COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
Looking forward to tomorrow … sunset at the Sunset Taverna, below the slopes of the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
There is an old joke in Crete that tells of how a tourist, eager to learn a few phrases of Greek, asks whether there is a word in Greek that is equivalent to the Spanish mañana.
‘Yes’ says his Greek friend. But he stops, ponders a little, and then, after a few moments of deep thought, he draws a deep breath, and adds hesitantly: ‘Yes, but, but it doesn’t convey the same sense of urgency.’
It is no accident that the Greek word αύριο (avrio, tomorrow) lacks the sense of urgency conveyed in mañana.
Although the word avrio means ‘tomorrow’ or ‘not today’, it often carries a cultural connotation of a relaxed approach to time, meaning ‘when life allows’, not just the next calendar day. It is an integral part of an approach to life that values living in the present without giving in to the deadlines set by others.
The literal meaning of avrio is the day after today. It comes from the Classical Greek word αὔριον (aúrion), a derivative from ἀήρ, meaning a breeze or the morning air. The word is used, for example, by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Sophocles (Oedipus Tyrannus, Ichneutae and Trachiniae), Euripides (Alcestis and Hippolytus) and Xenophon (Economics). It is found too throughout the New Testament, for example in two verses in the Gospel reading next Sunday (8 February 2026):
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? (Matthew 6: 30).
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6: 34).
However, in its Greek cultural context today, the word is imbued with concepts of living without rigid deadlines, embracing a slower pace of life, and understanding that things happen when they are meant to.
In everyday conversation in Greek, the word is frequently used to say ‘not today’, ‘later’, or ‘not now’.
Many popular Greek songs have the word avrio in their title or as their theme, including songs by Stelios Kazantzidis, Ίσως αύριο (Isos Avrio, ‘Maybe Tomorrow’), a classic Zeibekiko song, and in traditional songs like those by Aspasia Stratigou, or in songs such as Σήμερα και Αύριο (Símero ke Avrio, ‘Today and Tomorrow’), a common theme, often with lyrics about love lasting forever.
Ίσως αύριο (Isos Avrio, Maybe Tomorrow) by Stelios Kazantzidis, a classic zeibekiko
Ίσως αύριο (Isos Avrio, Maybe Tomorrow) by Stelios Kazantzidis
Όλοι με ρωτούν πώς έχω καταντήσει
κι εγώ με απορία τους κοιτώ
κλάψε καρδιά μου σήμερα
τη μαύρη σου τη μοίρα
κλάψε για τον κατήφορο
που στη ζωή μου πήρα
Ίσως αύριο χτυπήσει πικραμένα
του θανάτου η καμπάνα και για μένα
Έχω απ’ τη ζωή παράπονο μεγάλο
δεν ένιωσε τον πόνο μου κανείς
μη με κατηγορήσετε
αφού κανείς δεν ξέρει
πριν πέσω τόσο χαμηλά
τι έχω υποφέρει
Ίσως αύριο χτυπήσει πικραμένα
του θανάτου η καμπάνα και για μένα
What will again happen tomorrow,
For years I’ve asked,
New troubles, new sorrows
Await me, the poor soul.
May tomorrow never dawn,
For new misfortunes
And pain it will bring me.
Everyone awaits tomorrow
With hope in their hearts,
But for me, no hope remains
In this world, no hope at all.
May tomorrow never dawn,
For new misfortunes
And pain it will bring me.
If only you knew, my dear mother, how much I suffer in life,
In this unjust and deceitful world
You’d never have brought a child into it.
May tomorrow never dawn,
For new misfortunes the wicked will give me.
Waiting for tomorrow … sunset behind the Fortezza and the harbour in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Αύριο πάλι (Avrio páli, ‘Tomorrow Again’) is a poem by the Greek poet, translator and lyricist Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992) that has been set to music and recorded by singers such as Maria Farantouri, as well as Grigoris Bithikotsis, Manolis Mitsias, Yannis Parios, Dimitra Galani and Dimitris Mitropanos.
Nikos Gatsos had a profound influence on the post-war generation of Greek poets. His blend of surrealism, symbolism and folk song was widely admired and made him one of the great 20th century Greek poets, alongside his friends the Nobel laureates Odysseas Elytis and George Seferis.
Nikos Gatsos (Νίκος Γκάτσος) was born on 8 December in 1911 in Asea in Arcadia in the Peloponnese, where he finished primary school. He attended secondary school (gymnasio) in Tripoli, and then moved to Athens, where he studied literature, philosophy and history at the University of Athens for two years.
By then, he was familiar with the poetry of Kostis Palamas and Dionysios Solomos, Greek folk songs, and trends in European poetry. In Athens, he became part of the literary circles of the day becoming a lifelong friends of Odysseus Elytis and published some of his poems in the magazines Nea Estia (1931-1932) and Rythmos (1933). He also published literary criticism in Μακεδονικές Ημέρες (Makedonikes Imeres), Ρυθμός (Rythmos), and Νέα Γράμματα (Nea Grammata). He met Odysseus Elytis in 1936, and became his literary ‘brother’ in poetry.
In 1943, Aetos published his long poem ‘Amorgos’, a major contribution to modern Greek poetry and praised combining surrealism and traditional Greek folk poetry motifs. He went on to publish three more poems: ‘Elegeio’ (1946) in Filologika Chronika, ‘The Knight and Death; (Ο ιππότης κι ο θάνατος) (1947), and ‘Song of Old Times’ (Τραγούδι του παλιού καιρού) (1963), dedicated to Seferis, in the magazine Tachydromos.
After World War II, he worked as a translator with the Greek-British Review and as a radio director with Ellinikí Radiofonía. He also began writing lyrics for Manos Hatzidakis, and collaborated with Mikis Theodorakis and other Greek composers. He translated various plays, and his magnum opus was his translation into Greek of the Spanish tragedy Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca.
He was close to the composer Manos Hadjidakis and the singer Nana Mouskouri, and his friends included Philip Sherrard, Peter Levi, Peter Jay and the Limerick-born poet Desmond O’Grady (1935-2014), who translated the poetry of CP Cavafy. He died in Athens on 12 May 1992 at the age of 80.
Αύριο πάλι: Νίκος Γκάτσος
Αύριο πάλι, αύριο πάλι θα 'ρθω να σε βρω
Κρίμα που δεν με πιστεύεις
Κρίμα που μ' αφήνεις μόνο μου να ζω
Αύριο πάλι, αύριο πάλι θα 'ρθω να σου πω
Κρίμα που δεν με πιστεύεις
Κρίμα που δεν ξέρεις πόσο σ' αγαπώ.
Αύριο πάλι, αύριο πάλι θα 'ρθω να σε βρω
Κρίμα που δεν με πιστεύεις
Κρίμα που μ' αφήνεις μόνο μου να ζω
Αύριο πάλι, αύριο πάλι θα 'ρθω να σου πω
Κρίμα που δεν με πιστεύεις
Κρίμα που δεν ξέρεις πόσο σ' αγαπώ
Tomorrow again (translated by Marina Boronina)
Tomorrow again, tomorrow again I will come to find you
It’s a pity that you don’t trust me
It’s a pity that you leave me alone to live
Tomorrow again, tomorrow again I will come to tell you
It’s a pity that you don’t trust me
It’s a pity that you don’t know how I love you.
