Turning to a war-time poem by George Seferis that recalls ‘calm’, ‘beautiful’, ‘bleeding’ Crete, but a ‘strong, innocent island’

The old harbour of Chania … George Seferis fled Athens to Chania in 1941 and wrote ‘Days of June ’41’ as he fled from Crete into exile (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In recent weeks, I have been a series of occasional blog postings and photographs of a dozen modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki, the second city of Greece. In a posting on Thursday ( October 06), I looked at a marble monument that honours Sokratis Karantinos (1906-1979), a prominent theatre director and critic who was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Northern Greece (NTNG) in the 1960s.

The inscriptions on the sculpture include a dedication to Sokratis Karantinos and a poignant verse by the Nobel Prize winning poet George Seferis:

Θυμότανε κανείς γέροντες δασκάλους που μας άφησαν ορφανούς
One remembered old teachers who left us orphaned

This haunting quotation is from the closing stanza of ‘The Last Day’, a powerful poem written by Seferis in Athens in February 1939. The line expresses a profound sense of spiritual and cultural abandonment. For Seferis, the ‘old teachers’ (or elders/spiritual leaders) represent the guiding authority of tradition, wisdom, and moral stability. By leaving the younger generation ‘orphaned’ they left them without direction in a broken world.

The poem was written on the brink of World War II and during the oppressive Metaxas dictatorship and captures a pervasive sense of powerlessness, impending doom, and total annihilation. The line quoted on the sculpture highlights a deep disappointment with the previous generation, whose cowardice, political missteps, or silence left ordinary people completely vulnerable to the oncoming historical catastrophe.

George Seferis (1900-1971) was a poet, Nobel laureate and diplomat, and many of his poems became popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s when they were set to music by the composer Mikis Theodorakis and sung by artists like Maria Farantouri, turning his poems into songs of protest and resistance.

In recent days, I have also turned to his poem ‘Days of June ’41’, written by Seferis 85 years ago as he fled first to Crete in 1941 during World War II, and then went into exile in Alexandria and South Africa. This poem, later included in his collection Logbook II (Ημερολόγιο καταστρώματος Β), is datelined ‘Crete – Alexandria – South Africa, May-September ’41’.

The poem is set primarily in Alexandria but in it Seferis expresses his pain for Crete and the longing of an exile:

After the Germans had taken Crete

The new moon came out over Alexandria
with the old moon in her arms
while we were walking towards the Gate of the Sun
in the heart’s darkness – three friends.

However, unlike many other well-known poems by Seferis, ‘Days of June ’41’ was never set to music by Theodorakis and so never recorded by Maria Farantouri. But it is on the curriculum in second level schools and is well-known among many people in Crete because of its references to the island.

Giorgos Seferis is a major figure in Greek literature and in 1963 became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature

George Seferis (Γιώργος Σεφέρης) 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 London (1931-1934), where he was introduced to Eliot and Pound, and Albania (1936-1938), where he first met his future wife Marika Zannou.

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 Maria (‘Maro’) Zannou, the mother of two young daughters from her previous marriage to Andreas Londos.

He returned to liberated Athens in 1944, and continued to work in the Foreign Ministry, with 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.

In 1963, Seferis became the first Greek writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is one of the two Greek poets to have been honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature – the other poet is Odysseas Elytis (1911-1996), who was born in Iraklion in Crete, and together Seferis and Elytis can be credited with the modernisation of Greek literature.He received several honorary doctorates from Cambridge (1960), Oxford (1964), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1964), and Princeton (1965).

After the colonels’ coup in 1967, Seferis went into voluntary seclusion and many of his poems were banned by the regime, including the musical versions written and arranged by 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 was buried in the First Cemetery in Athens. ‘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 Maria cut off her hair and flung it into his grave.

He has commemorative blue plaques on two of his homes in London – the Greek Ambassador’s residence at 51 Upper Brook Street, off Grosvenor Square, and 7 Sloane Avenue.

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 his writing.

As well as Strophe (1931), his early poems include 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 TS 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 moment in modern Greek literature. Seferis also translated WB Yeats, DH Lawrence, Ezra Pound and WH Auden.

