Nikiforos Vrettakos

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Nikiforos Vrettakos ( Greek Νικηφόρος Βρεττάκος , * January 1, 1912 in Krokees , Laconia , Peloponnese ; † August 4, 1991 in Ploumitsa near Krokees) was a Greek writer and one of the most famous Greek poets of the so-called 1930s generation and is considered "the saint of the Greek poetry ”. He was the first left member of the Academy of Athens .

Life

Nikephoros Vrettakos, who came from Mani , grew up in the village of Krokees near Sparta , where he attended elementary school. His childless uncle and relatives supported him so that he could attend high school in Gythio like his friend Giannis Ritsos .

In 1929 he moved to Athens , where he attended the local university studied. In the same year, the first selection of poems Under Shadows and Lights by the 17-year-old was published. After a year he had to leave the university for financial reasons.

In 1934 he married Kalliopi "Pitsa" Apostolidou, with whom he had two children. For a short time he worked as a farmer and in a silk factory before starting his 30-year career in the Greek civil service (Ministry of Public Works) in 1937.

In the Second World War he fought in the Greco-Italian War 1940-1941 and joined the National Liberation Front EAM (Ethnikó Apelevtherotikó Métopo, Greek: Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο ΕΑΜ) in 1942 .

After the war, he continued his civil service career but was forced to move from Athens to Piraeus in 1947 because of his political beliefs . In 1954 he was elected to the Piraeus City Council.

In 1949, the Communist Party of Greece revoked his membership because he had called for reconciliation between the two superpowers in one of his essays. He visited the Soviet Union in 1957. In the same year he won the State Prize for Poetry and began to work as a journalist, translator and literary editor for various magazines and newspapers. He spoke French and Italian.

On the night of the coup on April 21, 1967, he managed to avoid arrest. He decided to go into exile in Switzerland and Italy in order to do his part against the lack of freedom in his country from there. He wrote a poem about the student Kostas Georgakis , who set himself on fire in Genoa , in protest against the Greek junta.

1967–1970 he found refuge for several months in the Greek children's home “Kypseli” in the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen , Switzerland. There he wrote poems, told stories to the children and regularly took part in the weekly morning celebrations, where the village community gathered to remember the meaning and goals of the village, the common and common human element as a supporting element of the small international community. For the 50th anniversary of the children's village in 1996, a text and picture book with the cycle of sixteen poems that he had written in the children's village from 1967 to 1970 was published in memory of Vrettakos:

“Every morning, when the sun rises over Trogen and over the children's village, all things are as simple as anywhere and always on this earth. But the faces of the children - here - are home countries. Every Monday morning they gather under the same promise of love. Together they are a globe that prays "

- Nikiforos Vrettakos : Pestalozzidorf

Vrettakos returned to Greece in 1974, where he lived with his uncle in Krokees. In 1987 he caused outrage in left circles when he accepted the nomination for the Academy of Athens, which was considered a stronghold of conservatism. In the 1980s he built a small house near the ruins of Plumitsa. Here he wrote a large part of his work in the face of his beloved Taygetos Mountains.

He was President of the Greek PEN Club and Honorary President of the Society of Greek Poets and the Piraeus Society for Art and Literature.

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His work is characterized by a strong closeness to nature, social commitment and his urban poetry that advocates human dignity and human rights. It comprises several volumes of poetry and has been translated into most European languages ​​as well as Arabic, Japanese and Turkish. His poetry radiates a humane sensibility combined with a bold realism. At first he wrote about nature and family life in the traditional rhythm and meter , later he used contemporary forms and expanded his range of topics to the problems of the world. Its main themes are peace, freedom, equality, justice and brotherhood. Many of his poems were set to music in popular songs by Greek composers, some by Mikis Theodorakis .

He also wrote the study by Nikos Kazantzakis . His Anguish and His Work , his autobiography Odyni and for the Greek diaspora the prayer book Liturgy Below the Acropolis . He wrote about his experiences as a soldier in World War II and the plight of the left after the defeat in the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949.