Yesterday was χθες (chthés); the day before yesterday was προχθές (prochthés); today is σήμερα (simera); tomorrow is αύριο (avrio); the day after tomorrow is μεθαύριο (methávrio).
Yes, of course, αύριο can mean tomorrow. But waiting for tomorrow can sometimes feel like waiting for ever. Relax, sit back, and enjoy it … until tomorrow.
Αύριο.
Tomorrow’s woes … a sign in a taverna in Tsesmes, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
‘My whole life is close to you’ … today celebrated the 100th birthday of the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis
Patrick Comerford
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021), one of the most influential composers in Greece, who was born 100 years ago on 29 July 1925.
A series of concerts, around the globe and throughout Greece this year are marking this centenary, with centenary celebrations paying tribute to Theodorakis, who would have turned 100 today. His work – from the Mauthausen Cycle to film scores to interpretations of Greek folk music and songs – has profoundly shaped and defined Greek music today.
Mikis Theodorakis, composer, conductor, and politician, was born on the island of Chios on 29 July 1925 and died in Athens almost four years ago on 2 September 2021.
As one of the most prominent figures in Greek music, Theodorakis is more relevant than ever and continues to resonate around the world. His music expresses his political values and fused his idealism and his commitment to freedom.
His scores for films such as Zorba the Greek and Electra, his interpretations of classical plays and drama, or his settings for the works of contemporary Greek poets such as Odysseas Elytis, Giorgos Seferis and Yiannis Ritsos, show how Theodorakis catches Greek cultural imaginations, combining Greek traditional music and classical composition, high art and popular culture.
In January 1968, 31 years after Seferis completed ‘Epiphany, 1937’, the composer Mikis Theodorakis conceived of it as a choral piece, Επιφάνια-Αβέρωφ (Epiphania-Averof), naming the cantata after the prison in central in Athens. He had been detained there since August 1967, after the colonels right-wing junta had seized power on 21 April 1967, and was denied the Christmas amnesty extended to many other political prisoners in December 1967.
Gail Holst’s book, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (Amsterdam, 1980), shows that for Theodorakis setting the entire ‘Epiphany, 1937’ to music was a tour de force, his own epiphanic moment in the junta’s jail cells.
Theodorakis worked on the poem as a cantata to be performed with the help of his fellow prisoners. Each evening, while other prisoners listened to the radio in a communal hall from 7:30 to 8:30, Theodorakis used the hour to train his choir of 10 prisoners.
The poem’s first-person-singular refrain Κράτησα τη ζωή μου (Kratêsa tê zôê mou) is translated into English by Keeley and Sherrard as ‘I’ve kept a rein on my life’. It could also be translated as ‘I’ve kept a hold on my life’. In this refrain, Theodorakis heard a multiplicity of voices, the universality of their utterance further enhanced by the composer’s preference for a mixed chorus of both men and women.
This recurring phrase throughout the main part of the poem struck Theodorakis’s sensitivity and curiosity. Seferis’s refrain creates a sense of monotony and repetition and at the same time the sense of one carrying something heavy.
Gail Holst’s book, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (1980), shows that for Theodorakis setting the entire ‘Epiphany, 1937’ to music was a tour de force, his own epiphanic moment in the junta’s jail cells.
The key figure in these concerts and events is Maria Farantouri, who worked closely with Theodorakis for many years and is the most important voice in his oeuvre. She is known for her powerful, soulful and sensitive voice, and she continues to captivate audiences with her interpretations of his work.
Her version of Το γελαστό παιδί (The Laughing Boy) celebrates the uprising in the Athens Polytechnic on 17 November 1973 that led to the downfall of the colonels within a year. The song, composed by Mikis Theodorakis, was first included on the soundtrack of the Costas-Garvas movie Z (1969), and was quickly linked with resistance to the junta.
For Greeks, it is a song about the death of so many young people killed resisting the regime. When the regime was toppled in 1974, Mikis Theodorakis and many singers organised a concert to celebrate the return of democracy to Greece, and Maria Farantouri sang one of the most touching songs of the time.
There was a palpable response when she intentionally changed the original reference to August to the month of November to honour the students killed in November 1973. The original Greek lyrics are by the poet Vassilis Rotas, but they are based on earlier poem by the Irish playwright Brendan Behan.
Some years ago, my friends Paddy Sammon, a former Irish diplomat once based in Athens, and Damian Mac Con Uladh, an Irish journalist from Ballinasloe now based in Corinth, have researched the Irish background to this great Greek classic of resistance to oppression. The original laughing boy in Brendan Behan’s poem is Michael Collins. Theodorakis adapted the Greek translation, and adapted it in the context of Grigoris Lambrakis, the pacifist activist killed by far-right extremists in Greece in the years before the colonels seized power.
Behan adapted the poem in his play The Hostage (1958). The play first came to the attention of Theodorakis while he was living in Paris, and he was inspired to compose a cycle of 16 songs in 1962 with Greek lyrics by Vasilis Rotas (1889-1977).
Rotas’s translation of The Hostage was staged in Athens in 1962 at a time when the Greek civil war was still a taboo topic and left-wing activity was under close police surveillance. The play became a way for people to identify with their struggle against a repressive regime.
Maria Farantouri went into exile after the coup in 1967, and sang this song at solidarity concerts across Europe. ‘It became a hymn not only for the Irish liberation movement, but also for every liberation movement in the world, and Greek democracy,’ she told an RTÉ documentary.
When the junta sent in tanks against protesting students at the Athens Polytechnic on 17 November 1973, killing at least 24 people over a number of days, Maria Farantouri added a couple of stanzas to the song, and changed the date from August to November, deliberately linking the song to that event.
At many of this year’s anniversary concerts, Maria Farantouri is accompanied by Tasis Christoyannis, a distinguished baritone singer, and Alkinoos Ioannidis, a versatile singer, composer and poet from Cyprus, whose style is a mix of folk, classical and rock and who brings a fresh, contemporary dimension to Theodorakis’ repertoire.
Other accompanying musicians and singers include Vassilis Lekkas, Myron Michaelidis, Manolis Mitsias, Yota Negka and Thanassis Voutsas. Their voices highlight the many dimensions of the musical legacy of Theodorakis, although he once said of his work: ‘I like to believe that the bulk of my work – from the simplest song to the most intricate symphonic composition – belongs to a single musical unity.’
The sound of bouzoukis, lutes, and the delicate santouri blend seamlessly with clarinet, violin, and intricately woven orchestral arrangements, creating a musical fusion of tradition and expressive artistry, full of passion and poetry.
‘The Ballad of Mauthausen’, the Holocaust cantata written by Iakovos Kambanellis and Mikis Theodorakis … Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated, on 3 May 1945
During these concerts, Farantouri sings from all periods of Theodorakis’s oeuvre. But the highlight on many evenings is The Ballad of Mauthausen.
Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated at the end of the Holocaust and World War II 80 years ago, on 3 May 1945. The Ballad of Mauthausen (Η Μπαλάντα του Μαουτχάουζεν) is a cantata written by the Greek playwright Iakovos Kambanellis (1922-2011) and Mikis Theodorakis 60 years ago in 1965. It is based on the experiences in Mauthausen of Kambanellis, who wrote four poems that Mikis Theodorakis set to music.
The book and the music were born in an incendiary political and cultural milieu in Greece. Two days after its first performance, all music by Theodorakis was banned from Greek state radio. Within two years, the military had seized power and the colonels silenced Theodorakis and many other voices for seven long years.
For the first time ever, the complete music of Zorba the Greek – the work that in many ways has become the musical soul of Greece – has been performed live, interpreted with the original instruments used in the 1964 recording.
The Oscar-winning film, based on a major work by Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in Greek in 1946 as Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas. Theodorakis wrote the score for the 1964 film that became, perhaps, the best-loved Greek film. It was one of my earliest introductions to Greek culture, music and literature.
Other features on programmes include selections from Odyssey (2006), Theodorakis’ final song cycle, set to the poetry of Kostas Kartelias, include pieces from Ta Lyrika (1976), with poetry by Tasos Livaditis, and Beatrice on Zero Street (1994), with poetry by Dionysis Karatzas – works that belong to the composer’s later lyrical period. The evening also include some of his most loved and well-known songs, drawn from earlier song cycles and set to the verses of great poets and lyricists.
The two concerts in the Megaron Moussikis in Thessaloniki (1 and 2 January) included Theodorakis’ ballet suite Greek Carnival. The two concerts in the Megaron Moussikis, Athens (16 and 17 February) included excepts from Pablo Neruda’s Canto General in its original orchestration for a 15-member ensemble and two choirs.
Two concerts in Xanthi (11 and 12 April) also marked the centenary of the birth of Manos Hadjidakis, when Maria Farantouri and Nikos Kypourgos, two of Manos Hadzidakis’ most important collaborators, discussed his music and his influence on modern Greek music.
A concert in the Pyrgos Vassilissis (Queen’s Tower) in Ilion (30 May) was dedicated to the 100 years since the founding of Ilion.
Other concert venues in Greece have included Chania (13 June) and Iraklion (14 June) in Crete; the Kallimarmaron Stadium in Athens (25 June); Thessaloniki (30 June and 1 July), where Maria Farantouri and Manolis Mitsias sang poems by the Andalusian poet Federico Garcia Lorca, set to music by Theodorakis and other composers; and Thessaly (19 July).
Concerts venues in Greece in the coming weeks include the island of Lefkada (8 August), the Ancient Theatre in Dion (11 August), the Little Theatre in ancient Epidaurus (16 August), Siviris in Chalkidiki (24 August), and Serres (7 September).
International venues so far this year have included a concert in Grand Pera in Istanbul (19 March), when Maria Farantouri was accompanied by the pianist Achilleas Gouastor in a programme that included poems by Kiki Demoula, set to music by Sakis Papademetriou, as well as songs by Theodorakis. There was a concert in Helsinki too on 27 March.
A concert in Bochum, Germany (9 May) included The Ballad of Mauthausen, with a reading and talk that also marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. International concerts later this year are taking place in Düsseldorf (11 October), Rotterdam (13 October) and Lucerne (31 October).
In his music, Theodorakis expressed his political values and fused his idealism and his commitment to freedom. I was in Crete at the time of his funeral, the island was immersed in three days of official mourning and I could see how people were deeply moved emotionally as they watched that funeral on television screens everywhere. In the week after his death, Theodorakis was described by a leading Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, as ‘Greece’s last enduring myth.’
‘The Ballad of Mauthausen’, the Holocaust cantata written by Iakovos Kambanellis and Mikis Theodorakis … Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated, on 3 May 1945
Patrick Comerford
The Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) commemorations next week mark Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 and the end of all German military operations. Yom haShoah, the Jewish world’s annual day of remembrance of the Holocaust, was marked last week (24 April 2025). Wednesday marked the 80th anniversary of Ravenruck (30 April 1945), and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen was marked two weks earlier (15 April 1945).
This weekend also marks the liberation of the concentration camps at Mauthausen and Gusen. The last members of the SS fled the camps on 3 May 1945, and a US Army reconnaissance unit arrived in Gusen and Mauthausen on 5 May. On the following day, the US army finally liberated around 40,000 prisoners in the camps. In both camps they found the bodies of hundreds of detainees who had died in the days before liberation.
Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated at the end of the Holocaust. Mauthausen-Gusen was about 20 km east of Linz in Upper Austria. Unlike Auschwitz, it was not an extermination camp, but countless people were murdered and died there in horrific circumstances. There the Nazis forced their victims to work in a stone quarry, hauling large pieces of rock and stone up the ‘Stairs of Death’ along steep and uneven ramps.
The Jewish prisoners there included Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005), who is remembered for his tireless efforts to bring those responsible for the Holocaust to justice. He survived the Lwów ghetto, concentration camps in Janowska (1941-1944), Kraków-Płaszów (1944) and Gross-Rosen, a death march to Chemnitz, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Mauthausen (1945).
After World War II, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. He played a role in capturing Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960. He died in Vienna at the age of 96 on 20 September 2005.
Other prisoners or detainees in Mauthausen included Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romanies and Spanish republicans. Between 240,000 and 320,000 people, including Jews, intellectuals, and people classified as political ‘undesirables,’ were murdered in Mauthausen.
The Greek playwright Iakovos Kambanellis, author of ‘Mauthausen’ … is regarded by many as the greatest Greek playwright of the 20th century
Over the past week, I have been listening once again to the words and the music of The Ballad of Mauthausen, a cantata written by Iakovos Kambanellis and Mikis Theodorakis 60 years ago in 1965, 20 years after the end of World War II.
The Ballad of Mauthausen (Η Μπαλάντα του Μαουτχάουζεν) is based on the experiences of the Greek playwright Iakovos Kambanellis (Ιάκωβος Καμπανέλλης, 1922-2011), who wrote four poems that Mikis Theodorakis (Μίκης Θεοδωράκης) set to music.
Kambanellis was a poet, playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, and novelist, best known as a screenwriter for films, including Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis. It was first written the script as a play, Stella With the Red Gloves, based on Carmen, but was never produced on the Greek stage because of its sexual frankness. The film, shot in the streets of Athens, follows a singer (Melina Mercouri) who refuses to marry her lover and begins a passionate affair with a football player. The film made a star of Melina Mercouri and boosted Greek cinema’s international reputation.
Kambanellis was born on 2 December 1922 in Hora on the island of Naxos. He was forced to leave school at an early age and to find work after the family moved to Athens, but he continued his studies at an evening technical school. He was arrested in 1942 after attempting to flee Nazi-occupied Greece, and was sent to Mauthausen in Austria, where he spent the rest of World War II.
