Odysseus Elytis

Odysseas Elytis was the pseudonym of Odysseas Alepoudelis (November 2, 1911–March 18, 1996), a Greek poet.

Born in Iráklion, Crete to a Lesvos family, he studied law in the University of Athens but did not take his degree. During the Second World War he served as a Lieutenant in the underground resistance. Shortly after the war he visited Paris and studied there, before returning to Greece.

His main work, fourteen years in the writing but published in 1959, is Axion Esti, a poem that attempts to identify the vital elements in Greece's 3000-year history and tradition and where the Orthodox liturgy blends with the images of the sun, the sea, and the Christian element with the pagan.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979.

Selected works in English translation

• Collected Poems (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
• Eros, Eros, Eros: Selected and Last Poems (1998 - includes poems not in the Collected)