Odysseus Elytis turned to the ancient poets, as has been remarked, out of a sort of ‘elective affinity’.Footnote 1 Elytis never concealed his admiration for Greek poets of the seventh and sixth centuries BC, especially those from his ancestral Lesbos, such as Alcaeus, Sappho and later Crinagoras, or Terpander from Antissa (another small town on Lesbos), and Archilochus from Paros:Footnote 2
Personally, as a lyric poet, I cannot but reflect with emotion that the art I make was born here, in the bed of the Aegean; and I may say on the soil of my homeland, if we take into account that Sappho in Lesbos, and Archilochus in Paros, were the first in the whole of the West to take poetry away from the epos and the myths of the gods; they tried to express their feelings and their inner world for the first time.Footnote 3
Elytis makes a bold statement here: lyric poetry was born in the cradle of the Aegean, and remembering it is a sign of respect and reverence, just as the epic poets themselves expressed their heroes’ devotion to the gods. For Elytis, needless to say, the Aegean is the authentic divinity, synonymous with lyric poetry itself, and not by mere convention. As he wrote in 1984:
Historians have spoken of an extraordinarily rich and refined way of life that developed on Lesbos in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. An amalgam of free customs and habits according to patterns of worship in which nature and love held a privileged place. If we add that, in the opposite hinterland of Asia, not so far away after all, there was Lydia, with Sardis, famous for its make-up and women's clothing, one can understand how close to the Paris of the time the women of Mytilene could even speak as Sappho did. Surely her house bore some resemblance to the ‘literary salons’ of pre-war Europe.Footnote 4
A distinctive personal connection links Elytis’ life and poetry to Mytilene and the island of Lesbos as a whole.Footnote 5 His interest in this land is readily seen in terms of a symbolic perception, related to a sort of poetic consecration:Footnote 6
There is no other place in the world where the Sun and the Moon coexist, reigning together so harmoniously, dividing their power so impartially, as in this part of the earth where once, who knows in what inconceivable times, some god, for his own pleasure, pulled it off like a plane tree leaf and blew it right into the middle of the sea. I speak of the island which later, once inhabited, had the name ‘Lesbos’ and whose position, as we see it marked on maps, seems to bear little correspondence to reality.Footnote 7
Through an intangible spirit common to the poets of Lesbos, and not only geographically, one can grasp profound affinities between them and the poetic sensibility of Elytis. Alcaeus and Sappho, and later Crinagoras too, took on through Elytis’ poetry a new significance – even, it may be said of the two last, a new existence – thanks to Elytis’ imaginative reconstruction of the fragments of the one and the epigrams of the other.
The technique of reconstructing fragments or restoring epigrams is not unconnected with the notion of ‘prismatic expression’ outlined in an essay from 1964. The polyhedral and crystalline form of a prism allows the coexistence of facets that are significant in themselves, but which, when arranged in a new composition, create a new and harmonious entity. The poet writes:
A poet's value consists not only in seeking out rare and unexpected images, but also in knowing how to place them in the substance of a poem in such a manner that none of the brightness of these images gets lost in the process.Footnote 8
Thus, the concept of the ‘prismatic’, hinted as in 1964 in an essay with regard to the long poem Τὸ Ἄξιον Ἐστί (Dignum est),Footnote 9 comes to impose itself more consistently in the essay on Romanos the Melodist, conceived in 1975, when Elytis’ Sappho project was still at an early stage. Poetic expression, as Elytis describes it, can be divided into ‘prismatic expression’ (πρισματικὴ ἔκφραση) or ‘flat expression’ (ἐπίπεδη ἔκφραση):
Greek poetry was born with certain distinctive traits. Its texts – its words – are never on the same level: they oscillate (κυματοῦνται), as Romanos would say. Even in the epic, a narrative genre in itself, Homer is the first to give an example of how to avoid flat expression. His rhapsodies are organized around prominent clusters, which subsequently constitute the ensemble. These nuclei are not necessarily ‘images’: they are expressive units that radiate autonomously, in which the nexus of the signifier coincides with that given signified, to the point that in the end it is not possible to know whether the charm comes from what the poet says or from the way he says it.Footnote 10
He goes on to claim that, in the light of such an approach, poetic discourse takes on a ‘prismatic’ character and that poems with this characteristic
have an impact on the reader not only in their entirety, but also in sections, in pieces, thanks to these prominences, these crystals in which the sharpness of the spirit culminates. These are expressions in which the minerals of language and imagistic iconic elements come together, and in which the formulation of a truth is also the awakening of a world that can be assimilated by the receptivity of our imagination.Footnote 11
Elytis invokes Homer to explain this idea of homogeneous composition, based on the use of phrasal elements and images taken, so to speak, from within Greek poetry. The mention of Homer is to be understood not only as an allusion to epic poetry (as a source in part of lyric poetry) but in a broad symbolic sense to convey the significance and value of the linguistic code adopted, the Greek language:
Τὴ γλώσσα μοῦ ἔδωσαν ἑλληνική⋅
τὸ σπίτι φτωχικὸ στὶς ἀμμουδιὲς τοῦ Ὁμήρου…
Μονάχη ἔγνοια ἡ γλώσσα μου στὶς ἀμμουδιές τοῦ Ὁμήρου…
(‘Greek the language I was given; / poor the house on Homer's shores. / Language my only care on Homer's shores’), as the poet famously says in his Axion Estì (Passion, II).