The ‘Stairs of Death’ in Mauthausen
Kambanellis owed his survival in Mauthausen to the protection of a philhellenic German prisoner who assigned him to the architectural drafting office, where additions to the camp were designed.
Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated in May 1945. Kambanellis was not a Jew, and he was free to return with the other Greek prisoners to Greece. But knowing there were Greek Jews who dreamed of reaching Palestine, he elected to stay on in the camp until the last Greek Jew left.
Interviewed later in life, he said: ‘I don’t want to make myself into a hero. What could I do? I saw the eyes of the sick, of the weak, of the abandoned; could I have said okay, fine, I’m leaving now? I was their friend.” He admitted he was deeply envious of them “because we all went back to an old world and we were scared of it. We couldn’t, after those three years, go back to the world of the past, of before the war. And they went to a new, virgin, country and started a new world in Palestine.’
On his return to Greece, Kambanellis began writing a newspaper column in Athens before turning to the theatre and film.
A recurring feature of his work is the use of multiple, often unexpected voices. He attributed this to the years he spent in Mauthausen, listening to the voices of nameless sufferers. His success as a writer seemed miraculous to him and perhaps contributed to his unique blend of realism and mysticism.
His most successful play, Our Grand Circus, was staged in 1973 at the height of the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece. Weaving history, myth, and the traditional shadow puppet theatre with folk motifs, the play ridicules the heroic view of Greek history favoured by the colonels, rewriting Greek history from a left-wing perspective.
By calling the performances a circus and transforming his bleak view of the regime and of Greek history into a series of amusing vignettes, he escaped the strict censorship of the time. Our Grand Circus broke all box-office records and made Kambanellis a popular symbol of resistance.
He wrote the scripts for about a dozen films and directed two of them. He died in Athens on 29 March 2011. He is regarded by many as the greatest Greek playwright of the 20th century.
Mauthausen, his only novel, is a memoir recalling his experiences in the concentration camp. It was first published 60 years ago in Athens in 1965 and has been translated into English and German. At the same time, he wrote the Mauthausen cantata with a setting by his close friend Mikis Theodorakis, when his publisher suggested that they publish their works together.
The book and the music were born in an incendiary political and cultural milieu in Greece. Two days after its first performance, all music by Theodorakis was banned from Greek state radio. Within two years, the military had seized power and the colonels silenced Theodorakis and many other voices for seven long years.
Kambanellis was inspired by a photograph of an unknown girl which he found in the camp and which he kept with him.
The memoir begins in the camp and the neighbouring villages in the weeks immediately after their liberation. The horrors the inmates have seen and have suffered are recalled by the author and the woman he falls in love with, a Lithuanian Jew, in merciless detail as the lovers exorcise their demons by revisiting the sites of the atrocities they witnessed. When the inmates are gradually repatriated, many of the Jews there wait to find a way to get to Palestine.
The best-known song of all, performed by Maria Farantouri, is the first song, Άσμα Ασμάτων (Asma Asmaton, ‘Song of Songs’), which opens with the words:
Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.
‘My love, how beautiful she is in her everyday dress’.
This first song recalls the poignant questioning of a man who describes how beautiful his beloved is and asks the other inmates if they have seen her. They tell him they have seen her on a long march, standing on large square with a number on her arm and a yellow star on her heart. Maria Farantouri hauntingly sings the repeated line: ‘No-one knows how beautiful my beloved was.’<’br />
This song maintains the poetic structure of the Biblical Song of Songs, until the chilling line, coming as if in response to ‘have you seen him whom my soul loves,’ echoes with the question: ‘Young girls of Mauthausen, Young girls of Belsen, Have you seen my love?’ and the answer ‘We saw her in the frozen square, A number in her white hand And a yellow star on her heart.’
The second song, O Αντώνης (O Antonis, ‘Adonis’) is also known from the score of the film Z. This song tells the story of a Jew who collapses on the ‘Stairs of Death’ at the base of the quarry and is shot by the guard who then orders the Greek prisoner Antonis to lift a double burden or he too will be shot.
Antonis lifts this second rock and defiantly walks on with it. In this song we also hear the stairs being depicted in the introduction to every couplet.
The third song, Ο Δραπέτης (O Drapetis, The Fugitive), is the story of a prisoner who escapes the camp but cannot find refuge in the hostile surroundings. He is captured again and is shot.
The introduction to this song depicts the landscape of Austria with a Mozart-like melody.
In the last song, Όταν τελειώσει Ο Πόλεμος (Otan Teliossi O Polemos, When the War Ends), the poet addresses one of the girls he sees standing by the fence of the female camp and asks whether they can come together when the war is finally over, kiss at the gate, make love in the quarry and in the gas chamber until the shadow of death is driven away.
The song ends with an epilogue, returning to the first song and ending with the plaintive words that no-one knows how beautiful my beloved was.
The instrumentation includes bouzoukis, spinet, electric guitar, baglamas, flute, bass and percussion, all helping to create a desolate yet beautiful atmosphere.
Greek popular music in the 1960s became known all over the world thanks to the scores by two composers in particular, Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, for two popular movies, Never on Sunday and Zorba the Greek. Both worked in the laika tradition of Greek popular music influenced by European melodic form. Each had his own muse or angel in a female singer who interpreted his music – for Hadjidakis she was Nana Mouskouri, for Theodorakis she was Maria Farandouri.
The recording of The Ballad of Mauthausen marked the beginning of one of the most fruitful collaborations in Greek music. Mikis Theodorakis discovered the singer Maria Farantouri when she was a 16-year-old young singer. He is said to have told her at the time: ‘You will be my high priestess.’ Her unique dramatic voice and style complements his music, and it is so productive a partnership that it has lasted for half a century.
Listening to The Ballad of Mauthausen, it is difficult to grasp that this is the voice of a teenager who has just left school, for she sings with a raw force and energy that reaches into the heart and soul with intensity.
Farandouri and Theodorakis had a life-long musical collaboration, intensified by their shared political activism. This album is both a classic and the high point of that collaboration.
Farandouri’s voice is a marvel of depth and beauty, and the songs are among the best by Theodorakis. The power and majesty of his music combined and the soaring beauty of her voice make The Ballad of Mauthausen a profound testament to the power of human resistance to tyranny and oppression.
The most accessible recording by Maria Farantouri (Μαρία Φαραντούρη) is complemented by a cycle of six songs for Farantouri, named ‘Farantouri’s Cycle’:
5, Κουράστηκα να σε κρατώ (Kourastika na se Krato, ‘I Am Tired of Holding Your Hand’).
6, Ο ίσκιος έπεσε βαρύς (O Iskios Epesse Varis, ‘The Shadow is so heavy’).
7, Πήρα τους δρόμους τ' ουρανού (Tous Thromous T’Ouranou, ‘I Took to the Streets of Heaven’).
8, Στου κόσμου την ανηφοριά (Stou Kosmou Tin Aniforya, ‘The Uphill Road’).
9, Το Εκκρεμές (To Ekremes, ‘The Pendulum’).
10, Τ' όνειρο καπνός (Tóniro Kapnos, ‘Dreams Go up in Smoke’).