The name of Tsouderon Street in Rethymnon honours a former Greek prime minister who was born in the town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Seferis arrived in Chania from Athens in April 1941 as German Nazi forces were sweeping through the Greek mainland. As the Nazi army advanced towards Athens in 1941, the Greek Prime Minister of the day, Alexandros Koryzis, died by suicide on 18 April. He was succeeded as Prime Minister on 21 April by Emmanuel Tsouderos (Εμμανουήλ Τσουδερός) (1882-1956), who was born in Rethymnon in Crete.

A day later, a newly-married Seferis arrived in Crete on 22 April 1941 as part of the team preparing the way for a Free Greek government that would go into exile. As the army command prepared to capitulate, a defiant and heroic Tsouderos fled from Athens to Crete with King George II on 29 April 1941. Back in his native Crete, Tsouderos reorganised the Greek forces to resist the Germans.

In Chania, Seferis stayed at the Hôtel Ellas (Hotel Hellas). He was the secretary to Tsouderos’s Minister of Press, Emmanouil Nikolaoudis, and supervised the publication of the very first edition of the Government Gazette printed outside mainland Greece.

Just days before arriving in Crete, Seferis married Maria ‘Maro’ Zannou in Athens on 10 April 1941. Their time at the Hotel Hellas in Chania was brief, but Sfereis documented their presence there in a brief, pencil-written note to his close friend, the author Lawrence Durrell, written on the back of a page torn out of the hotel’s guest book.

But Seferis spent only three weeks in Chania. Tsouderos fled again during the Battle of Crete and headed the Greek government in exile until 13 April 1944. Seferis and his wife Maria Zannou escaped Crete by ship to Alexandria on 16 May 1941, four days before the German airborne invasion of Crete and the beginning of the Battle of Crete.

Over 25 years later, Seferis returned to Crete again briefly in April 1967 to read his poems and to give a talk to the Lyceum of Greek Women, founded in in 1911 by Kalliroi Siganou Parren, who was born in Rethymnon. It was one of his last prominent public appearances in Greece before the colonels seized power on 21 April 1967 and forced him into an outspoken, self-imposed public silence and resistance.

Unlike other well-loved and well-known poems by Seferis, such as ‘Arnisi / Sto Perigiali’ or ‘Epiphany’, which were set to music by composers like Mikis Theodorakis, ‘Days of June ’41’ has no popular musical setting.

Seferis wrote ‘Days of June ’41’ while he was fleeing the Nazi invasion of Greece, moving first to Crete, then to Alexandria and moving on to South Africa with the Greek government-in-exile.

Despite spending less than a month on Crete, for Seferis it had become ‘the beautiful island’, ‘the calm island’, ‘the strong, innocent island’, and you can hear his pain as he thinks out loud of how Crete is bleeding, how the people are being killed, their ‘bodies like broken branches, / like roots uprooted’:

… the beautiful island is bleeding,
wounded; the calm island – the strong, innocent island.
And the bodies like broken branches,
like roots uprooted.

The poem reflects displacement, exile, the loss of youth and physical vitality (‘we believed in the omnipotence of the body’), the trauma of war in Crete (‘the beautiful island is bleeding, wounded’), and wandering through blacked-out war-time Alexandria with his close friends.

In the narrow streets of old Chania … ‘the beautiful island is bleeding, / wounded; the calm island – the strong, innocent island’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Μέρες του Ιουνίου ’41, Γιώργος Σεφέρης

Βγήκε το νέο φεγγάρι στην Αλεξάνδρεια
κρατώντας το παλιό στην αγκαλιά του
κι εμείς πηγαίνοντας κατά την Πόρτα του Ήλιου
μες στο σκοτάδι της καρδιάς — τρεις φίλοι.

Ποιός θέλει τώρα να λουστεί στα νερά του Πρωτέα;
Τη μεταμόρφωση τη γυρέψαμε στα νιάτα μας
με πόθους που έπαιζαν σαν τα μεγάλα ψάρια
σε πέλαγα που φύραναν ξαφνικά·
πιστεύαμε στην παντοδυναμία του κορμιού.
Και τώρα βγήκε το νέο φεγγάρι αγκαλιασμένο
με το παλιό· με τ’ όμορφο νησί ματώνοντας
λαβωμένο· το ήρεμο νησί, το δυνατό νησί, το αθώο.
Και τα κορμιά σαν τσακισμένα κλαδιά
και σαν ξεριζωμένες ρίζες.