In this respect we should consider the enhancement of the idea of the fragment, not as a mere relic to be preserved – or worse, to be venerated – but as a vital element to be grafted, to be re-composed, in the confidence that the various fragments will give rise to new, equally effective phono-semantic images through intra-lingual translation. Οn an iconographic level, this has an affinity with Elytis’ predilection for collage, which shares the same technique of recomposing fragments.Footnote 12 Elytis himself clarifies for the reader of his Sappho the basic criteria for the re-composition of the ancient poems:Footnote 13
a) I have not followed the classic arrangement of Sappho's fragments in any way, since my experimentation aimed at something different from philology.
b) I have gone further: to the arbitrary linking of fragments, having as a rule the nature of the content and the ultimate goal the creation of a new, albeit incomplete, poetic nucleus.
c) That is why it has often been necessary to change the verb tenses (from present to imperfect or future etc.) or to introduce conjunctions (such as ‘and, ‘therefore’, ‘however’, ‘but’ etc.) without ever, as J. M. Edmonds once did or as Edith Mora does today, filling the gaps with conjectural intermediate meanings.
d) I have eliminated capital letters and commas. I have limited myself to full stops, dashes and exclamation marks. I also used an ornamental mark to indicate where the lines or stanzas break off (for all those times when I was dealing with a poem that has been preserved almost in its entirety).
e) After many attempts, I have found the solution of the narrow column to be appropriate, both for the original text and for the translation. In doing so, of course, the reader will find some difficulty in reading the text correctly, i.e. according to the rhythm of the verses. But in spite of this, I have preferred to achieve an emotional correspondence with the mysterious halo emanating from the ancient columns and papyri, from the very difficulty of reading them; and at the same time to free myself from the fragmented surface of the pages, so as to obtain an impression of balance and unity”.Footnote 14
And whereas the fragment does not exist in the original text, in his adaptation then Elytis purposely creates it from scratch, trying to emulate the already structured and compact composition and recreating something new with the same original power.
This is why the methods of re-composition (ἀνασύνθεση) for Sappho's fragments and re-generation (μορφή στά νεοελληνικά) for Crinagoras’ epigrams by Elytis are so distinctive in their personal adaptation of the ancient source material in both cases. As a consequence, they merit special attention, more than that needed to appreciate the attempts by Edmonds, Mora, and others at reconstructing the sense of Sappho's fragments through their own interventions. It is clear, after all, that the ‘versions’ (let us remain on neutral ground with this generic term, though it is never used by Elytis) are an expression of his sensibility, which leads to join in a dialogue as an equal with the original text.
When tracing some of the dynamics that would later lead to the structuring of Elytis’ Crinagoras, one must take into account Elytis’ cultural approach to ancient authors – that is, the lens through which he searches for patterns. Ancient Greek authors are very frequently referred to in his work (poetry and prose alike), with a predilection above all for Sappho.Footnote 15 Among those interlocutors who have contributed to the construction of Elytis’ personal mythology it is useful to recall the significance, beside Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, of authors extant only in largely fragmentary form such as Archilochus and Heraclitus: see the catalogue in the section “Ὄττω τις ἔραται” (Ὁ ταξιδιωτικὸς σάκος) in ῾Ο μικρὸς ναυτίλος (1985). Yet there is no trace here of Crinagoras, to whom Elytis comes to pay distinctive attention.