The Ballad of Mauthausen is a difficult poem to read and a difficult cantata to listen to, and yet is compelling.
It is difficult to realise how a poet could be inspired to write about love in the all-encompassing atmosphere of evil and death in a concentration camp.
Yet this is the dream of love, and love is the way a great soul not only survives such terror, but finds meaning and triumphs over it.
A sketch by Simon Wiesenthal in Mauthausen for ‘Café As’ … part of a recent exhibition in the Jewish Museum, Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Άσμα Ασμάτων
Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.
Κοπέλες του Άουσβιτς,
του Νταχάου κοπέλες,
μην είδατε την αγάπη μου;
Την είδαμε σε μακρινό ταξίδι,
δεν είχε πια το φόρεμά της
ούτε χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου,
η χαϊδεμένη από τη μάνα της
και τ’ αδελφού της τα φιλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.
Κοπέλες του Μαουτχάουζεν,
κοπέλες του Μπέλσεν,
μην είδατε την αγάπη μου;
Την είδαμε στην παγερή πλατεία
μ’ ένα αριθμό στο άσπρο της το χέρι,
με κίτρινο άστρο στην καρδιά.
Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου,
η χαϊδεμένη από τη μάνα της
και τ’ αδελφού της τα φιλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.
Ο Αντώνης
Εκεί στη σκάλα την πλατιά
στη σκάλα των δακρύων
στο Βίνερ Γκράμπεν το βαθύ
το λατομείο των θρήνων
Εβραίοι κι αντάρτες περπατούν
Εβραίοι κι αντάρτες πέφτουν,
βράχο στη ράχη κουβαλούν
βράχο σταυρό θανάτου.
Εκεί ο Αντώνης τη φωνή
φωνή, φωνή ακούει
ω καμαράντ, ω καμαράντ
βόηθα ν’ ανέβω τη σκάλα.
Μα κει στη σκάλα την πλατιά
και των δακρύων τη σκάλα
τέτοια βοήθεια είναι βρισιά
τέτοια σπλαχνιά είν’ κατάρα.
Ο Εβραίος πέφτει στο σκαλί
και κοκκινίζει η σκάλα
κι εσύ λεβέντη μου έλα εδω
βράχο διπλό κουβάλα.
Παίρνω διπλό, παίρνω τριπλό
μένα με λένε Αντώνη
κι αν είσαι άντρας, έλα εδώ
στο μαρμαρένιο αλώνι.
Ο Δραπέτης
Ο Γιάννος Μπερ απ’ το βοριά
το σύρμα δεν αντέχει.
Κάνει καρδιά, κάνει φτερά,
μες στα χωριά του κάμπου τρέχει.
«Δώσε, κυρά, λίγο ψωμί
και ρούχα για ν’ αλλάξω.
Δρόμο να κάνω έχω μακρύ,
πάν’ από λίμνες να πετάξω.»
Όπου διαβεί κι όπου σταθεί
φόβος και τρόμος πέφτει.
Και μια φωνή, φριχτή φωνή
«κρυφτείτε απ’ τον δραπέτη.»
«Φονιάς δεν είμαι, χριστιανοί,
θεριό για να σας φάω.
Έφυγα από τη φυλακή
στο σπίτι μου να πάω.»
Α, τι θανάσιμη ερημιά
στου Μπέρτολτ Μπρεχτ τη χώρα.
Δίνουν το Γιάννο στους Ες Ες,
για σκότωμα τον πάνε τώρα.
Όταν τελειώσει Ο Πόλεμος
Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.
Χαρά του κόσμου, έλα στην πύλη
να φιληθούμε μες στο δρόμο
ν’ αγκαλιαστούμε στην πλατεία.
Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.
Στο λατομείο ν’ αγαπηθούμε
στις κάμαρες των αερίων
στη σκάλα, στα πολυβολεία.
Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.
Έρωτα μες στο μεσημέρι
σ’ όλα τα μέρη του θανάτου
ώσπου ν’ αφανιστεί η σκιά του.
Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.
The Song of Songs
How beautiful she is, my love
in her everyday dress
and the little comb on her hair
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful
Girls of Auschwitz
Dachau’s girls
have you seen by chance my love?
We saw her leaving on a long voyage
she was no longer wearing her dress
nor a little comb on her hair.
How beautiful she is, my love
the one pampered by her mother
and her brother’s kisses
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful
Girls of Auschwitz
Dachau’s girls
have you seen by chance my love?
We saw her in the frigid town square
with a number stamped on her white hand
with a yellow star pinned by her heart
How beautiful she is, my love
the one pampered by her mother
and her brother’s kisses
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful
Adonis
There on the wide staircase
the staircase of tears
in Wiener Graben’s deep stone-
quarry of cries and lamentation
Jews and partisans stroll by
Jews and partisans fall down
a rock they carry on their back
a rock a burden cross of death
There comes Adonis and a voice
a voice, a voice he hears
oh comrade, oh comrade,
help me to climb these stairs
But there on the wide staircase
that staircase of tears
such help is taken as insult
such a compassion is a curse
The Jewish man falls on the step
and red bleeds through the staircase
and you young lad come over here
a double rock you’ll carry
A double rock I’ll take, a triple
my name, they call me Adonis
come and meet me if you are a man
at the marble threshing circle.
The Fugitive
Janos Ber from the North
can’t stand the barbed wire.
He takes heart, takes wing
runs through the villages of the valley.
Ma’am, give me a piece of bread
and clothes to change into –
I have a long way to go
and lakes to fly across.
Wherever he goes or stops
fear and terror strike
and a cry, a terrible cry:
Hide from the fugitive!
Christians, I’m no murderer,
no beast come to eat you.
I left the prison
to go back to my home.
Ah, what deathly loneliness
in this land of Berthold Brecht!
They hand Janos over to the SS
They’re taking him, now, to be killed.
When the War is Over
Girl with the weeping eyes,
Girl with the frozen hands.
Forget me not when the war is over.
Joy of the world. come to the gate
So that we could embrace in the street.
So that we could kiss in the square.
So that we could make love in the quarry.
In the gas chambers,
On the staircase, in the observation post.
Love in the middle of noon
In all the corners of death
’Til its shadow will be no more.
Girl with the weeping eyes,
Girl with the frozen hands.
Forget me not when the war is over.
• Maria Farantouri, who is on a tour marking the 100th anniversary of the death of Mikis Theodorakis, is taking part in a concert in Schauspielhaus in Bochum, Germany next Friday (9 May 2025). The programme that includes ‘The Ballad of Mauthausen’, other songs, readings and a talk. The concert marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and she is accompanied by the pianist Henning Schmiedt.
‘But where did you wander / All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?’ (Odysseas Elytis, Marina on the Rocks) … rocks and the sea at sunset behind the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on images for full-screen viewing)
Patrick Comerford
The journey to Rethymnon from Iraklion last night, along the 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 Fortezza 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.
Odysseus Elytis was born in Iraklion in 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
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.
