Yannis Ritsos

Rick M. Newton (Kent State University)

Ed. by Vassilis Manoussakis, University of the Peloponnese
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.7.1.02: Greek Writing and Culture: Modern and Contemporary, 1453-present.
Vol. editors: Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus)

Dates

Born 1 May 1909
Died 11 Nov 1990
Activity 1930-1990

Places

Born in Greece
Active in Greece

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Ritsos' Works

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Yannis Ritsos is the most prolific poet of modern Greece, with an

oeuvre

exceeding 6,200 pages of verse in over 100 collections. He also authored a nine-volume series of autobiographical prose novelettes, as well as essays on poetics, and translations of Russian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Turkish, Persian, Cuban, and Chilean writers into modern Greek. He ranks as one of the four great poets of twentieth-century Greece (with Constantine Cavafy, George Seferis, and Odysseas Elytis) whose works have reached an international audience through wide translation. Selections of Ritsos' poetry have been translated into 45 languages. In 1977 he received the Lenin Prize for Peace from the USSR, on display in the Benaki Museum in Athens alongside the Nobel Prizes for Literature awarded to Seferis and…

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2821 words

Citation: Newton, Rick M.. "Yannis Ritsos". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 January 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12235, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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