Yannis Ritsos

• Name — Yiannis Ritsos • Native Name — Γιάννης Ρίτσος • Born — 1 May 1909 • Birthplace — Monemvasia, Greece • Died — 11 November 1990 • Place of death — Athens, Greece • Occupation — Poet • Movement — Modernism Generation of the '30s

Ritsos was born on 1 May 1909 to a well-to-do landowning family in Monemvasia. He suffered great losses as a child: his mother and eldest brother died early from tuberculosis, his father struggled with mental illness, and his famly was economically ruined. This marked Ritsos and affected his poetry. Ritsos himself was confined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis from 1927 to 1931.

In 1934, Ritsos joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He maintained a working-class circle of friends and published Tractor in 1934. Kostis Palamas, the well known and respected poet, impressed by his talent, praised him publicly. In 1935, he published Pyramids; these two works sought to achieve a fragile balance between faith in the future, founded on the Communist ideal, and personal despair. Tractors and Pyramids initially were not well received by leftist critics, who found the language "too embellished" and Ritsos overly focused on form. He was inspired for his landmark poem "Epitaphios" by a photo of a dead protester during a massive tobacco-workers demonstration in Thessaloniki in May 1936. Published the same year, it broke with the shape of the Greek traditional popular poetry and expressed in clear and simple language a message of the unity of all people.

In August 1936, the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas came to power and Epitaphios was burned publicly at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. Ritsos responded by taking his work in a different direction. He began to explore the conquests of surrealism through the domain of dreams, surprising associations, explosions of images and symbols, a lyricism illustrative of the anguish of the poet, and both tender and bitter souvenirs. During this period Ritsos published The Song of my Sister (1937) and Symphony of the Spring (1938).

During the Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1945) Ritsos became a member of the EAM (National Liberation Front) and authored several poems for the Greek Resistance. These include a booklet of poems dedicated to the resistance leader Aris Velouchiotis, written immediately upon the latter's death on 16 June 1945. Ritsos also supported the Left in the subsequent Civil War (1946–1949); in 1948 he was arrested and spent four years in prison camps. In the 1950s Epitaphios, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, became the anthem of the Greek Left. In 1967 he was arrested by the Papadopoulos dictatorship and sent to a prison camp in Gyaros, later to Samos and finally Lemnos.

• Subterranean Horses, tr. Minas Savvas, illustrations by the author (1980) • Chronicle of Exile, tr. M. Savvas (1977) [select poems] • Eighteen Short Songs of the Bitter Motherland, tr. A. Mims, illus. Y. Ritsos (1974) [Greek and English] • Exile and Return, tr. E. Keeley (1985; repr. 1987, 1989) [select poems] • Gestures and other poems, 1968-1970, tr. N. Stangos, illus. by the poet (1971) • Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, tr. E. Keeley (1990) • Selected Poems 1938-1988, tr. K. Friar, K. Myrsiades & others (1989) • Selected Poems, tr. N. Stangos (1974) • The Fourth Dimension, tr. P. Green, B. Bardsley (1993) • Late Into the Night: The Last Poems of Yannis Ritsos, trans. Martin McKinsey (Oberlin College Press, 1995). • Diaries of Exile, Archipelago Books, (2012) • Petrified Time: Poems from Makrónissos, trans. Martin McKinsey and Scott King (Red Dragonfly Press, 2014).. • Twelve Poems About Cavafy, tr. Paul Merchant (Tavern Books, 2010) • Monochords, tr. Paul Merchant (Tavern Books, 2017)

One child is recorded: Eri Ritsos. Other recorded relations include Despina Glezou.

Yannis Ritsos is recorded with the occupation playwright. Recorded as poet, playwright, translator, writer and actor. Recorded at birth as Ιωάννης Ρίτσος.