Giorgos Seferis is a major figure in Greek literature and in 1963 became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature
Patrick Comerford
TS Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’, which I was discussing yesterday, was written in 1927 after he joined the Church of England and is one of the five poems in his Ariel Poems published in 1930. The poem is truly a sermon in poem, and is one of the great works of English poetry in the 20th century.
Another Epiphany poem that comes to mind at this time of year is ‘Epiphany, 1937’, is a poem written in 1937 by Giorgos Seferis, a major figure in Greek literature who became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature in 1963.
Seferis’s poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ has had a lasting influence on Greek culture and identity. It was part of Epiphany, a collection that inspired the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis 30 years later to write a cantata, with songs that are still popular in Greece. When the poem was set to music as an cantata or choral work by Theodorakis, ‘I Kept Hold of My Life’, it became an expression of resistance to the colonels’ junta from 1967 to 1974.
Seferis’s poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ and its setting by Theodorakis, continue to be major important and influential cultural works in Greece, and Theodorakis has ensured that the lyrics are widely-known and are regularly performed, in his choral adaptation or setting Κράτησα τη ζωή μου (Kratêsa tê zôê mou, ‘I Kept Hold of My Life’. One of the most moving performances brings together the voice of Maria Farantouri and the jazz instrumentation of Charles Lloyd.
A diplomatic assignment in London for George Seferis influenced the direction of his poetic creativity and marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship between Eliot and Seferis, who translated the works of both Eliot and Ezra Pound into Greek.
George Seferis (1900-1971) was born Giorgos Seferiadis (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης) in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Asia Minor in 1900. He went to school in Smyrna and then to the Gymnasium in Athens. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, he studied law at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He returned to Athens in 1925 and joined the Foreign Ministry the following year. He had a long and successful diplomatic career, that began with postings in England (1931-1934), where he was introduced to Eliot and Pound, and Albania (1936-1938), where he wrote ‘Epiphany, 1937.’
Seferis moved to Crete with the Free Greek Government during World War II, and then into exile in Egypt, South Africa and Italy. Meanwhile, in 1941 he married Marika Zannou, the mother of two young daughters from her previous marriage to Andreas Londos.
He returned to liberated Athens in 1944. He continued to work in the Foreign Ministry, followed by diplomatic postings in Ankara (1948-1950), London (1951-1953) and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953-1956). He was back in London again as the Greek Ambassador from 1957 to 1961, his last post before he retired to Athens.
After the colonels’ coup in 1967, he went into voluntary seclusion and many of his poems were banned, including the musical versions written and arranged by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.
His poem ‘Denial’ (Άρνηση), first published in 1931 in his collection Turning Point (Στροφή, Strophe), became an anthem of resistance to the colonels. He died on 20 September 1971 and ‘Denial’ (Άρνηση) was sung by the crowds lining the streets of Athens at his funeral. He had become a popular hero for his resistance to the regime. His widow Marika cut off her hair and flung it into his grave.
Seferis’s exclusive use of demotic, or common, Greek as his language of choice earned him a privileged place among his generation of Greek poets, while his wide travels provide the backdrop and colour for much of Seferis’s writing.
As well as Strophe (1931), his early poetry includes E Sterna (The Cistern, 1932), and Mythistorema (1935). Later collections include Tetradio Gymnasmaton (Book of Exercises, 1940), Emerologio Katastromatos (Logbook I, 1940), Emerologio Katastromatos B (Logbook II, 1944), Kihle (Thrush, 1947), Emerologio Katastromatos Γ (Logbook III, 1955) and Tria Krypha Poiemata (Three Secret Poems, 1966).
Seferis first became acquainted with Eliot in London in Christmas 1931, when he found a copy of the poem ‘Marina’ in a bookshop on Oxford Street and was struck by its Mediterranean feeling. He published his translation of Eliot’s poetry in 1936 in The Waste Land and Other Poems, prefaced by his first essay in print, ‘Introduction to TS Eliot’, itself a major event in modern Greek literature. Seferis also translated WB Yeats, DH Lawrence, Ezra Pound and WH Auden.
In 1963, Seferis became the first Greek to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He received several honorary doctorates from Cambridge (1960), Oxford (1964), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1964), and Princeton (1965).
The icon of the Baptism of Christ in the new iconostasis in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford … the Baptism of Christ is the main Epiphany theme in the Orthodox Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
I believe his poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ shows strong influence from Eliot’s Epiphany poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’. In the Orthodox Church, the Baptism of Christ is principal theme in celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany. While Eliot’s poem draws on the Epiphany theme of the Visit of Magi, these two poems share similar imagery, although Seferis is writing in a secular, non-religious way.
The poem starts by addressing a second-person singular, as a shared reminiscence of a locus amoenus, with the sea flowering and the mountains in the moon’s waning (verses1-5).
As the reader proceeds from this introductory section to the main part of the poem, summer’s eutopia gradually yields to an icier landscape, culminating with the terse third-person closure: ‘The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.’
The whole poem can be read as the personal, almost internal, voice of a lone walker, traveller, or hiker who at times encounters other, equally lonely, walking figures during his journey. The speaker is travelling among yellow trees, climbing the mountains, his road having no end, having no relief, at times meeting a woman bent as she walks giving her child the breast, or a man who walks blindly across the snows of silence.
A second-person singular shows up at key positions of this main section, following or preceding the recurring phrase ‘I’ve kept a rein on my life.’ Who is this second-person singular? The identity seems to fluctuate along the flow of the poem, at times appearing as the distant nostalgic memory of the beloved, at other times as an alternative to the speaker’s own persona, now addressing himself in the second person
One eventually realises that even if the whole poem is nothing but the utterance of a first-person speaker in love, this is love experienced in sheer loneliness.
With the date 1937, Seferis offers a landmark in his own life. In that year, he was the Greek consul in Korçë (Κορυτσά, Korytsa) in south-east Albania, near the border with Greece. It had once been one of the wealthiest communities in northern Epirus, Greek had remained the language of business and trade, and it was briefly held by Greece during the opening years of World War I.
During the summer before his posting to Korçë, Seferis had fallen deeply in love with Marika Zannou, the wife of Andreas Londos, a former naval officer, and the mother of two girls. Their affair began during mutual holidays on the island of Aegina, but was cut short when Seferis returned to Athens in September 1936 and found he had been appointed to Albania. He endured the winter of 1936-1937 in isolation, writing several times a week to his beloved Maro, then still unhappily attached to Andreas Londos back in Greece.
Perhaps ‘Epiphany, 1937’ marks an epiphanic landmark in the writer’s his own poetic itinerary. The word epiphany (ἐπιφάνεια, epiphania) has very specific reference points too. Epiphanies are moments of revelation. But linking this noun with the year in the title ‘Epiphany, 1937’ also seems to refer to the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, when the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates the baptism of Jesus by Saint John in the Jordan.
The continuing presence of water in Epiphany evokes this feast, where immersion in water is combined with bestowing identity on the person being baptised. January also provides the setting for the ice-covered landscape of the main part of the poem.