Η δίψα μας
ένιππος φύλακας μαρμαρωμένος
στη σκοτεινή πόρτα του Ήλιου
δεν ξέρει να ζητήσει τίποτε: φυλάγεται
ξενιτεμένη εδώ τριγύρω
κοντά στον τάφο του Μεγάλου Αλεξάντρου.

Κρήτη – Αλεξάνδρεια – Νότιος Αφρική, Μάης ‒ Σεπτέμβρης 1941

Days of ’41’, George Seferis

After the Germans had taken Crete

The new moon came out over Alexandria
with the old moon in her arms
while we were walking towards the Gate of the Sun
in the heart’s darkness – three friends.

Who wants to bathe in the waters of Proteus now?
We looked for metamorphosis in our youth
with desires that played like big fish
in seas suddenly shrinking;
we believed in the body’s omnipotence.
And now the new moon has come out embracing
the old; and the beautiful island is bleeding,
wounded; the calm island – the strong, innocent island.
And the bodies like broken branches,
like roots uprooted.

Our thirst
a guard on horseback turned to marble
at the dark Gate of the Sun –
he doesn’t know how to ask or anything: he stands guard
exiled somewhere around here
near the tomb of Alexander the Great.

(Translation © Björn Thegeby, 2020)

George Seferis was in exile in Chania in 1941 and returned to visit Crete in 1967 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it: 60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow

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):

εἰ δὲ τὸν χόρτον τοῦ ἀγροῦ σήμερον ὄντα καὶ αὔριον εἰς κλίβανον βαλλόμενον ὁ θεὸς οὕτως ἀμφιέννυσιν, οὐ πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὑμᾶς, ὀλιγόπιστοι;

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).

μὴ οὖν μεριμνήσητε εἰς τὴν αὔριον, ἡ γὰρ αὔριον μεριμνήσει ἑαυτῆς· ἀρκετὸν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἡ κακία αὐτῆς.

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)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas

58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany

59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind

60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow.

61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’.

Series to be continued

Open tomorrow … a sign in a shop in Platanias, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Greece pays tribute to the composer Mikis Theodorakis on his 100th birthday

‘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.’

Street art and poems by Seferis and Elytis on the back streets of the old town in Iraklion

‘On the wall, the Mermaid with tresses unbraided’ (Odysseas Elytis, ‘The Monogram’) … street art in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

With some time on my hands in Iraklion one Saturday afternoon, between visiting some churches and having a late lunch with an old friend, I found myself in the narrow streets of the old town, between Saint Minas Cathedral and the Martinengo Bastion with the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis.

It was a sunny, sleepy afternoon, and I was searching for a taverna or café where we could have lunch. In these side streets, none of the restaurants had yet opened – perhaps it was too early in the afternoon on a holiday weekend; perhaps families were too busy, preparing for their Easter celebrations.

But as I wandered around, almost aimlessly, after visiting the grave of Kazantzakis, I came across some colourful street art in the streets of the old town and reminders of the poetry of two great Greek poets, George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis.

Only days before, I had been musing on the poetry of both Seferis and Elytis on the journey from Iraklion Airport to Rethymnon, where I was spending Holy Week and Easter on a personal ‘mini retreat’.

‘Whether it gets dark / or light / the jasmine stays always white’ (George Seferis, ‘The Jasmine’ … street art at Vourvourladikon in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Vourvourladikon looks like an attractive and inviting restaurant lose to the Church of Agios Mathaios Sinaites, offering Greek and Mediterranean cuisine and known too for its decor.

One large bright blue board facing the street is decorated with the words of ‘The Jasmine’, a haiku or short poem by George Seferis:

Είτε βραδιάζει,
είτε φέγγει,
μένει λευκό, το γιασεμί.

Whether it gets dark
or light
the jasmine stays
always white.

(– translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971) is a major figure in Greek literature and in 1963 he became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature. He has had a lasting influence on Greek culture and identity, and many of his poems have been set to music or have inspired the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis including ‘I Kept Hold of My Life’, which became an expression of resistance to the colonels’ junta from 1967 to 1974.

George Seferis was born Giorgos Seferiadis in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Asia Minor and went to school in Smyrna and Athens, before his family moved to Paris in 1918. He joined the Greek Foreign Ministry in Athens in 1925 . He had a long and successful diplomatic career, that began with postings in England (1931-1934), where he was introduced to TS Eliot and Ezra 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 London 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. He became a popular hero for his resistance to the regime, and his widow Marika cut off her hair and flung it into his grave.

An old wooden door quoting two lines from the poem Το Μονογραμμα (‘The Monogram’) by Odysseas Elytis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On an old wooden door in front of the restaurant, but half-hidden by spring growth, is a quotation of two lines from Το Μονογραμμα (‘The Monogram’), one of his great love poems by the poet Odysseas Elytis (1911-1996):

και στην αγάπη ξέρω
Να μπαίνω σαν Πανσέληνος

and in love I know
how to bathe like a full moon

Elytis was born in Iraklion, and Mikis Theodorakis has set many of his poems to music and sung by one of Greece’s most loved singers, Maria Farantouri.

His great epic poem, Το Άξιον Εστί (To Axion Esti, It is Worthy), published in 1959, 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). After returning, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979. He died on 18 March 1996, at the age of 84, and was buried at the First National Cemetery.

‘Like from a wrecked wall painting / Big as the little life wanted you’ (Odysseas Elytis, ‘The Monogram’) … street art in the old town in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his poem Το Μονογραμμα (‘The Monogram’), Odysseas Elytis also refers to jasmine flowers and it is set in Crete in Easter:

High on the veranda or under the garden’s cobblestones
With the horse of the saint and the egg of Easter

Like from a wrecked wall painting
Big as the little life wanted you,

The poem also refers to wall paintings, and close to the restaurant are two other works of street art that could also have been inspired by lines in Το Μονογραμμα (‘The Monogram’):

On the wall, the Mermaid with tresses unbraided
The cat that watched us in the dark

‘The cat that watched us in the dark’ (Odysseas Elytis, ‘The Monogram’) … street art in the old town in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Odysseas Elytis, ‘The Monogram’ (Το Μονογραμμα):

I will always mourn – hear me? – for you, alone, in Paradise.

I.

Fate, like a switchman, will turn
Elsewhere the lines of the palm
Time will concede for one moment

How else, since man loves and is loved

The heavens will perform our insides
And innocence will strike the world
With the scythe of death’s blackness.

II.

I mourn the sun and I mourn the time that comes
Without us and I sing of others who’ve passed
If this is true

The bodies addressed and boats sweetly gliding by
The guitars that flicker under the waters
The ‘believe me’ and the ‘don’t’
One in the air and one in the music

The two small animals, our hands
That tried to climb one another in secret
The flowerpot cool through the open garden gate
And the parts of sea coming together
Beyond the dry-stone wall, beyond the hedge
The windflower you held in your hand
Whose purple shuddered three times for three days above the waterfall

If this is all true, I sing
The wooden beam and square tapestry
On the wall, the Mermaid with tresses unbraided
The cat that watched us in the dark

A child with incense and the red cross
The hour when night falls on unapproachable rocks
I mourn the garment that I fingered and the world came to me.

III.

Like so I speak of you and me

Because I love you and in love I know
How to enter in like the full moon
From everywhere, about your small foot in the boundless sheets
How to pluck the jasmine – and I have the power
To blow the wind and take you in sleep through the moon’s passages and the sea’s secret colonnade
– Hypnotized tree of silvering spiders

The waves have heard of you
How you caress, how you kiss
Around the neck, around the bay
How you whisper the ‘what’ and the ‘eh’
Always we the light and the shadow

Always you the little star and always I the dark vessel
Always you the harbor and always I the light shining from the right
The wet jetty and the glint on the oars
High on the vine-laden house
The bound roses and cooling water
Always you the stone statue and always I the shadow that grows
You the hanging shutter and I the wind that blows it open
Because I love you and I love you
Always you the coin and I the worship that gives it value

So much the night, so much the humming in the wind
So much the mist in the air, so much the stillness
Around the despotic sea
Heavenly arch full of stars
So much your faintest breath

That I no longer have anything else
Within these four walls, this ceiling and floor
But to call for you and for my own voice to hit me
To smell your scent and for people to fear
Because people can’t bear the untried
And foreign and it’s early you hear
It’s early still in the world my love

To speak of you and me.

