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A poet over troubled waters

The turbulent history of contemporary Greece erupted in the life of poet Giannis Ritsos like the wild waves of the Myrtoon Sea smash on the rocks of his birthplace, Monemvasia.

By Desolation Road

July 15^th, 2020

"This landscape is as hard as silence, it squeezes its burning stones at its shoulders, it squeezes its orphaned olives and vines in the light, it grits its teeth. There is no water. Only light. The road disappears in the light and the shadow of the stone wall is like iron. The trees, the rivers and the voices marbled in the lime of the sun."

Giannis Ritsos, one of the very few extremely significant 20th century poets of Greece, and a timeless icon of the struggle for freedom, justice and love, described with the above words his birthplace Laconia, in the southwestern Peloponnese. He was born, raised and flourished in the castle town of Monemvasia.

A poet of the caliber of Contantine Cavafy and of Nobel laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, Ritsos was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977 and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize - which he allegedly never won because of his left-wing political beliefs, as in the case of novelist Nikos Kazantzakis.

A poet over troubled waters

The house where Ritsos was born on May 1, 1909, the fourth child of Eleftherios Ritsos and Eleftheria Vouzanara, was not the one he grew up in. His paternal home was located opposite of Monemvasia's church of Panagia Chrysafitissa, but shortly after his birth the family moved to the new house, close to the entrance of Monemvasia, and near its walls. His family was quite wealthy, as his father was a large landowner in the area, and conservative in his political beliefs, while his mother was the daughter of wealthy merchants of the nearby town of Gythio.

He spent his entire childhood in Monemvasia, going to the island’s school, but he attended High School in Gythio. During that time he enjoyed the affection and sensitivity of his cultured mother, who began to shape his artistic nature - just as her library began to shape his leftist ideas. At the age of 7, Ritsos started writing his first lyrics, and learning the piano.

Nevertheless, his life in Monemvasia was not carefree. His father's tendency towards gambling and women caused serious family quarrels, while he himself was unable to obey the strict discipline of the school, preferring to play or paint. "It was as if I liked being punished, I did not like people who excelled in everything," he recalled.

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

This was the prelude to a life of extreme hardships for Ritsos, which was marked by terrible tragedies: the bankruptcy of the family after the agricultural reform of Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, the death of his brother Mimis and some months later of his mother, both from tuberculosis, when he was 12 (in 1921), the incarceration of his father and his beloved sister Loula in a psychiatric clinic in Athens during the 1930s.

And then, on a personal level, came his long battle with tuberculosis that began in 1927 and found him stranded for long periods in sanatoriums of Athens and Crete, the often degrading work he had to do to make a living, his battle with cancer from 1968 onwards, but also his constant persecution and exile he experienced due to his political beliefs.

Identifying himself with many leftist poets who were hospitalized with tuberculosis at the Sotiria Hospital in Athens, Ritsos was introduced to Marxist ideology. Thus, in 1934 he joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), and in 1936 he wrote one of his most famous works, the Epitaph. This poem was inspired by the photograph of the mother of 25-year-old Tassos Tousis, holding the corpse of her son, unjustly killed during the police crackdown on the tobacco-workers' demonstration in Thessaloniki by order of dictator Ioannis Metaxas. The Epitaph was one of the books that Metaxas symbolically burned in the shadow of the Acropolis, immediately after the dictatorship of August 4, 1936.

In 1942 Ritsos joined the communist-driven National Liberation Front (EAM), the leading Resistance organization of Greece against the WW2 occupation forces which settled in the country after the invasion of Nazi Germany in April 1941. Many of his poems of the time were directed to the struggle for freedom, and many were inspired by the death of the emblematic military leader of the Resistance, Aris Velouchiotis, in June 1945.

After the liberation of Greece, in October 1945, the forces of the Greek state -with the help of the British intelligence and the underground ultra-nationalist groups- started the fierce persecution of the leftists all over the country. It was already decided in the Yatla convention that Greece would remain under the influence of the West, and during this time the Greek state was in a rebuilding process after WW2. This process had to be conducted only by people with approved political views, while former Greek collaborators or informers of the Nazis were desperately trying to seek shelter, in the new State, from their communist persecutors.

Thus, for all of them the communists were not only unwelcome, but actually they imposed a lethal threat for their political careers - or even their lives, in the case of the Nazi collaborators. So, once again Ritsos found himself in the middle of the storm. He was sent into exile, first to Lemnos island (1948), then to the hell of Makronisos (a barren island in close proximity to Athens’ east coast), and finally to the small island of Agios Efstratios, in the North Aegean Sea.

All this time, his unstoppable poetic creation -which he did not give up despite the constant relapses of his tuberculosis- was banned in Greece. As Ritsos was trying to survive in the torture island of Makronisos, his companion -the great, late actor- Manos Katrakis, also an inmate, put Ritsos’ poems in glass bottles and buried them in the ground, to save them. And save them he did.

At the same time, an international campaign was taking place in Europe for the release of Ritsos and all the political prisoners in the concentration camps of the barren islands of exile. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Pablo Neruda and Louis Aragon raised their stature.

In fact, Picasso created the sketch for Ritsos' poem The Man with the Carnation, in honor of the executed resistance hero and member of the Communist party, Nikos Belogiannis (pictured left), and his comrades.

Ritsos remained in exile for four years, until 1952. After his release, in 1954 he married Garyfalio Georgiadou, who a year later gave birth to their daughter, Eri Ritsou. One of his most brilliant poems, The Moonlight Sonata, won him the State Poetry First Prize in 1956, at a time when Ritsos, now free, traveled to the Soviet Union and Cuba.

During the same period, the Epitaph was set to music by (the also later distinguished with the Lenin Prize) Mikis Theodorakis, and became one of the anthems of the Left.

A poet over troubled waters

The following twelve years were calm and highly creative for Giannis Ritsos, but this period ended violently with the imposition of the Colonel's Junta in Greece. This happened on Friday, April 21, 1967, and when Ritsos learned the news he refused to hide. He was arrested immediately, after a new round of persecutions of the leftists, and was sent to the martyrdom island of Gyaros, then to Leros, and finally under home restriction in Karlovasi, Samos. His work went illegal, for one more time.

Nevertheless, Ritsos returned to Athens in 1971, and after the fall of the dictatorship (in 1974) his work took on international proportions and was even recognized within Greece. The climax was the awarding of the Lenin Prize in 1977, the highest distinction of the socialist world, which he received with great emotion.

Through his own dramatic experiences, the wide and never-ending conflicts of the Greek society and his insistence on his untouchable ideology, Giannis Ritsos examined the human struggles in times of terrible destiny, with mastery that few contemporary Greek writers have ever achieved.

His legacy consists of more than 100 collections of poetry, more than 50 unpublished collections of poems, 9 novels, 4 plays and 12 books of translations by poets such as Nazim Hikmet and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The foreign versions of his work, which have been translated into forty different languages, amount to 320.

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

Back to Monemvasia

In 1973, Giannis Ritsos managed to return to his native land, Monemvasia, after 20 years. "My Lady Monovasia, my stone boat. Thousands are your jibs and your sails. And you’re always still, to sail me to the worlds", he wrote. He was to be buried there after his death in Athens, on November 11, 1990. The central cobbled path of the castle town today bears his name, while outside his well-preserved house his bust faces the wild and turbulent Myrtoon Sea.

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

A poet over troubled waters

Footnotes

Text & photography Copyright: Desolation Road / Panos Diamantis

FootNotes

Text & photography Copyright: Desolation Road / Panos Diamantis

© 2026 Desolation Road

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