Greek Poet Manolis Anagnostakis

Greek Poet Manolis Anagnostakis

Manolis Anagnostakis (b. Thessaloniki, 1925), poet and essayist, has also been politically active with the New Left. While studying medicine, he served as editor in chief of the student magazine "The Start" (1944). He took part in the Resistance and during the Greek Civil War was condemned to death for unlawful political activity by a military tribunal.

Birth: Mar. 10, 1925
Thessaloniki, GreeceDeath: Jun. 23, 2005
Athens, Greece
Greek Poet Manolis Anagnostakis Dies in Hospital

Athens.- Greek poet Manolis Anagnostakis, held to be one of most important poets to emerge from Greece in the post-war era, died on Thursday in Amalia Fleming hospital at the age of 80, after a long bout of illness.

He was politically aligned to the Left, taking part in the Greek Resistance movement during WWII and the civil war that followed, while his poetry was marked by the terse, grim realism characteristic of left-wing poetry at that time.

Anagnostakis, also a writer of prose and essays, was born in Thessaloniki in 1925. He studied medicine and practiced radiology. During the troubled post-war era, he was condemned to death by a military court and spent many years in prison and exile.

He had won many awards for his poetry, which has been translated into several European languages.

President, party leaders express sorrow over death of poet Manolis Anagnostakis. President Karolos Papoulias and party leaders on Thursday expressed their sorrow over thedeath of renowned poet Manolis Anagnostakis earlier in the day.

President Papoulias said in a statement "we will miss the voice of Manolis Anagnostakis as much as his silence in past years."

Prime Minister and Culture Minister Kostas Karamanlis expressed his condolences and said "Greek literature and Greek culture lost a splendid poet and humble fighter today."

Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Secretary General Aleka Papariga said in a message of condolences to the family of Anagnostakis "warm condolences for the death of Manolis Anagnostakis, one of the most important poets of his generation."

Coalition of the Left, Movements and Ecology (SYN) party leader Alekos Alavanos also extended his condolences to the family of the deceased, and expressed his deep gratitude for Anagnostakis' work and the example he set in life.

PASOK party leader, Athens mayor express sorrow over death of poet Manolis Anagnostakis: Main opposition PASOK party leader George Papandreou and Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyianni on Thursday expressed their sorrow over the death of renowned poet Manolis Anagnostakis.

"Having an open mind and always an uneasy thought, he did not hesitate to open new paths, seek new ideas and set his own bright paths, remaining steadfast on his principles and values. Even his silence was a great cry of freedom," Papandreou said in his statement.

"Manolis Anagnostakis, with his character, humility, fighting spirit and his priceless work was a model human being, ideologist and intellectual," Bakoyianni said in her statement.
 

 Burial:
First Cemetery
Athens
Regional unit of Athens
Attica, Greece

His first collection of poems, "Seasons", was published in 1945. In 1948, while he was in prison, his collection "Seasons 2" was published and in 1951, immediately after his release, "Seasons 3". These volumes were followed by "Sequel" (1954), "Poems, 1941-1956" (1956), his collected works to date, and the cycle "Sequel 2" and "Sequel 3" (1962). In another collection, "Eighteen Texts" (1970), his poems appeared under the general title "The Target", written during the early years of the Colonels' dictatorship (1967-73).

From 1959 to 1961 he was the editor of the bimonthly journal "Criticism", which focused on the literary, ideological and aesthetic questions of his generation. He worked on many other magazines and newspapers and published additional collections of poetry -- "Poems, 1941-1971" (1971) -- studies, articles and book reviews. His poetry demonstrates the conviction that human life is marked by the historic events that form its context.

MANOLIS ANAGNOSTAKIS
STOCHOS
The subject is now what do you think
We ate well we drank well
we lived our live well so far
Minor troubles balanced by minor gains
The subject is now what do you think.

Some other Poems by Manolis Anagnostakis

Selections from THE TARGET (1970) by Manolis Anagnostakis (1925- )

translated by David Conolly

POETICS

- You're betraying Poetry again, you'll tell me,

Man?s most sacred expression

You're using it again as a means, a pack-mule

For your sinister objectives

In full knowledge of the damage you're doing

To the young through your example.

- Tell me what you have not betrayed

You and your kind, for years and years,

Bartering your possessions one by one

In international markets and common bazaars

So you're left without eyes to see, without ears

To hear, with lips sealed and you say nothing.

For which of man?s sacred rights are you arraigning us?

I know: preaching and rhetoric again, you'll say.

Well, yes! Preaching and rhetoric.

Words have to be hammered like nails.

If they're not to be lost in the win

THESSALONIKI, DAYS OF 1969 A.D.

In Egyptou Street -first turning rightThere now stands the Transaction Bank Building

Tourist agencies and emigration bureaus

And kids can no longer play with all the traffic

passing

In any case the kids have grown, the times you knew have

passed

They now no longer laugh, whisper secrets, share trust,

Those that survived, that is, as grave illnesses have

appeared since then

Floods, deluges, earthquakes, armoured soldiers;

They remember their fathers? words: you'll experience

better days

It's of no importance in the end if they didn't experience

them, they repeat the lesson to their own children

Always hoping that the chain will one day break

Perhaps with their children?s children or the children of their

children's children.

For the time being, in the old street as was said, there stands

the Transactions Bank

-I transact, you transact, he transactsTourist agencies and emigration bureaus

-we emigrate, you emigrate, they emigrateWherever I travel Greece wounds me, as the Poet said

Greece with its lovely islands, lovely offices, lovely

churches

Greece of the Greeks.

YOUNG MEN OF SIDON, 1970

Actually, we shouldn't complain.

Your company's good and congenial, full of youth,

Fresh young girls - stout-bodied lads

All passion and love for life and action.

And your songs too, good, with meaning and substance

So very human, so moving,

About infants that die in other continents

About heroes killed in former times,

About revolutionaries, Black, Green and Yellow ones,

About Man's grief in his overall suffering.

It's especially to your credit that you involve yourselves

In the issues and struggles of our age

You directly and actively make your presence felt - in view

of which

I think you more than deserve

In twos, in threes, to play, to fall in love,

And unwind, for sure pal, after such exertion.

(They've aged us prematurely Yorgos, do you realise?)