Awards

  • 1940 Greek State Prize for Seal for Human Faces .
  • In 1945 he was awarded the National Resistance Prize.
  • 1956 Greek State Prize for Poetry 1929-1951 .
  • In 1977 he received the Ouranis Prize from the Academy of Athens.
  • In 1980 the monument to the "Unknown Sailor" was unveiled in the port of Gythio.
  • 1981 Asla Award from Sicily.
  • 1983 Greek State Prize for Poetry.
  • 1985 National Prize for Literature.
  • In 1987 he was accepted into the Chair of Literature by the Academy of Athens.
  • 1990 Vaptsarov Award from Bulgaria.
  • 1991 Honorary Doctorate in Literature from the University of Athens.
  • In 2012 an anthology with poetry and prose texts by well-known poets with an introduction by the art historian Leonce Petmezas was published as a tribute to the 100th birthday .
  • He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
  • The city of Athens awards him the “Nikiforos Vrettakos” Memorial Prize for literature every year.
  • In his honor, many cities and organizations inside and outside Greece hold cultural events again and again.

Publications (selection)

Modern Greek poetry

  • Under shadows and lights. 1929.
  • Go to the silence of the centuries. 1933
  • The war. 1935.
  • People's faces. 1935.
  • The Swan's letter. 1937.
  • Archangel's Journey. 1938.
  • Margarita, pictures of the sunset. 1939.
  • The height of the fire. 1940.
  • Heroic deal. 1944.
  • 33 days. 1945.
  • The fabulous state. 1947.
  • Margaret's book. 1949.
  • Taygetus and the silence. 1949.
  • The murky rivers. 1950.
  • Ploumitsa. 1951.
  • Out with the horse. 1952.
  • Letter to Robert Oppenheimer . 1954
  • Poems 1929-1951. 1956.
  • My mother's church. 1957
  • The time and the flow. 1957.
  • Royal oak. 1959.
  • The depth of the world. 1961.
  • Autobiography. 1961.
  • Choice (selection from previous collections). 1965.
  • These children of our planet: 16 poems in Greek and German. Original in the poet's handwriting. Propyläa, Zurich 1970.
  • Walks . Complete edition of the poetic work in 3 volumes, 1972.
  • Ode to the sun. 1974.
  • Protest. 1974.
  • The river Bues. 1975.
  • Afternoon sunflower. 1976.
  • Anarithm. 1979.
  • Liturgy under the Acropolis. Oratorio, 1981.
  • The excellent planet. 1983.
  • Unfinished talent. 1986.
  • The philosophy of flowers. 1990. (Greek-English)
  • Poems (Τά ποιήματα) Tria Phylla, Athens 1991. 3 volumes.
  • with Arthur Bill , Argyris Sfountouris : The Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen and its Greek poet. Verlag Haupt, Bern 1996, ISBN 3-258-05384-7 .
  • odyni (οδύνη, QUAL), autobiography, Greek, Anubis 2006, ISBN 960-7478-16-9
  • The secrets of the dreams of Fabius. 2009

prose

  • The naked child. 1939.
  • The nature boy. 1945.
  • Two people talk about world peace. 1949.
  • One of the two worlds. 1958.
  • Suffer. Novel in English, New York, 1969.
  • In front of the same river. 1972.
  • Prometheus. Tragedy, 1978.
  • Evidence of a critical era. 1979.

essay

  • Nikos Kazantzakis. His Anguish and His Work. 1960.

literature

  • Arthur Bill: Nikiforos Vrettakos, the Greek poet . In: Helpers on the go. Stories of a country schoolmaster, children's village director and disaster relief worker . Stämpfli, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-7272-1323-X
  • Maren Heyne, Argyris Sfountouris: Ilionissia. Isole della Luce . Photo book with 13 poems by Giorgos Seferis, Jannis Ritsos , Nikiforos Vrettakos. Edizioni Pantarei, Lugano 1973
  • Anna Kelesidou: The pananthropismos Nikiforos Vrettakou. Parnassus 31, 1989
  • Kimon Friar : Modern Greek Poetry . Efstathiadis Group SA, 1993, ISBN 960-226-243-5
  • The Charioteer: An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture. Numbers 33/34 1991-1992, Pella Publishing Company Inc. page 261
  • Peter Bien et al .: A Century of Greek Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Cosmos Publishing, Vale, NJ 2004
  • M. Byron Raizis: Greek Poetry Translations . Efstathiadis, Athens 1983

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur Bill: Helpers on the way. Stories of a country schoolmaster, children's village director and disaster relief worker . Stämpfli, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-7272-1323-X
  2. ↑ Argyris, a survivor of the Distomo massacre, grew up in the children's village and translated the poems into German.
personal data
SURNAME Vrettakos, Nikiforos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Βρεττάκος, Νικηφόρος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek writer, primarily poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Krokees
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1991
Place of death Ploumitsa , Laconia