IV.

It’s early still in this world, do you hear me
They haven’t tamed the beast, do you hear me
My wasted blood and sharp, hear me, knife
Like a ram running across the heavens
Breaking the tails of comets, hear me
I am, hear me
I love you, hear me
I hold you and I take you and I dress you
In the white gown of Ophelia, hear me
Where do you leave me, where do you go and who, hear me

Holds your hand above the flood
The enormous flames and volcanic lava
Will bury us, hear me, and the day will come
A thousand years later when we will be, hear me
Shining fossils, hear me
For the heartlessness of men to burnish, hear me
And throw above them in a thousand pieces
And on the waters one by one, hear me
I measure my bitter pebbles, hear me
And time is a great church, hear me
Where once the forms
Of saints
Shed true tears, hear me
The bells ring loudly, hear me
I cross a deep ford
Where the angels wait with candles and funeral psalms
I go nowhere, hear me
Neither or both together, hear me

This flower of the storm and, hear me
Of love
Once and for all, we pick it
And it never comes to flower anywhere else, hear me
On another earth, on another star, hear me
There isn’t soil, there isn’t air
That we touch, the same, hear me

And no gardener was ever so lucky

To produce such a flower from such a winter, hear me
And such northern winds, only we, hear me, In the middle of the sea
Only from the mere wish for love, hear me
Raised an entire island, hear me
With caves and capes and crags in bloom
Listen, listen
Who speaks in the waters and who cries, hear
Who seeks the other, who calls, hear
I am the one who calls and I am the one who cries, you hear me
I love you and I love you, hear me.

V.

I have spoken of you in old times
With wet nurses and veteran rebels
From where your beastly sorrow comes
The brilliance of trembling water on your face
And why it must be that I come near you
I who don’t want love but want the wind
But want the gallop of the uncovered, upright sea

And none had heard of you
Neither dittany nor wild mushroom
Of Cretan highlands, none
Only God grants and guides your hand to me

Here and there, carefully around the whole turn
Of the face’s seashore, the bay, the hair
On the hill rippling off to the left

Your body in the stance of the solitary pine
Eyes of pride and of transparent
Depth, in the house with an old china cabinet
Of yellow lace and cypress wood
Alone I wait for where you’ll first appear
High on the veranda or under the garden’s cobblestones
With the horse of the saint and the egg of Easter

Like from a wrecked wall painting
Big as the little life wanted you,
To hold within a little candle the stentorian volcanic glow

So no one will have seen or heard
Anything about you in the wilderness of dilapidated houses
Neither the buried ancestors at the edge of the garden fence
Nor the old woman with all her herbs

Of you, only I, and maybe the music
That is concealed inside me but shall return more strongly
Of you, the unformed breast of twelve years
Turning toward the future and the red crater
Of you, a bitter odor finds the body
And like a pin punctures memory
And here the soil, here the doves, here our ancient earth.

VI.

I have seen much and the earth to my mind seems more beautiful
More beautiful in the golden breath
The sharp stone, more beautiful
The dark blue of the isthmuses and the roofs among the waves
More beautiful, the rays where you pass without stepping
Unbeaten like the goddess of Samothrace atop the sea’s hills

Like so I have seen you and that will suffice
For all and time will be exonerated
In the wake of your passage
My soul like a green dolphin follows

And plays with the white and azure

Triumph, triumph, where I have been conquered
Before love and together
With the hibiscus and passion-flower
Go, go, and let me be lost

Alone, and let the sun be a newborn that you hold.
Alone, and let me be the homeland that mourns
Let it be the word that I sent to hold the laurel leaf for you
Alone, the lone, strong wind and the full
Pebble under the eyelid of dark depths
The fisherman who caught then threw Paradise back into Time.

