Odysseus Elytis Quotes & Sayings

Logic has rid us of the absurdity of our clothes. That's progress, no irony, only now we are cold. Hale and ill trade bodies with unusual willingness, while in midair souls tangle. The young start out disgusted and Poetry is left to the memo-writers. — Odysseus Elytis

I like to begin where winds shake the first branch. — Odysseus Elytis

Coincidence, when raised to a symbol, occurs with mathematical precision at the most crucial moment, even for the squarest of minds. A moment the rest of us call higher will, Fate's gesture, something like that. — Odysseus Elytis

Willing or not, we are all hostages of the joy of which we deprive ourselves. Here springs love's pre-eternal sadness. — Odysseus Elytis

You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth — Odysseus Elytis

This is why I write. Because poetry begins where death is robbed of the last word. — Odysseus Elytis

If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must be irreparably planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying eros, eros, eros. — Odysseus Elytis

Forced relations between two things that superficially appear foreign create a new, instantaneous state. Authentic poetry asks nothing more. A kinship completely nonexistent moments ago was created by the poet's authority, just as it might have been created in life by the authority of chance. — Odysseus Elytis

But you must know that only he who fights the darkness within will the day after tomorrow have his own share in the sun. — Odysseus Elytis

The splendor of youth is, to a point, the splendor of error. Jealous the old, who have everything previewed! The nightingale will never come sing over your wisdom. It won't, darlin', it won't. — Odysseus Elytis

Poetry should express the apex, should constitute a kind of pioneering outpost in the unexplored area of life, should precede other arts in the depiction of sensitivity. It should be the word and sword intervening in the spirit, so that matter, docile, can follow. Creation, especially poetic, is above all a result. — Odysseus Elytis