Poetry
Στους φίλους μιας άλλης χαράς
Not translated into English
Giorgos Sarantaris · 1940
Opening lines
Με θύμησες επλήρωσε την καρδιά
Κι αγάπησε έναν αγνό τάφο
With memories he filled the heart
And loved a pure grave
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from el.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Short poems addressed to those who know another joy, foreign to this world. The joy of existing is set down in them as self-evident, without argument and without emphasis, and it stands beside time, death and the absolute that the poet also sought in his essays. The verse refuses the tragic that everything around it called for.
Context
The collection appeared in 1940, a few months before its author joined the army. It is the last of the four that he published in his lifetime, and the title states the note of his whole work: a joy that is not that of the world and that he addresses to those who know it. He wrote in free verse, in a simple language, and refused the tragic that his generation cultivated. Nothing of it exists in French.
Who it is for
Short poems, never given in French. They can be read without a key, but the date of their publication changes how they sound.
Prizes and reception
Welcomed with enthusiasm by the critic Mítsos Papanikoláou, it makes its author the first metaphysical lyric poet of modern Greece.