37 Interviews of Odysseas Elytis (1942-1992) and an audio document from the Press Conference held on October 19, 1979, at the "Grand Bretagne" hotel on the occasion of the announcement of Odysseas Elytis' Nobel Prize in Literature.

"[...] one wonders: what are we fighting for day and night, locked in our laboratories? We fight for something that is nothing, yet it is everything. It is the democratic institutions, which everything shows that they will not endure for long. It is quality, for which no one gives a damn. It is the entity of the individual, which is heading towards its total eclipse. It is the independence of small nations, which has already become a dead letter. It is ignorance and darkness. That the so-called "practical people" - mostly, the bourgeois of today - mock us; it is characteristic. They see nothing. We see everything. Where the truth lies will be revealed one day, when we will no longer be here. But it will be, if it is worth it, the work of one of us all. And this will save the honor of all of us - and of our era."

Odysseas Elytis

The interviews included are:

Introduction

The interviews 1942-1992

- Fanis Cleanthis, "Bouquet", 1942; "Aeolian Letters", 1973: "Lyrical creation is an indefinite martyrdom"
- Teucros Anthias, "The Postman", 1951: "The new currents in our poetry"
- Anonymous, "The Evening", 1953: "Art, the only thing left to save selflessness"
- Anonymous, "Free Speech", 1953: "What did time give that has passed?"
- Renos H. Apostolidis, "Freedom", 1958: "What is to blame for the misery of Greek life?"
- Anonymous, "The Postman", 1961: "How do they write?"
- Anonymous, "Images", 1961: "Odysseas Elytis: a poet bound to the Greek seas and the rhythms of our era"
- George Pilichos, "The Postman", 1961: "A poet gazes at America"
- Anonymous, "To Vima", 1965: "30 years of Elytis"
- Andriana Ferentinou, "The Teenager", 1968: "My ideal audience is young people"
- Leonidas Zenakos, "To Vima", 1972: "The return of Odysseas Elytis"
- George K. Pilichos, "The News", 1973: "Where there is no nightingale, there is a Molotov cocktail"
- Ivar Ivask, "Books Abroad", 1975: "Proportions of light"
- Soula Alexandropoulou, "Kathimerini", 1975: "Odysseas Elytis, the Greek with 'open cards'"
- Vasilis Alexakis, "Le Monde", 1976: "I express myself exclusively through the modern Greek reality"
- George K. Pilichos, "The News", 1976: "A new barbarism threatens to suffocate us!"
- Soula Alexandropoulou, "Kathimerini", 1977: "Odysseas Elytis recently refused to become an Academician"
- Takis Mentrakis, "Epikaira", 1977: "The transcendent element in Papadiamantis"
- Matthaios Moundes, "Woman", 1977: "The return to the sources saves... Elytis on Papadiamantis"
- Giannis Flessas, "To Vima tis Kyriakis", 1978: "As a Greek, I have the right to worry about my identity"
- Minas Nikiforakis, newspaper "Allagi", Heraklion Crete, 1979: "Odysseas Elytis speaks about Heraklion"
- Olivier Germain-Thomas, "Le Monde", 1979: "I found my way with the Greek light"
- Vaios Pankourelis, "To Vima", 1979: "My foundations are in the mountains and the mountains are carried on the shoulders of the people"
- Beatrice Spiliadi, "Kathimerini", 1979: "Everything was difficult, it "The Liberal", Nicosia, 1979: "Elytis: the poet of Greece"
- George Pilichos, "Ta Nea", 1979: "If I didn't speak Greek, I wouldn't have become a poet"
- Victoria Fernandez, "Granada", 1980: "A Nobel among war, revolution, freedom, and nature"
- Kitsa Bonzou, "Mesimerini", 1980: "One year after the Nobel"
- Antonis Fostiéris and Thanasis Niarchos, "I Lexi", 1981: "Approximating the ideal"
- George Gemenakis, "Ta Nea", 1981: "After England... back to my manuscripts"
- George Pilichos, "Ta Nea", 1982: "Our fate is in our hands!"
- Dimitris Analis, "Reperes", 1983: "Transcendence and geometry"
- Antonis Fostiéris and Thanasis Niarchos, "I Lexi", 1983: "For a new Sappho"
- Nikos Dimou, "To Vima", 1985: "The temptation of analysis and the murder of imagination"
- Mikela Hartoulari, "Ta Nea", 1988: "My Greece is not the current one"
- Mikela Hartoulari, "Ta Nea", 1990: "I fight with beauty and innocence as weapons"
- Julita Iliopoulou, "Anti", 1992: "Poets and painters in post-war France"

Note from the editor
Index of main names and titles