Here again we see the recognizably short, free-verse poems, ranging from 6 to 16 lines, that constitute an essential facet of the poet’s output. Again we find simple, familiar objects in mystical, incongruous roles: the characteristic alertness to the nuances of things and to the poetic possibilities thereby manifested by the so often ignored minutiae of life. Here once more we come across the elliptical bareness, the occasional staccato rhythms and the strong sensual awareness that accompany vignettes and visions. The typically shifting imagery again exemplifies what is apparently an almost inconsequential sequence of disparate elements.

Ritsos, in fact, in spite of his surrealism, abides by what Shelley, in A Defense of Poetry, defined as the role of metaphor: “It marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension.” It is a process that dictates the patterning of the thought progression while still retaining a sort of inherent, mystical unity.

   Already, up in the loft, our suitcases wait to find out when we’ll be leaving, where we’re going this time, and for how long. You also know that inside those scuffed, hollow suitcases there is a bit of string, a couple of rubber bands, and not a single flag.

(“People and Suitcases”)

This segment from a longer poem is, in fact, typical of several in Late into the Night. In its emotive contrasts it intimates what was with what is and with what is imminent. It hints at transience and at the vagueness and arcane inevitability of departure. Readers of Ritsos have come across similar poems with similar sentiments elsewhere (in Repetitions, Gestures, Testimonies, etc.), but in this volume these elegiac, introspective pieces about decrepitude and dying are more concentrated indeed, more stark and poignant. Ritsos still evokes the images of Greek life, but now it is “a children’s song infested with wrinkles” (“The Crazy”) or as he exclaims in “Intimations,” “Oh forgotten years of childhood, / mindless years hypnotized by sunlight between / two unknowable miracles.” Now, as he wallows in old age, he watches friends leave him one by one for that “undiscovered country,” while he ruminates over the only country that he knows, “what we called patrída,” the rocky beloved homeland of “cicadas, olive trees, oleanders and wells” (“Homeland”).

The overt and covert sadness in these poems is both controlled and deepened by a sense of transitoriness, by the erosion brought by time, by the progress of decay, even by the mellow moods of despondency. As those of us who have visited Ritsos know, he painted and was surrounded by hundreds of pebbles. In one poem here which he calls “Painted Stones” there is the flawless profile of

 [a] discuss thrower, most likely, or musician. But there was no room on the stone to show the lyre, where it rested on his knee. Late at night, however, long past midnight, you hear that invisible lyre, playing something wonderful, a poem you’ll never write, while the ambulances scream down your street transporting the 78 victims.

It may be helpful to know here that Ritsos was 78 years old when he composed this poem. Knowing, too, that he suffered persecution, disease, and exile throughout his life will further illuminate the metaphor. As in several other poems, he makes an inventory here of his life and finds it less than satisfactory.

Martin McKinsey’s translations in Late into the Night are, on the...