VII.

In Paradise I have marked out an island
Akin to you and a house by the sea

With a large bed and a small door
I have thrown an echo into the depths
To see myself every morning when I rise

Half to see you passing through the waters
Half to weep for you in Paradise.

(– translated by Aliki Caloyeras)

Street art near Vourvourladikon in Iraklion, telling tales of the Old Town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Listening to the poetry of Elytis and the songs of Theodorakis on the road from Iraklion to Rethymnon

‘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.

A poem by Odysseas Elytis that Mikis Theodorakis made an anthem for all Greeks

‘Do not, please, I beg you, / do not forget my home’ … flowers among the stones in a side street in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Greek Festival in Milton Keynes has become an annual festival and is taking place this afternoon (2 July 2023) in the Swinfen Harris Church Hall of the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford. The festival includes live music, dancing, BBQ food, cakes, Greek products, a book stall and family fun. Today’s festival, a Greek meal at Emmy’s Pitta in Coventry last week, and Greek dancing on the streets of Stony Stratford during Stony Live last month, have stirred my longings to return to Greece.

My thoughts of returning to Greece later this year, and especially to Crete, are reinforced emotionally as I listen again to some of my favourite Greek songs or turn again to some of my favourite Greek poems.

In recent weeks, I have found myself listening to a number of versions of the song Της Δικαιοσύνης Ήλιε Νοητέ, a poem by the Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis (1911-1996) in 1949 and was set to music by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.

This morning’s song, Της Δικαιοσύνης Ήλιε Νοητέ (‘The Sun of Justice’) was adapted from Canto 3 in the Axion Esti, a literary masterpiece by Elytis. It is a difficult poem to translate, and efforts to render it in English are puzzling if not almost unintelligible to many people outside Greek.

Yet, the words of Elytis and the music of Theodorakis make this one of the most emotional and rousing anthems in the modern Greek repertoire. Every Greek is moved to patriotic tears when they hear to and join in to its haunting repeated refrain:

Μη παρακαλώ σας μη
λησμονάτε τη χώρα μου!

Do not, please, I beg you,
do not forget my home

It was set to music by Theodorakis almost 60 years ago in 1964, and within a few years it had become a popular anthem in the resistance to the colonels until their junta a decade later in 1974.

Odysseas Elytis is one of the greatest poets of the second half of the 20th century, and his Axion Esti is regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. Several of his poems have been set to music and his collections have been translated into dozens of languages.

Odysseus Elytis (Οδυσσέας Ελύτης) was his pen name, but he was born Odysseus Alepoudellis (Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλλης) in Iraklion, the capital of Crete, on 2 November 1911, into the Alepoudellis family, an old industrial family originally from Lesbos.

When he was three, the family moved to Athens, where he went to school and 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 an army lieutenant 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 moved to Paris in 1948, where he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He moved in literary and artistic circles that included Matisse, Picasso, Chagall and Sartre, but was private and solitary in pursuing poetic truth. He worked for the BBC in London in 1950-1951.

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.

The Axion Esti won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960. Widely regarded as his chef d’oeuvre, it 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 is all the more powerful for exploring the darkest of shadows at times. The speaker explores the essence of his being as well as the identity of his country and people.

At the invitation of the US State Department, he travelled throughout the US in 1961, and similar invitations brought him to the Soviet Union (1963) and Bulgaria (1965). He was awarded the First State Poetry Prize in Greece in 1960, and was decorated with the Order of the Phoenix in 1965.

Meanwhile, the composer Mikis 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’ regime in Greece, Elytis lived in exile in Paris from 1969 to 1972. By then, The Axion Esti and its setting by Theodorakis had been taken to heart by lovers and revolutionaries alike, particularly during the resistance to the colonels’ regime.

Elytis returned to Greece, and in 1975 was awarded an honorary PhD by Thessaloniki University and received the honorary citizenship of Mytilene, his ancestral island of Lesbos.

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 in Athens.

‘Its high mountains eagle-shaped, / Its volcanoes all vines in rows, / And its houses the whiter, / for neighbouring near the blue!’ … street art in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The setting of Το Άξιον Εστί (To Axion Esti) to music by Theodorakis as an oratorio, with its sheer beauty and musicality, provided anthems that were sung throughout Greece by in the resistance to injustice.

