Exile and Return

English, Greek (translation)

Ritsos makes the horrifying seem ordinary: "The dead sit speechless in the back rooms/ in their old slippers." This cycle of searing lyrics, written mainly during the Papadopoulos dictatorship in Greece, reflects the author's bitter years of imprisonment, house arrest and "self-exile." The poems speak of the moral courage needed to survive tyranny ("What we didn't say became barbed wire again"). Not overtly political, these stark verses portray a sinister world of hostile masked figures, walking statues, of the aged and blind and crippled. In a wider context, Ritsos's short, free-verse snippets mirror the dislocation and anonymity of the modern age. "I live here/ at this number, on this street," cries the narrator. An anonymous "he" is the protagonist of many of the verses. A stunning and powerful collection by a writer who has survived hell. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A Nobel contender, Ritsos is Greece's most prolific contemporary poet, with more than 100 books of poems, transla tions, essays, and plays to his name. Written during the Papadoupoulos dic tatorship of 1967-1974, these poems from eight volumes previously pub lished in Greece portray a stark realism that yet often drifts into surrealism and symbolism. Operating in open forms, they offer a black - and - white cinematic landscape of horror and nightmare and the human heart under siege: ``There was nothing else in the night, just/ the boundless dark plain . . . Over there,/ a huge smashed bus/ with one headlight on . . . and a dead branch of inviolability.'' A generous and representative collection recom mended for modern and foreign lan guage collections. Thom Tammaro, Interdisciplinary Studies Dept., Moor head State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.