Yannis Ritsos is a poet whose writing life is entwined with the contemporary history of his homeland. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this volume, which presents a series of three diaries in poetry that Ritsos wrote between 1948 and 1950, during and just after the Greek Civil War, while a political prisoner first on the island of Limnos and then at the infamous camp on Makronisos. Even in this darkest of times, Ritsos dedicated his days to poetry, trusting in writing and in art as collective endeavors capable of resisting oppression and bringing people together across distance and time. These poems offer glimpses into the daily routines of life in exile, the quiet violence Ritsos and his fellow prisoners endured, the fluctuations in the prisoners’ sense of solidarity, and their struggle to maintain humanity through language. This moving volume justifies Ritsos’s reputation as one of the truly important poets in Greece’s modern literary history.
- ISBN10 1935744585
- ISBN13 9781935744580
- Publish Date 8 January 2013 (first published 1 January 2013)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 15 March 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Archipelago Books
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 146
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781935744580