Crinagoras (b. Mytilene ca. 70 BC, d. Rome after AD 11, probably ca. AD 18) was the author of some fifty surviving epigrams written in a refined style and included in the famous Corona (Στέϕανος) of Philip of Thessalonica (first century AD), an anthology of poems that appeared during the reign of Caligula or Nero as a successor to the prestigious anthology by Meleager in the first century BC. All of Crinagoras’ epigrams can be dated to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. He must have been an influential figure in his home town: inscriptions document his participation in various embassies abroad. In 48-47 BC and 45 he was in Rome (cf. IG XII 35a; 35b), in order to redefine the political status of his island, and twenty years later, in 26-25 BC, we find him on another mission to Tarragona in Spain (cf. IG XII 35c). He was particularly appreciated in Rome, where he had moved under Augustus, becoming part of the circle of favourites of Octavia Minor, Augustus’ sister, and establishing close relations with the imperial family. To Augustus’ nephew, Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42-23 BC), he sent a copy of a work by Callimachus of Cyrene, while to Antonia Minor he offered five books of lyrics. Each gift was accompanied by a ‘note’, stating that the poet expected nothing in return, for this was a spontaneous homage expressed in the name of an exchange between lovers of Greek literature, with no constraints of ‘courtesy’ between the poet and his patron.Footnote 16 In all probability his literary otium did not coexist with his political and diplomatic activity, but occurred later.
Crinagoras’ epigrams have their charm, to which variety of theme and, especially, refinement of style contribute. The poem on winter roses for the birthday of a young woman destined for marriage; the gift of a copy of Callimachus’ Hecale to Marcellus; a reflection on the lunar eclipse in conjunction with the death of Cleopatra Selene; the epitaph for Imnides, daughter of Evander; the ironic poem about the escape of a parrot that had been taught to greet Caesar Augustus; the celebration of Emperor Tiberius’ victories from Armenia to Germany; a lament for Corinth (destroyed by Mummius in 146 BC); the horrific image of an abandoned skull as symbol of the transience of life – all these and more constitute the varied subject matter of his collection.
Elytis’ μορφὴ στὰ νέα ἐλληνικά (the term emphasizing a project of intralingual translation) is preceded by a preface to Crinagoras (as had been the case with Sappho) in which Elytis sets out the arguments for choosing this ‘minor’, yet in his field excellent, poet of the Hellenistic-Roman period. It is also worth noting here the admission of a debt to Cavafy's 1920 poem, Νέοι τῆς Σιδῶνος (400 μ.Χ.) (Young Men of Sidon, AD 400):
Ὁ ἠθοποιός πού ἔφεραν γιά νά τούς διασκεδάσει
ἀπήγγειλε καί μερικά ἐπιγράμματα ἐκλεκτά.
[. . .]
Διαβάσθηκαν Μελέαγρος, καί Κριναγόρας, καί Ριανός.
(The actor invited for their entertainment/recited a few choice epigrams. [. . .] Meleager, Crinagoras and Rhianus were read.)
‘Μελέαγρος καὶ Κριναγόρας καὶ Ριανός’ – this alchemical combination of sounds as in other instances in his poetry, is perhaps what led Elytis to Crinagoras: Cavafy's choice of three epigrammists of modest value (with the possible exception of Meleager), is justifiable, according to Elytis, solely for the magical-evocative value perceived in the euphonic alchemy of the signifiers: ‘Ας όψεται ο Καβάφης⋅ που μολονότι δεν είναι, συνήθως, ανοιχτός σε τέτοιου είδους ευαισθησίες, έγραψε τον μαγικό – λεκτικό στίχο “Διαβάστηκαν Μελέαγρος και Κριναγόρας και Ριανός”.’Footnote 17
However, Crinagoras is an expatriate poet, a court poet at Rome, by contrast with Sappho who, it appears, never left Lesbos.Footnote 18 The story of Crinagoras’ exile Τηλόθι Λέσβου (‘Far from Lesbos’), which so influenced Elytis’ sensibility, has been compared to that of Kalvos, he too an emigré. For Elytis, Kalvos ‘seems to have banished from himself every personal aspiration and sacrificed every ambition, showing that he pursues but one goal: that of serving the patriotic love that burns within him to the best of his ability’.Footnote 19
