Greece: Axion Esti - Odysseus Elytis - Mikis Theodorakis

Mario Frangoulis
From of a concert (May, 2001)
celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Crete.

Axion Esti - Odysseus Elytis
Music Composer: Mikis Theodorakis

The Axion Esti is probably the most widely read volume of verse to have appeared in Greece since World War II and remains a classic today. Those who follow the music of Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis have been especially drawn to Odysseus Elytis's work, his prose is widely considered a mirror to the revolutionary music of Theodorakis. The "autobiographical" elements are constantly colored by allusion to the history of Greece, thus, the poems express a contemporary consciousness fully resonant with those echoes of the past that have served most to shape the modern Greek experience.

Born in Crete in 1911, Odysseus Elytis began to publish his poetry in the 1930s. He took part in the campaign against the Italian fascists in Albania in 1940-41. He was one of the most prominent poets of the Greek resistance during the Nazi occupation. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1979 for his poetry which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness'. He died in Athens in 1996.
(Source: http://www.amazon.com)