Poetry
The Moonlight Sonata
Η σονάτα του σεληνόφωτος
Yannis Ritsos · 1956
Synopsis
One spring evening, in the large bedroom of an old house, an elderly woman dressed in black speaks to a young man who is about to leave. She tells him of the house she can no longer bear to carry, her memories, what she has not lived, and keeps asking him to let her go out with him to see the city under the moon. He says nothing.
Context
The monologue was written in 1956, four years after its author's release, between two deportations. The text consists entirely of what the woman says to the young man, and the form is closer to theatre than to a collection: it is the first of the long dramatic monologues that the author gathered in 1972 in the Fourth Dimension. Jocelyne Carmichael staged it in 1984. Gérard Pierrat translated it for Seghers in 1976, and Katerina Apostolopoúlou and Murielle Szac retranslated it in 2025, in a bilingual edition.
Who it is for
A long poem in continuous monologue, without divisions. The closed setting is the very form of the entire text.
Prizes and reception
National Poetry Prize in 1956, regarded by critics as its author's masterpiece, it opens the series of his great monologues.