Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

The last word by Katerina Anghelaki Rooke (1996)

In honor of Odysseas Elytis who died 19.3.1996

At the beginning of his luminous career, Odysseas Elytis said: “I write so that black does not have the last word.” In his last book – which appeared just a few months ago – entitled West of Sorrow, where lines, words seem to pursue one another, breathless, he writes: “But never, beauty, was time lent to me / to succeed against aniline black a victory…” Obscure words of a poetic kernel which was about to explode with infinite possibilities of radiance…Does this mean, then, that black had the last word or that the poet’s vision reached such a depth that the traces of the controversy have disappeared?

Black and light, sunshine and darkness, these were the two poles of Elytis’ poetry, a pendulum between passion and patience, a bewilderment stretching throughout the day. At the beginning, naturally, the rise of the brightest star coincided with the sunrise of the poet’s life and poetry. So he was acclaimed as the poet of the “Sparkling Aegean”, of The Sovereign Sun, of “The Body of Summer”…In his verses, “The Health of Heaven”, “The Little Sailor of the Garden”…and especially “The Made Pomegranate Tree”, with all the answers to the difficult questions hanging from the branches (“Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things / On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the made pomegranate tree?”), we have all these things that occupied the whole land of Greece, as if death had never stepped on these territories, only Resurrection.

But the sun is now in the middle of the sky, the descent may start any moment and while the poet had written in the past: “The sorrow of death had set me in such a fire, that my glow returned to the sun”, it is with “The Light-tree” (1971), when he had just turned sixty, that Elytis feels the real death starting to cast its real shadow. “First time it crossed my mind to find an end in the midst of happiness. Death attracted me like a strong glaze where you can see nothing else” (The Light-tree”). Thus the poet slowly turns around; his profile is seen against the door where darkness is going to step in, this time to stay. Steadily, through collections of poems like the The Invisible April, The Elegies of Exopetra and finally West of Sorrow, the blend of darkness and light, becomes just a pure black stone, an onyx. “A key turns both ways; either you lock yourself in or you open yourself to all.” The “Poet of the Aegean” and of “The Greek sun” at this point, to my mind, becomes a really great poet. Because all great poets, or should I say those who belong to that “species” with more or less access to perfection, all say the same thing, examine the same impossibility: How to live with this darkness surrounding us, waiting for us, waiting upon us, us the unchallenged lords of nothingness? And how, in spite of this, knowing only this, can one live a deep human life? “Life is a chord / where a third sound interferes / and it is the one which tells the truth about / what the poor man throws away / and what the rich man collects” (West of Sorrow).

“The sky [will be] the children want it / with roosters, pine cones, azure kites / flags / on Saint Heraclitos’ day / the kingdom of the child” writes Elytis, always in West of Sorrow. A Jan Kochannowski, a Polish poet of the 16th century, asks for Heraclitos’ tears to help him mourn his “small girl, his little daughter.” They both see Heraclitos related to the child’s world.

Yes, they all say the same thing, but we, down here, are not invited to the great conference of the immortals and we don’t know it.

Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke

Athens 19.3.1996

PS. An hour ago Odysseas Elytis was buried in the First Cemetery of Athens. The sky was overcast, cold. The silence that he had requested was there, hovering severe over the heads of the crowds. No speeches as he had requested. Tears as he would expect. Numb. We are all numb.

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