But Elytis is too subjective in his judgements here: the exiled Kalvos was committed to celebrating the freedom of his homeland from afar, but it is by no means clear that Crinagoras too was nostalgic, even though he was away from Mytilene: on the contrary, his high social rank allowed him to do without the support and protection of the Roman aristocracy and he could have returned to his homeland whenever he wished. He was not a recluse in Rome, nor does he appear to have had any binding client relationships: ‘The poet was a man of action, often contemptuous of danger and fully interested and involved in politics, as is proven by the three documented ambassadorships’,Footnote 20 in one of which ‘he lost at least one of his companions’ (cf. Epitaph to Seleucus 16 = AP 6.376) and ‘it is very likely that he made other journeys, from Mytilene or Rome, as his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries suggests’ (cf. 35 = AP 11.42). It has also been suggested that the poet spent time in Judaea at Herod's court.Footnote 21 But the periodization, which is based on epigraphic evidence that records the poet's presence also in delegations to Julius Caesar in 48/47 and 44, is not always clear. This does not mean that Crinagoras did not maintain a relationship with the Roman court of Augustus, a relationship nourished by esteem, favours and rewards, often reciprocated by the poetic celebration of the imperial family. His predilection for epigrams, in which he seems to have excelled, so much so that he was included in the famous Crown of Philip of Thessalonica, well known in Rome since the time of Nero, put the poet in the best light with the imperial family.
Elytis's ‘re-generation’ of the 52 epigrams by or attributed to Crinagoras appeared in 1987. (The term ‘re-generation’ is here used in preference to ‘translation’, which is somewhat misleading in this context.) Between 1973 and 1976, Elytis had been working on Giraudoux's and Brecht's and on his volume of translations Δεύτερη Γραφή (Second Draft). The Crinagoras volume followed the Sappho (1984), as we have seen, but also the translation of the Apocalypse (1985). The narrow time lapse between one publication and the next one suggests that Elytis, at this late stage of life, was devoting himself in a way anything but desultory to an enterprise of translation or reworking. It should not be forgotten that his relationship with the ancient poets ‘is to be understood, rather than in terms of apprenticeship, as a relationship of elective affinity.’Footnote 22
For the text and commentary notes on the epigrams of Crinagoras (1987), Elytis bases himself solely on the edition of the Palatine Anthology (Les Belles Lettres, published several times).Footnote 23 Elytis’ transposition of the epigrams is based on an absolutely subjective criterion, with a division into four sections that evidently diverges from the division into seven sections (7, as we know, is one of the key numbers in Elytis’ poetry) previously adopted for the reconstruction of Sappho's fragments and is obviously different from the Bellettrian edition of choice, as shown by the groups of epigrams arranged in the following scheme:
As with the re-composition of Sappho's fragments Elytis broke away from traditional editorial criteria for Crinagoras as well, disarticulating the original epigram structure of the poems and putting forward a surrealist text on the basis of a different kind of elective affinity.Footnote 24
The key to the organization of the subject matter is broadly thematic: Section 1a: 15 poems dedicated to gifts, victories and happy events; Section 2a: 4 poems dedicated to love; Section 3a: 17 poems dedicated to the theme of death and, finally, Section 4a: 16 poems dedicated to travel. These were amongst the favourite themes of Hellenistic-Roman epigrams, different and more varied than those of their origins.
