Patrick Comerford
The journey to Rethymnon from Iraklion last night, along north coast of the Crete, with its rocky coves, sandy beaches and cliffs, was almost like a home-coming, bringing with it hopes of seeing the sun setting in the west behind the Fortezzangs over the next few evenings. Although last night's journey was in total darkness, this is one of the most beautiful and scenic routes I know. It is a journey that has never ceased to captivate me since I first arrived in Crete early one morning almost 40 years ago in the mid-1980s.
As I was planning and arranging last night’s journey from Iraklion to Rethymnon, I found myself once again reading Marina on the Rocks, one of my favourite poems by Odysseas Elytis (1911-1996), who was born in Iraklion, and listening to a setting by Mikis Theodorakis, sung by one of Greece’s most loved singers, Maria Farantouri.
Both Elytis and Theodorakis have been major figures in Greek culture throughout the second half of the 20th century. The only other Greek poet to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature was George Seferis in 1967. Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), who was also born in Crete, received Nobel nominations on nine separate occasions, but never received the prize.
Odysseus Elytis is one of the poets who revived Greek poetry in the last century. Several of his poems have been set to music and his collections have been translated into dozens of languages. These poems are written in rich language, filled with images from history and myths. His lines are long and musical, inspired by the Greek light, the sea, and the air. The autobiographical elements of his poetry are coloured by allusions to the history of Greece, and his poems express a contemporary consciousness fully resonant with those echoes of the past that have shaped the modern Greek experience.
Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021) was born 100 years ago on 29 July 1925, and is best remembered outside Greece as the composer of the scores for Zorba the Greek and Z. In Greece,he is the great national composer, who collaborated with some of the most prominent Greek singers and film makers. He is the composer of the Left, whose songs became anthems of the resisance during the colonels’ junta in 1967-1974. He was especially drawn to the work of Elytis, whose writings were a mirror to the revolutionary music of Theodorakis.
Odysseus Elytis (Οδυσσέας Ελύτης) was his pen name, but he was born Odysseus Alepoudellis (Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλλης) in Iraklion on 2 November 1911, into the Alepoudelis family, an old industrial family from Lesbos.
When he was three, his family moved to Athens, where he later studied law at the University of Athens. He published his first poem in 1935 in the journal New Letters (Νέα Γράμματα) at the prompting of friends such as George Seferis. His entry with a distinctively earthy and original form assisted to inaugurate a new era in Greek poetry and its subsequent reform after World War II.
He was a lieutenant in the Greek army during World War II, and fought on the Albanian frontline, resisting the Italian invasion. After World War II, he was twice Programme Director of ERT, the Greek National Radio Foundation (1945-1946, 1953-1954). In between, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and worked for the BBC in London. He moved in literary and artistic circles that included Matisse, Picasso, Chagall and Sartre, but was private and solitary in pursuing his poetry.
His great epic poem, Το Άξιον Εστί (To Axion Esti, It is Worthy) was published in 1959, after a period of more than 10 years of poetic silence. It became one of the most widely read volumes of poetry published in Greece since World War II, and it remains a classic to this day. His Axion Esti , widely regarded as his chef d’oeuvre, is a poetic cycle of alternating prose and verse patterned after the ancient Byzantine liturgy.
As in his other writings, Elytis depicts Greek reality through an intensely personal tone. It is a hymn to creation inspired by the Greek Orthodox liturgy and the 17th century epic poetry of Crete, including the Erotokritos (Ἐρωτόκριτος) by Vikentios Kornaros. It is a composition of song and praise that explores the essence of his being and the identity of his country and people. Theodorakis set the Axion Esti to music in 1964, and it became immensely popular throughout Greece. This setting by Theodorakis later contributed to Elytis receiving the Nobel Prize.
During the colonels’ junta, Elytis lived in exile in Paris (1969-1972). He returned to Greece, and in 1975 was awarded an honorary PhD by Thessaloniki University and received the honorary citizenship of Mytilene. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979. He died of a heart attack in Athens on 18 March 1996, at the age of 84, and was buried at the First National Cemetery.
Marina of the Rocks is a poem by Elytis that explores the relationship between a woman, the sea and the summer months, evoking a sense of natural beauty and freedom, suggesting a love that is both intense and fleeting, like the sun itself, and observing the fleeting nature of time and memory.
In his poetry, Elytis often focuses on the senses, and in Marina of the Rocks he evokes the heat, light and textures of the summer landscape. For the poet, the sea, rocks, and sun are central symbols of summer and the natural world, emphasising the powerful and liberating aspects of the environment as he explores the passionate relationship between the woman and the summer and the idea of memory and the passage of time, suggesting that even as the summer fades, its impact on the woman’s soul remains.
Marina of the Rocks celebrates the beauty and power of nature, the sensual experience of summer. Vivid imagery and symbolism create a sense of place and time, inviting the reader to experience the joy and melancholy of the summer months.
Every Greek above a certain age, and certainly every Greek of my age, is able to sing the adaptation of this poem as the song Marina by Theodorakis and sung by Maria Farantouri with her plaintive and haunting voice.
