by poets (P), translators (T), and the editor (E)
This translation rewrites the collection’s title 27 ή ο άνθρωπος που πέφτει (27 or the man who falls) as 9/11 or Falling Man, and the poet’s 27-syllable line into one of twenty syllables, placing a caesura after every ninth or eleventh syllable to inscribe the titular date into the translation. (T)
The title in Greek, Πατρείδα, plays on the words for ‘Fatherland’ or ‘Homeland’ (Πατρίδα) and ‘I saw’ (είδα), creating a neologism that means ‘what I see of my country’. The translation refers to the first line of the American national anthem. (T)
‘For Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’: See her entry in the Translators’ biographies. Also see Further Reading for Karen Van Dyck’s translation of her poetry. (E)
MY BROTHER PAUL, THE DIGGER OF THE SEINE
‘O you dig and I dig / and I dig inside myself towards you’: From the collection Die Niemandsrose by the poet Paul Celan (1920–70), dedicated to the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938). (E)
This poem references both the shipwreck of the MV Danny F II, which was carrying a load of almost a thousand cows and sheep, on 17 December 2009, and the death by asphyxiation, five days later, of a lioness and eight tigers on the circus truck transporting them to Yakutsk, Siberia. (P)
In the winter of 1877–8, the sculptor Giannoulis Chalepas, as yet unknown and misunderstood, suffered a severe nervous breakdown; he destroyed his studies and works – mainly heads of Satyrs, of which only one, which he had given to his young nephew, survives – and he repeatedly attempted suicide. He was placed ‘under observation’ and, as his condition worsened, his family sent him to Italy to recuperate. Soon thereafter he returned to Greece with the aim of studying the sculptures of the Acropolis, but he ended up in the Psychiatric Hospital of Corfu. (P)
Penthesilea is an Amazon queen in Greek mythology, and the heroine of Heinrich von Kleist’s eponymous tragedy (1808). (E)
(PENELOPE – EΧΩ ΠAΘΟΣ ΓΙΑ ΣEΝΑ)
Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, who keeps her suitors at bay during her husband’s absence by promising to choose one when she finishes her weaving. What they don’t know is that she undoes her day’s work every night. (E) This translation, like Bariş Pirhasan’s ‘Çürüme’ and George Economou’s ‘Torn’, relies on the reader comparing the language patterns and shape of the original and the translation, and filling in the missing English. (E)
Thetis is the Ancient Greek goddess of water and one of the fifty Nereids, the daughters of the sea god Nereus. The name in Greek is a cognate of τίθεται – the one who is positioned, placed, but also who posits. (E)
The inhabitants of one of the islands Odysseus visits on his journey are said to live in a drugged indolent state induced by eating lotus flowers. (E)
‘For Miltos’: A reference to the poet Miltos Sachtouris (1919–2005). See Further Reading for Karen Emmerich’s translation of his poetry. (E)
‘For Eva Stefani’: An homage to her experimental art video of the same title. For Stefani’s own poetry, see p. 129. (E)
Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major), a chamber music composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (E)
See note to p. 119. (E)
Wörter: As a teenager Jazra Khaleed lived in Germany for a few years before settling in Greece. (E)
This is a response to Kyoko Kishida’s poem on p. 151. See also note to p. 119. (E)
In this poem, Greek letters are what they look like: Π and Τ have flat roofs, while ζ and ξ have roots that dangle down. In Greek, to be homeless is to be roofless (άστεγης) and, as in English, the verb ‘to uproot’ is used for plants and people. (T)
This is the final poem of a triptych, coming after ‘Odysseus’ and ‘Penelope’. Telemachus, son of Odysseus, helped his father defeat his mother’s suitors at home in Ithaca, but never went to war. His name means ‘far from war’. Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, was known as a brutal warrior and fought with Odysseus in Troy. His name means ‘new war’. (E)
On this date an uprising against the rule of the Bavarian King Otto led to the establishment of a constitution, for which Syntagma Square in Athens is named. (T)
‘Let him write as many sonnets as he wants about Faliro’: Faliro, now a seaside suburb near Piraeus, was the subject of a rather whimsical love poem by Lorentzos Mavilis (1860–1912) involving an heiress with a new-fangled automobile. (T)
The title refers to the poem written in 1948 by Nikos Engonopoulos called ‘Poetry 1948’. ‘from the treason of Ploumbides’: Nikos Ploumbides was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance and a leading Communist. He later fell afoul of the KKE (the Communist Party of Greece) and resigned from their politburo. After he was arrested and executed by the right-wing Papagos government in 1954, leftwing newspapers insisted that he was alive and well, spending money earned from his treason (allegedly as a secret police spy). In 1958, the KKE exonerated him. (T)
‘Philip the Apostle’: One of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Known as the apostle who preached in Greece, Syria, and Phrygia. (E)
Οι παραλογές (the paralogues) are a category of Greek folksong, composed in ballad form, which focuses on ancient myth, often about the Underworld. The word also literally refers to a lack of logic (paralogic), and has been used by Greek poets to explain an indigenous form of surrealism which emerged under the Colonels (1967–74) and has recently resurfaced.
‘Charon’: Charon is the ferryman in Hades who carries the souls of the newly dead across the river Styx, which divides the living from the dead. (E)
‘Σύρε καλέ την άλυσον’: In Greek the reference is to the folksong ‘The Bridge of Arta’, in English, to the Rapunzel story. (T)
‘Zappeion’: The Zappeion, an important neoclassical building in the center of Athens near Syndagma Square, which has lent its name to the National Garden that surrounds it. (E)
The capital Σ in the original gives the poem a biblical tone which the translation picks up on by capitalizing the Deep. (T)
See note to p. 115. (E)
See note to p. 123. (E)
MY BONES IN THE SOUP OF MY GRAVE
The English translation is from another version of the Greek poem that is untitled. (P)
‘Muzë muzikë muzg’ means ‘Muse music dusk’ in Albanian. (P)
The title refers to the poem ‘In the Manner of G. S.’ by the Nobel Laureate poet George (Giorgos) Seferis (1900– 1971), which begins with his famous line about exile: ‘Wherever I travel Greece wounds me.’ (E)
‘Ωλμεγεν πιρ Ο’: ‘He who never lost anything.’ He who never dies (alluding to Allah).
‘Π·υραδα’: ‘Here he rests.’ The orthography used in these epitaphs is called Karamanlidika (Greek) or Karamanlıca (Turkish), in which Greek characters were employed in writing Turkish. This system had gone out of use by the 1930s following the population exchanges between Turkey and Greece. The adoption of the Roman alphabet in Turkey no doubt played a part in this, but the practice continued in Cyprus until 1933. (T)