Crinagoras’ poetry, with its typical epic-Ionian Greek, embraced an innovative character. This extends, as scholars have observed, and as Elytis was perhaps aware, to metrical experiments likewise.Footnote 25 What is certain is that Elytis does not follow the metrical scheme of the epigram and adopts his own personal measures to reproduce what can be considered Crinagoras’ stylistic peculiarities. As Loulakaki-Moore has observed: ‘In order to foreground what he takes to be the suppressed poetic gift of Crinagoras, Elytis first and foremost aims at freeing him from the epigram's formal restrictions.’Footnote 26 The layout of the text in the re-generation follows a subjective line with interventions also at the graphic level: at the level of the macro-text, for example, typographic spaces replace traditional punctuation or, at any rate, determine a rhythm understood to be free of graphic impediments, in conformity with a presumed oral execution, where silence between syntagm and syntagm is signified by empty spaces, as is shown by the following examples:
It is evident that the metrical form of the original elegiac couplet (hexameter + pentameter) no longer made sense to Elytis, who treated the texts as fragments, as in the different case of Sappho. The fragmentary character, which breaks all metrical regularity, is prevalent, even dominant. Striking cases of typographical layout include, the division of certain words (without employment of the hyphen) at line breaks is justifiable; so too as is the presence of extra spacing or special symbols to exorbitant to isolate a phrase.Footnote 27
In general, Elytis prefers the way of free rendering over faithful transposition, and apparently only respects the formal characteristics of the original, with all “its verse returns (enjambments), possible hiatuses, expressive licence, syntactic disconnections, and of course with the risk that the reader, who does not have the original before his eyes, will attribute all these inconsistencies to the translator's incapacity”.Footnote 28 Furthermore, one must also add the specific use of sounds and nouns, on which Elytis has always been very scrupulous since his first experiments in Προσανατολισμοί (Orientations) in 1940.Footnote 29
Elytis's focus on Crinagoras this poet takes place at several levels of expression. The following examples will give us an idea, albeit an incomplete one. From a stylistic point of view, for example, Elytis was deeply influenced by folk poetry,Footnote 30 which contributed decisively to the rendering of some of Crinagoras’ wording in perfect iambic decapentasyllables (the dominant metre of folk poetry):
1. βουερή μονιά ᾽κεῖ στῶν Βασσῶν τά βράχια ριζωμένη (στ´)
2. Πρώτη στά κάλλη τῆς θωριᾶς πρώτη στό μέσα πλοῦτος
3. φανεῖτε ἡ μιά σας ἐλαφρά κι ἡ ἄλλη ὄλο γαλήνη (κη´)
4. Μακριὰ στοῦ Νείλου κείτεσαι τίς ὄχθες πεταμένος (λα´)
5. στήν πρώτη γιά τήν ὀμορφιά καί τῆς καρδιᾶς τό πλοῦτος (ιβ´)
Elytis is faithful to the characteristics of the political verse itself, in which the two hemistichs (of 8 + 7 syllables respectively) tend to be complementary in their semantic redundancy (especially the first three examples), with reminiscences of the lexicon of popular song and also of Solomos, from whom the expression στό μέσα πλοῦτος is taken: the (epigrammatic) lyric poem ‘Φραγκίσκα Φραίζερ’ famously speaks: δῶρο δὲν ἔχουνε γιὰ σὲ καὶ γιὰ τὸ μέσα πλοῦτος. [‘they have no gift for you nor for the inner riches’).Footnote 31 Recourse to vernacular tradition seems to be an almost obsessive choice on the part of Elytis, especially when it comes to replacing an archaic or Atticizing term in the original, the function of which is no longer readily perceived. Likewise, he is always concerned with sound, as in the case of his approach to Romanos the Melodist.Footnote 32
Thus, in his lexical re-generation of Crinagoras, Elytis makes use of a studied selection of compound words, often with adverbial or adjectival value, capable of performing a specific function that is anything but ornamental.Footnote 33
Let us see some evidence of this modus operandi. To take one example, the compound term in the original of Crinagoras, for instance, is often respected with an even-to-even ratio: e.g. νεόσμηκτον = φρεσκοχυτός, λυγοτευχέα = χλωρόπλεχτο, νεοτευχέα = καινουριοχτισμένο or it can replace a locution: ἀπό θυμοῦ = ὁλόκαρδα; sometimes the author goes so far as to use compound terms with an antiquated flavour, even though they are calques, as for example in the case of κοντυλοφόρος (< fr. porte-plume) to translate κάλαμον. When a combination is impossible, Elytis prefers the circumlocution often introduced by the relative omnivalent πού: πυροκλοπίης = τὴ φωτιὰ… πού ᾽κλεψε, ὑελοκικκάδες ὄγχναι = ἀχλάδια πού τά λέν κρυστάλλια. As Loulakaki-Moore has shown,Footnote 34 it is very likely that Elytis for the rendering of compound nouns has followed the French translation, which in the same way employs relative phrases to break up a Greek monorhematic compound or a dative case expression; e.g.: ἐν ὁμωνυμίῃ qui est russi le sien (Elytis: πού ᾽ναι καὶ τὸ δικό του); ὠδίνων μειλίχῳ qui apaise les douleurs de l'enfantement (Elytis: ποὺ τῆς γέννας ξέρει τὶς ὠδίνες ν᾽ἁπαλύνει); ἱδρυσίες que l'on élève en l'honneur (Elytis: ποὺ γιὰ δόξα σᾶς ἔστησαν); ῾Ριγηλὴ πασῶν ἔνοσι χθονός εἴτε σε πόντου / εἴτ᾽ ἀνέμων αἴρει ῥεῦμα τινασσόμενον Tremblement de terre effroyable entre tous, soit que la mer soit que le vents te soulèvent sous leur flot ébranlé (Elytis: Θές ἡ θάλασσα εἶναι θές οἱ ἀνέμοι πού / τό κύμα σου σηκώνουνε πού μᾶς ταρακου/νάει σεισμέ); ἐρημαῖόν τε κέλυφο ὄμματος orbite qui l'oeil a déserté (Elytis: κόγχη πού σοῦ ᾽φυγε το μάτι). With the background of a perfectly bilingual poet like Elytis, it is not an exaggeration to conclude that his Crinagoras can be seen as a regeneration of the ancient poems as well as their French translations.