In classical Greek literature, epiphanies are associated with acquiring an authoritative poetic identity. In Hesiod’s Theogony, for example, the anonymous shepherd pasturing his flock on Mount Helicon appears in his own poem with the name Hesiod only at the moment when the Muses’ epiphany to him is being narrated.
In January 1968, 31 years after Seferis completed ‘Epiphany, 1937’, the composer Mikis Theodorakis conceived of it as a choral piece, Επιφάνια-Αβέρωφ (Epiphania-Averof), naming the cantata after the prison in central in Athens. He had been detained there since August 1967, after the colonels right-wing junta had seized power on 21 April 1967, and was denied the Christmas amnesty extended to many other political prisoners in December 1967.
Gail Holst’s book, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (Amsterdam, 1980), shows that for Theodorakis setting the entire ‘Epiphany, 1937’ to music was a tour de force, his own epiphanic moment in the junta’s jail cells.
Theodorakis worked on the poem as a cantata to be performed with the help of his fellow prisoners. Each evening, while other prisoners listened to the radio in a communal hall from 7:30 to 8:30, Theodorakis used the hour to train his choir of 10 prisoners.
The poem’s first-person-singular refrain Κράτησα τη ζωή μου (Kratêsa tê zôê mou) is translated into English by Keeley and Sherrard as ‘I’ve kept a rein on my life’. It could also be translated as ‘I’ve kept a hold on my life’. In this refrain, Theodorakis heard a multiplicity of voices, the universality of their utterance further enhanced by the composer’s preference for a mixed chorus of both men and women.
This recurring phrase throughout the main part of the poem struck Theodorakis’s sensitivity and curiosity. Seferis’ refrain creates a sense of monotony and repetition and at the same time the sense of one carrying something heavy.
Epiphany, 1937, by George Seferis, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard:
The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning
the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels
the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day
and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair
golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.
I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling
among yellow trees in driving rain
on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,
no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.
I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line
a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist
on the sand of the past summer perhaps
they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear
an alien voice around the frozen lake.
The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman
bent as she walks giving her child the breast.
I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered
plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing
neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor
hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.
I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence
I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers
like the breathing of the cypress tree that night
like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles
like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.
I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters
under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells
groping with my veins for those veins that escape me
there where the water-lilies end and that man
who walks blindly across the snows of silence.
I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you
heavy drops on green leaves, on your face
in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir
striking a swan dead in its white wings
living trees and your eyes riveted.
This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try
to recall your childhood years, those who left, those
lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,
however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop
under the harsh branches of the plane trees there
where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still
and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,
the road has no relief;
I’ve kept a rein on my life.
The snow
and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.
Κρατησα Τη Ζωη Μου, Γιωργοσ Σεφερησ: Επιφανια
Τ' ανθισμένο πέλαγο και τα βουνά στη χάση του φεγγαριού
η μεγάλη πέτρα κοντά στις αραποσυκιές και τ' ασφοδίλια
το σταμνί πού δεν ήθελε να στερέψει στο τέλος της μέρας
και το κλειστό κρεββάτι κοντά στα κυπαρίσσια και τα μαλλιά σου
χρυσά· τ' άστρα του Κύκνου κι εκείνο τ' άστρο ο Αλδεβαράν.
Κράτησα τη ζωή μου,
κράτησα τη ζωή μου ταξιδεύοντας
ανάμεσα σε κίτρινα δέντρα κατά το πλάγιασμα της βροχής
σε σιωπηλές πλαγιές φορτωμένες με τα φύλλα της οξυάς,
καμμιά φωτιά στην κορυφή τους· βραδυάζει.
Κράτησα τη ζωή μου· στ' αριστερό σου χέρι μια γραμμή
μια χαρακιά στο γόνατό σου, τάχα να υπάρχουν
στην άμμο τού περασμένου καλοκαιριού τάχα
να μένουν εκεί πού φύσηξε ό βοριάς καθώς ακούω
γύρω στην παγωμένη λίμνη την ξένη φωνή.
Τα πρόσωπα πού βλέπω δε ρωτούν, μήτε η γυναίκα
περπατώντας σκυφτή, βυζαίνοντας το παιδί της.
Ανεβαίνω τα βουνά· μελανιασμένες λαγκαδιές· o χιονισμένος
κάμπος, ώς πέρα ο χιονισμένος κάμπος, τίποτε δε ρωτούν,
μήτε o καιρός κλειστός σε βουβά ερμοκκλήσια, μήτε
τα χέρια που απλώνονται για να γυρέψουν, κι οι δρόμοι.
Κράτησα τη ζωή μου ψιθυριστά μέσα στην απέραντη σιωπή,
δεν ξέρω πια να μιλήσω, μήτε να συλλογιστώ· ψίθυροι
σαν την ανάσα του κυπαρισσιού τη νύχτα εκείνη
σαν την ανθρώπινη φωνή της νυχτερινής θάλασσας στα χαλίκια
σαν την ανάμνηση της φωνής σου λέγοντας «ευτυχία».
Κλείνω τα μάτια γυρεύοντας το μυστικό συναπάντημα των νερών
κάτω απ τον πάγο το χαμογέλιο τής θάλασσας τα κλειστά πηγάδια
ψηλαφώντας με τις δικές μου φλέβες τις φλέβες εκείνες πού μου ξεφεύγουν
εκεί πού τελειώνουν τα νερολούλουδα κι αυτός ό άνθρωπος
πού βηματίζει τυφλός πάνω στο χιόνι τής σιωπής.
Κρατησα τη Ζωη Μου -Β
Κράτησα τη ζωή μου, μαζί του, γυρεύοντας το νερό πού σ' αγγίζει
στάλες βαρειές πάνω στα πράσινα φύλλα, στο πρόσωπό σου,
μέσα στον άδειο κήπο, στάλες στην ακίνητη δεξαμενή,
βρίσκοντας έναν κύκνο νεκρό μέσα στα κάτασπρα φτερά του,
δέντρα ζωντανά και τα μάτια σου προσηλωμένα.
Ο δρόμος αυτός δεν τελειώνει, δεν έχει αλλαγή, όσο γυρεύεις
να θυμηθείς τα παιδικά σου χρόνια, εκείνους πού έφυγαν, εκείνους
πού χάθηκαν μέσα στον ύπνο· τους πελαγίσιους τάφους,
όσο ζητάς τα σώματα πού αγάπησες να σκύψουν
κάτω από τα σκληρά κλωνάρια τών πλατάνων εκεί
πού στάθηκε μια αχτίδα τού ήλιου γυμνωμένη
και σκίρτησε ένας σκύλος και φτεροκόπησε ή καρδιά σου,
ο δρόμος δεν έχει αλλαγή·
Κράτησα τη ζωή μου.
Το χιόνι και το νερό παγωμένο στα πατήματα των αλόγων.
• Copyright acknowledgement: George Seferis, ‘Epiphany, 1937’ from Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (trans and edit), George Seferis, Collected Poems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, revised ed, 1995).
Two refugee boys from Northern Cyprus huddled in a tent … today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. It is difficult to grasp that, after 50 years, a member state of the European still remains divided and part occupied, and that Nicosia, a European capital city, remains divided.