One version I came on across YouTube earlier this week has edited images from the 1977 film Iphigenia (Ιφιγένεια) by Michael Cacoyannis, the third in his Greek Tragedy trilogy, following Electra (1962) and The Trojan Women (1971).
When Theodorakis died in Athens on 2 September 2021 at the age of 96, he was brought back to Crete to be buried in his hometown, Galatas, near Chania. Maria Farantouri is currently on a tour that pays tribute to Theodorakis, marking his 100th birthday. The tour with Manolis Mitsias began in Thessaloniki in January and includes two concerts in Crete, in Iraklion on 13 June and in Chania on 14 June.
Δώσε μου δυόσμο να μυρίσω,
Λουίζα και βασιλικό
Μαζί μ'αυτά να σε φιλήσω,
και τι να πρωτοθυμηθώ
Τη βρύση με τα περιστέρια,
των αρχαγγέλων το σπαθί
Το περιβόλι με τ' αστέρια,
και το πηγάδι το βαθύ
Τις νύχτες που σε σεργιανούσα,
στην άλλη άκρη τ' ουρανού Και ν' ανεβαίνεις σε θωρούσα,
σαν αδελφή του αυγερινού
Μαρίνα πράσινο μου αστέρι
Μαρίνα φως του αυγερινού
Μαρίνα μου άγριο περιστέρι
Και κρίνο του καλοκαιριού
Give me mint to smell
Verbena and basil
Together with them, I will kiss you
What to remember first?
The spring with the doves
The archangel’s sword
The orchard with the stars
And the deep well
The nights when I took you for walks
To the other end of the sky
And I watched you rising,
Like a sister of the morning star
Marina, my green star,
Marina, light of the morning star,
Marina, my wild dove
And summer’s lily.
Marina of the Rocks, by Odysseus Elytis:
You have a taste of tempest on your lips —
But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.
But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on your breast, iambic heroine.
You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths —
But where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?
There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.
Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.
It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.
Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.
Η Μαρίνα των βράχων, Ο ποιητής, Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
Έχεις μια γεύση τρικυμίας στα χείλη – Μα πού γύριζες
Ολημερίς τη σκληρή ρέμβη της πέτρας και της θάλασσας
Αετοφόρος άνεμος γύμνωσε τους λόφους
Γύμνωσε την επιθυμία σου ως το κόκαλο
Κι οι κόρες των ματιών σου πήρανε τη σκυτάλη της Χίμαιρας
Ριγώνοντας μ’ αφρό τη θύμηση!
Πού είναι η γνώριμη ανηφοριά του μικρού Σεπτεμβρίου
Στο κοκκινόχωμα όπου έπαιζες θωρώντας προς τα κάτω
Τους βαθιούς κυαμώνες των άλλων κοριτσιών
Τις γωνιές όπου οι φίλες σου άφηναν αγκαλιές τα δυοσμαρίνια
– Μα πού γύριζες;
Ολονυχτίς τη σκληρή ρέμβη της πέτρας και της θάλασσας
Σου ‘λεγα να μετράς μες στο γδυτό νερό τις φωτεινές του μέρες
Ανάσκελη να χαίρεσαι την αυγή των πραγμάτων
Ή πάλι να γυρνάς κίτρινους κάμπους
Μ’ ένα τριφύλλι φως στο στήθος σου ηρωίδα ιάμβου
Έχεις μια γεύση τρικυμίας στα χείλη
Κι ένα φόρεμα κόκκινο σαν το αίμα
Βαθιά μες στο χρυσάφι του καλοκαιριού
Και τ’ άρωμα των γυακίνθων –Μα πού γύριζες
Κατεβαίνοντας προς τους γιαλούς τους κόλπους με τα βότσαλα
Ήταν εκεί ένα κρύο αρμυρό θαλασσόχορτο
Μα πιο βαθιά ένα ανθρώπινο αίσθημα που μάτωνε
Κι άνοιγες μ’ έκπληξη τα χέρια σου λέγοντας τ’ όνομά του
Ανεβαίνοντας ανάλαφρα ως τη διαύγεια των βυθών
Όπου σελάγιζε ο δικός σου ο αστερίας.
Άκουσε ο λόγος είναι των στερνών η φρόνηση
Κι ο χρόνος γλύπτης των ανθρώπων παράφορος
Κι ο ήλιος στέκεται από πάνω του θηρίο ελπίδας
Κι εσύ πιο κοντά του σφίγγεις έναν έρωτα
Έχοντας μια πικρή γεύση τρικυμίας στα χείλη.
Δεν είναι για να λογαριάζεις γαλανή ως το κόκαλο
άλλο καλοκαίρι,
Για ν’ αλλάξουνε ρέμα τα ποτάμια
Και να σε πάνε πίσω στη μητέρα τους,
Για να ξαναφιλήσεις άλλες κερασιές
Ή για να πας καβάλα στο μαΐστρο
Στυλωμένη στους βράχους δίχως χτες και αύριο.
Στους κινδύνους των βράχων με τη χτενισιά της θύελλας
Θ’ αποχαιρετήσεις το αίνιγμά σου.
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