As for the reuses of phonic sequences, we can observe some other examples: Βότρυες οἰνοπέπαντοι ἐϋσχίστοιο τε ῥοιῆς θρύμματα καὶ ξανθοὶ μυελοὶ ἐκ στροβίλων (p. 31) is echoed in Elytis’ Τσαμπιά σταφύλι ζουμερό κι ἀπό μισανοιγμένο ρόδι ρόγες ξανθή ψίχα κουκουνάρι (p. 31); Αἰετοῦ ἀγκυλόχειρος ἀκρόπτερον becomes Ἀπ᾽ ἀκρόφτερο ἀετοῦ, in which the phonic/semantic correspondence is almost total. Or the modern poet allows himself new images, without an exact correspondence with the original phonic texture: Ἄνοιξη ἄνθιζαν ἄλλοτε τά ρόδα (p. 37) where Crinagoras had Εἴαρος ἤνθει μὲν τὸ πρὶν ῥόδα, or: πυκναί τ᾽ἰτρινέαι ποπάδες καὶ πότιμοι becomes, with a particular study of assonances and a thickening of combined words, σφιχτοζυμωμένες σουσαμόπιτες νόστιμες σκορδοπαπούδες (p. 31). Elsewhere, too, phonic textures are transferred to sounds differing from those of the original (it goes without saying that the system of sounds on which Elytis works is governed by the modern pronunciation of Greek, which he will also have used for the original texts), but likewise helping to provide cohesiveness: Συμφορά πού σοῦ ᾽λαχε μεγάλη Ἑλλάδα Ποιοι ἄλλοι ἀντ᾽ἄλλων (p. 97), while Crinagoras’ text sounded Οἵους ἀνθ᾽οἵων οἰκήτορας ὦ ἐλεεινή εὕραο Φεῦ μεγάλης Ἑλλάδος ἀμμορίη.
From these limited examples, however, it is clear what kinds of effect Elytis is aiming at. He is aware of being faced with of a complex, precious, and elegant poet in Crinagoras; and this leads him to choices and solutions maybe even more daring than in his versions of non-Greek authors (such as Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Eluard, Jouve, Ungaretti, Garcia Lorca, Mayakovsky), whereby the logic of an intralingual resemantization was less coercive and the aim was only to provide historical rather than poetic accounts. While as for Sappho, so for Crinagoras Elytis must have felt a deep responsibility to handle a language as ductile and imperishable as Greek. As is well known, his poetry displays a constant formal inventiveness and exploits all the forms and registers of the Greek language, making it extremely difficult to translate, as one runs a great danger of not fully understanding the “moral force” (ἠθικὴ δύναμη) implied by the Greek language:
Si la langue n’était qu'un simple moyen de communication, il n'y aurait pas de problème. Mais il arrive, parfois, qu'elle soit aussi un instrument de «magie». De plus, dans ce long cours de siècles, la langue acquiert une certaine manière d’être. Elle devient un haut langage. Et cette manière d’être oblige. N'oublions pas non plus qu'en chacun de ces vingt-cinq siècles et sans nulle béance, il s'est écrit, en grec, de la poésie. C'est cet ensemble de données qui fait le grand poids de tradition que cet instrument soulève. La poésie grecque moderne en donne une image fort expressive.Footnote 35
By way of conclusion, it is perhaps appropriate to hazard what really was the inspiration that Crinagoras the epigrammatist provided the modern Greek lyric poet, over and above his virtuosity in sound patterning. First of all, it was a particular humanity, a form of Terentian humani nihil alienum, that captured Elytis’ attention: ‘a nobility that is less aristocratic and more human, in the deepest sense of the term’. Elytis cites the following example:
The example of the epitymbium dedicated, as an equal, to his servant Inachus, which makes him say that he died “far away, mourned by tears” [AP VI 371, v. 5] of his patron, is not to be ignored. Nor, by contrast, should his hatred for potentates go unnoticed, especially against the tyrant Eunichida who, in two successive epitymbia [AP VII 380 and 401], literally destroys him even when he is dead, with very offensive and sometimes even vulgar expressions.Footnote 36
Below is Elytis’ reconstruction of the two disparaging epitymbia:
[32: Though it be of hewn marble, and of a mason's hand, and well made, yet is it not a grave of a noble man. Do not judge a dead man by this stone, friend. Stones have no mind, and the most abominable dead man may take them for his cover. So under this one here the wretched carcass of Eunicidas has long been rotting.]