The memory of the invasion of Cyprus is still sharp in my mind. A few months later, I joined the staff of The Irish Times, and Cyprus later became one of the places I wrote about on a regular basis when I was a journalist on the Foreign Desk.
I first visited Cyprus earlier in 1987, 13 years after the invasion, and the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply. I stayed in Limassol at the end of the summer season that year, but travelled throughout the island, visiting Paphos, Larnaca. Ayia Napa, the RAF base at Akrotiri, Mount Olympos, the Troodos Mountains above Nicosia, and the grave of Archbishop Makarios in a tomb he had designed himself on Throni Hill, 3 km from Kykko Monastery.
Archbishop Makarios was the spiritual and political head of his people, and in the late 1950s he was a firm supporter of both enosis or full union with Greece and the armed guerrillas in EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) led by George Grivas.
After Cypriot independence, Archbishop Makarios became President of Cyprus in 1960. He believed Cyprus was too close to Turkey and that enosis was a dangerous demand. Turkey was much closer than Greece, with the Turkish coast a mere 40 miles away. But relations between both Athens and Ankara deteriorated, and EOKA B was formed to continue fighting for enosis, with daily kidnappings and murders.
The Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority remained polarised, and the colonels who had seized power in Athens in 1967 were determined to force enosis on Cyprus.
The presidential palace was attacked by Soviet-made tanks on 16 July 1974 and set on fire. The coup plotters claimed the president had been killed, but he survived the fourth attempt to murder him by escaping by the back door of the palace with his bodyguards.
He was spirited away to safety in Paphos, where he was born. From there, a British helicopter took him to the RAF base at Akrotiri and he was then flown to London and New York, where he addressed the UN Security Council on 19 July.
Meanwhile, the new Turkish prime minister Bülent Ecevit – a translator of TS Eliot into Turkish – warned the regime in Athens that unless the junta immediately climbed down and Cyprus reverted to the previous state of affairs, including restoration of Archbishop Makarios, Turkish military would intervene.
The colonels installed Nikos Sampson, a former EOKA hitman, as an acting, puppet president. Sampson had once been a reporter for the Cyprus Times but was also a target spotter for EOKA, and had spent time in Wandsworth Prison.
Cyprus had a ¬sizeable Turkish Cypriot minority, and the Turkish Cypriot leader was Rauf Denktash, a London-trained lawyer. Turkey began Operation Attila shortly after daybreak on 20 July 1974, with an air and sea assault, and Turkish ¬paratroopers were dropped to reinforce the Turkish Cypriot militia in the northern sector of Nicosia.
The fighting dragged on for almost a month, and reliable sources estimate between 4,500 and 6,000 Greek Cypriots were killed, wounded or missing, believed dead, and between 1,500 to 3,800 dead Turkish Cypriots. The refugee figures estimated 200,000 Greek Cypriots moved south and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots moved north.
There were countless broken ceasefires and failed rounds of peace talks in Geneva. In the last hours of the fighting, a Turkish tank attack captured Famagusta, the only deep-water port in Cyprus. The Ledra Palace on the Green Line in Nicosia became part of the buffer zone UN troops Canadians tried to establish between combatants.
Sampson resigned on 23 July and the presidency passed to Glafkos Klerides. Archbishop Makarios remained in London for five months. Meanwhile, the military policies and oppressive actions of the regime eventually brought down the colonels’ junta in Athens, and democracy was restored.
Archbishop Makarios secured international recognition for his administration as the legitimate government of the whole island, he returned to Cyprus and was restored as President on 7 December 1974. He was still in office when he died on 3 August 1977 aged 64.
Turkey occupied over one-third of the island, although the Turkish Cypriot community is less than one-fifth of the population, and a puppet state was set when the Turkish-occupied sector declared itself the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus in 1975. The name was changed to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.
When I had visited Cyprus in 1987, the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw. I visited both Greece and Turkey constantly in the years that followed, and continued to follow Cypriot politics closely.
After the Turkish invasion of the rock islet of Imia in the Aegean in 1996, I spent some days with the Greek navy in the sea around Rhodes, Kos, Kalimnos and other, smaller islands, and was taken to see Imia for myself despite Turkish threats to both Greek and international journalists, and was interviewed for a Greek television news channel. During those tense weeks and month, Greeks were reminded of the invasion of Cyprus and were in their fears that Turkish aggression is an ever-present threat.
That year, I also took part in a high-level conference organised by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Hellenic Centre in London on the Cypriot ambitions for EU membership, and analysed these hopes in a feature in The Irish Times.
On visits to Greek military headquarters in Athens, I noticed how the names of senior figures involved in the colonels’ regime and in plotting the failed coup in Cyprus had been wiped off the honour boards, their spaces left blank as an indication of the ignominy in which they are held.
The memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply when I returned to Cyprus in 2000, spending Orthodox Holy Week and the Easter season on a working visit in Nicosia. I climbed the viewing platforms, crossed the Green Line at the Ledra Palace, visited churches, mosques and a Sufi tekke, met politicians, journalists, econmists, bankers, business leaders, and elderly men who had fought in EOKA, and spoke to UN peacekeepers. I also interviewed Clive Handford, the Anglican Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf. In a personal touch, they prayed for me in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral in Nicosia, as I prepared for my ordination a few weeks later.
I wrote features in The Irish Times on Cypriot politics and economics, and an ‘Irishman’s Diary’ on the Irish links with Cyprus, including Sir Garnet Wolseley from Dublin who was the first British High Commissioner of Cyprus, and the Anglican chaplain in Ayia Napa, the Revd Robin Brookes, a former Rector of Drumcondra. I wrote features too on Church life in Cyprus for the Church of Ireland Gazette and diocesan magazines.
The following year, I reported on the election in Cyprus in 2001 for The Irish Times, and I interviewed Dr George Vassiliou, a former President of Cyprus (1988-1993) who was the Chief Negotiator for Cyprus during the talks on accession to the EU from 1998 to 2003.
During that Easter working visit to Cyprus in 2000, I bought a limited edition prints that were hanging on the walls and on the stairs of my home in Knocklyon, Dublin, for many year.
One is a bright, colourful picture of a bride preparing for her wedding. The other is a print showing two small boys, probably brothers, the older boy protecting his younger brother, who may have been blinded. They are Greek Cypriot refugees from Northern Cyprus, huddled in a tent after fleeing the Turkish invasion in 1974.
At the time I bought this print in Nicosia, I was hurt and broken as it reminded me of my own two sons back in Dublin, and I fretted and prayed about their future.
After framing the print, I came across a copy of the original photograph of the two boys who inspired this print or painting. It is still heart-breaking. I wonder whatever happened to these boys, who must now be in their 60s, and I still pray for them.
But the plight of the refugees in the Mediterranean still lives with us, and that image continue to remind me to speak up today for the refugees and to condemn our poor response to their plight and needs.
A bride prepares for her wedding in Cyprus … a limited edition print bought in Nicosia in 2000 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
