A Modern Odysseus

Page 13 March–April 2008 A Modern Odysseus Kostas Myrsiades The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios, translated from the modern Greek by Christopher Bakken and Roula Konsolaki, is a handsomely produced, first full-length collection of Patrikios’s work in English. The selection, representing some fourteen volumes of the poet’s oeuvre, consists of eighty poems, which sample for the reader the poet’s output from 1948–2002. Titos Patrikios, born in Athens in 1928, was a lawyer by trade who turned to poetry to give voice to the tragic climate of his country during the Nazi occupation, the ensuing civil war, the dictatorship of the three colonels from 1967–1974, and finally his exile to Rome and Paris. As a leftist active in the communist-led resistance against the German Occupation (1941–1944), he was later punished by the military dictatorship following the Greek CivilWar by being interred in prison camps on the islands of Makronisos and Ai-Stratis where he came in contact with other leftist poets, among them Yannis Ritsos whose influence is paramount in Patrikios’s poetry up to the mid-fifties. Today, Patrikios enjoys the reputation of a major voice in twentieth-century Greek literature, having received Greece’s National Prize for Literature and having had his work collected in a three volume set by Kedros, the leading literary publisher in Greece. Patrikios’s pre-fifties poetry is haunted by memories of and regrets for those who gave their lives for a free, democratic Greece, “For the thousands of unknown friends / who gave their lives / for mine.” At times, such poetry becomes abstract, recalling for the reader the poetry of Yannis Ritsos of the same period, lapsing at times into surrealistic images of the everyday life of peasants and of the earth and haunted by dead friends and comrades. It is a poetry full of sadness, regret, loss, and yet one that does not give in to despair but finds solace in love and hope for a better future. As the poet often wonders how he can endure his internment at the prison camps, life intercedes, and love and hope replace the despair he feels, “My flesh / always hurts when beaten, / always rejoices when caressed. / It hasn’t learned a thing.” Often Patrikios contrasts the hardships he endured at the front with the more pleasant experiences of a peaceful world at home before the war.Throughout this bitter and sardonic poetry tinged with a degree of optimism, he is a modern Odysseus journeying through his memories recalling lost and fallen comrades and reliving hardships. But unlike the Homeric Odysseus, Patrikios never seems to be in sight of his Ithaca but remains forever a wanderer like the Odysseus of Nobel laureate George Seferis’s Mythistorema (1935). Patrikios enjoys the reputation of a major voice in twentieth-century Greek literature. Patrikios’s post-fifties poems represented in this collection become less abstract, shorter, more epigrammatic, and straightforward questioning the hollowness of words, the ineffectiveness of poetry, seeking a justification for rejecting poetry all together. They seem more subdued, less passionate than his earlier poems, yet are still questioning past actions, reexamining his life and what it means to him and those around him. They are poems full of nostalgia and disappointment with one’s country and its people, especially in their acceptance of the Papadopoulos dictatorship, which caused his exile to Rome and Paris: the lions’ gate: selecteD Poems oF titos Patrikios Titos Patrikios Translated by Christopher Bakken and Roula Konsolaki Truman State University Press http://tsup.truman.edu 147 pages; cloth, $24.95 How can you go on living among people who died before their time? How can you continue waiting with the dead who refuse to believe they ever lived? In the poems from the collection Sea of Promise (1959–1963), he turns from memories of oppression and war to reflect on his love and their first encounters . Here his voice becomes more lyric, but in this reader’s opinion, these poems fall somewhat short of the quality expressed in his pre-fifties poetry. The imagery is clearer, more mundane, but the passion expressed earlier is lost. Nevertheless, this collection introduces the reader...