[33: A heap of earth clumped on top of a hideous head covers the bones of a true criminal the chest full of dirt, with the fetid row of saw-teeth, the servile spreading of the legs the bald skull all his half-burnt relics of Eunicidas full of a greenish putridity. Earth, to whom this ugly combination falls, see that upon his ashes you lie neither empty nor light]
Elytis then goes on to emphasise the importance for Crinagoras of the exile-motif:
However, if one wanted to specify what, in addition to this, Crinagoras brought, one would have to point out the feeling of the exile, which he tries to express: ‘the sorrow of exile’, as Seferis would also say. In fact, he was the first among the minores to open the passage that, in time, will become a great tributary running through Greek literature, up to the present day. Three or four times he returns to this subject, like a thorn in his side, because, first of all, he himself is afraid of it: the sentence to die in foreign lands.Footnote 37
Here, too, Elytis' reading is typically Greek; so Greek that it returns to reiterate and refresh the topos of death in a foreign land which is, as is well known, one of the most favoured by the popular tradition of songs about ξενιτιά, from antiquity to Foscolo's sonnet A Zacinto.Footnote 38 This is an entirely personal reading of Crinagoras, who does not seem to have complained too much about his stay in Rome, ‘far from Lesbos’ In fact, Elytis even seeks to draw a sharp contrast with Sappho:
[Crinagoras is] the reverse of Sappho's coin; and it is perhaps one more reason, just like his birthplace, that has led me to persevere with him. The healthy freedom of morals in the one, the lyrical effusion, the juice of life, and in the other, the oppressive life of the Court, the dryness, the narrowness of boundaries. Certainly, too the lack of any great talent.Footnote 39
This last assertion, which can be traced back to Elytis’ presumption that he was dealing with a minor poet of Greek literature, could justify his continuous search for the element of little importance, insignificant and neglected in literary history, but nevertheless worthy of attention, because in the modern poet's eyes it was the repository of a poetic experience useful for the construction of his own mythology. The result of this experiment, in which Elytis minimizes the mere translation function and exalts the intertextual element, charged with learned and popular tradition, takes shape in newly configured and intricate typographical artefacts. In fact, they deserve close study even independently from their ostensible source texts.
Elytis’ Crinagoras brings to a close his own personal dialogue with Alexandrian poetry. He had begun this with a few forays – later rejected – into the translation of epigrams by various poets.Footnote 40 These had appeared in an edited by C.A. Trypanis in 1943. Elytis’ attitude towards Crinagoras, as we have seen, was somewhat different, and reflects a different time and his own development forty and more years on. As Dallas puts it: ‘He edited [Crinagoras] as an elderly compatriot, indulging in some of his nostalgic notes (e.g. “of the pain of exile”), although recognising that Crinagoras, living in a courtly environment, “Far from Lesbos had estranged himself from the naturalistic conception of life, inherent in the sons of the Aeolian land”’.Footnote 41
Cristiano Luciani teaches Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He has worked on the relations between Italian and modern Greek literature, and especially on Cretan literary production from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, but has also published extensively on later periods. Among his recent contributions are the bilingual editions Konstantinos Kavafis, Poesie e Prose (with Renata Lavagnini) (Milan 2021) and Vicentzos Kornaros, Erotokritos (Athens 2020). His edition of Glukos’ Πένθος θανάτου (Thessaloniki 2018) was awarded first prize in 2019 by the European Association of Modern Greek Studies.