It is surprising, then, that it was not included by Constantine Trypanis in The Penguin Book of Greek Verse in 1971.

Edmund Keeley, who translated the epic into English, suggested the Axion Esti can ‘be taken best as a kind of spiritual autobiography that attempts to dramatise the national and philosophical extensions of the poet’s personal sensibility. Elytis’s strategy in this work … is to present an image of the contemporary Greek consciousness through the developing of a persona that is at once the poet himself and the voice of his country.’

The song I have been listening to in these recent weeks, Της Δικαιοσύνης Ήλιε Νοητέ, became a symbol of Greece seeking to recover and heal its wounds. It is one of the most dramatic songs heard in Greece, but at the same time one of the most inspirational and optimistic songs one can hear.

Grigoris Bithikotsis made the song his own in 1964 with his voice – as he did with so many pieces composed by Theodorakis, and he first made the song a symbol of an era:



After the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974, this particular song from the Axion Esti became a popular hymn throughout Greece.

The song gave voice to the suffering of Greeks in previous generations and their struggle against the colonels’ junta, their desire for freedom, stability and progress.

Modern versions that are popular throughout Greece include this one sung by Yannis Kotsiras:



However, my favourite version is that recorded by one of Greece’s most loved singers, Maria Farantouri:



Elytis’ 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.

Both Elytis and Theodorakis were born in Crete and were 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 honour.

Theodorakis was especially drawn to the work of Elytis, whose writings were seen as a mirror to the revolutionary music of Theodorakis. The autobiographical elements are constantly 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.

‘Its high mountains eagle-shaped, / Its volcanoes all vines in rows, / And its houses the whiter, / for neighbouring near the blue!’ … the White Mountains in Crete seen from Platanias in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Translating poetry and the lyrics of songs never does justice to the original, nor can it ever capture the passion of those who sing the song. So here are the original words, as adapted by Mikis Theodorakis, and a handful of recent efforts to translate the song:

Της Δικαιοσύνης Ήλιε Νοητέ Μίκης Θεοδωράκης:

Της δικαιοσύνης ήλιε νοητέ
και μυρσίνη συ δοξαστική
μη παρακαλώ σας μη
λησμονάτε τη χώρα μου!

Αετόμορφα έχει τα ψηλά βουνά
στα ηφαίστεια κλήματα σειρά
και τα σπίτια πιο λευκά
στου γλαυκού το γειτόνεμα!

Της Ασίας αν αγγίζει από τη μια
της Ευρώπης λίγο αν ακουμπά
στον αιθέρα στέκει να
και στη θάλασσα μόνη της!

Τα πικρά μου χέρια με τον Κεραυνό
τα γυρίζω πίσω άπ' τον Καιρό
τους παλιούς μου φίλους καλώ
με φοβέρες και μ' αίματα!

Μα' χουν όλα τα αίματα ξαντιμεθεί
κι οι φοβέρες αχ λατομηθεί
και στον έναν ο άλλος
μπαίνουν εναντίον οι άνεμοι!



Intelligible Sun of Justice
And you, Glorifying Myrtle
Do not, I implore you
Do not forget my country!

Its high mountains eagle-shaped,
Its volcanoes all vines in rows,
And its houses the whiter,
for neighbouring near the blue!

My bitter hands circle with the thunderbolt,
the other side of time.
I summon my old friends
with threats and running blood!

Intelligible Sun of Justice
And you, Glorifying Myrtle
Do not, I implore you
Do not forget my country!

Another translation goes like this:

Notional sun of justice
and you glorifying myrtle
don’t please don’t
forget my homeland!

It has eagle-shaped high mountains
terraced vineyards on the volcanoes
and the whiter houses
in the neighbourhood of the blue!

It almost meets Asia on one side
and almost touches Europe a little
it stands in the air
and in the sea by itself!

My bitter hands with the Thunder
I turn them before Time
I’m calling my old friends
with threats and blood!

But all the blood has been remunerated
and the threats all quarried
and one against the other
the winds are invading!

Odysseus Elytis was born in Iraklion in 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)