88 books like Yannis Ritsos

That I would love a poem written/translated by Seamus Heaney did not come as a surprise to me, but that it is Beowulf, a poem/story steeped in the Germanic warrior culture and soaked in blood that enthralled me, did surprise me.

I do not remember the occasion that prompted my reading, but even as I opened the book to its Introduction, and read “...And now this is ‘an inheritance’ --/Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked/ In the long ago, yet willable forward...Again and again and again,” I could not put it down.

In fact, you might say, it is not the story but the voice of the poet and how he brought this ancient language and people back to life that compelled me to read on. Of course, the voice is that of the poet of “Digging,” as he traces his roots back to these unlikely ancestors.

This story has always struck me as a quest to identify and regain humanity, as its hero repeatedly faces strange and powerful obstacles to his voyage home. I first read it as a child and then again, but in Greek, as a student—a time in life when anyone is trying to find their feet as a human being!

Perhaps the most comforting thing is that amongst all the gods and monsters and cursing and fighting, eating habits often characterize the work’s characters. Odysseus is always looking for sitophagoi, bread eaters, i.e. civilized people who make their own food, rather than man-eating monsters. I can identify with a hero looking for nice people to share a nice meal with.

I read this English translation before I even read the book in Chinese, even though Chinese readers in Hong Kong where I grew up all read it as teenagers or young adults. The popular title of the novel is Dream of the Red Chamber, in both English and its original Chinese, but I immediately agreed with Hawkes that The Story of the Stone, one among its many titles, is much more expressive and fitting.

The eighteenth-century aristocratic family is a hugely complex world we are introduced to, but Hawkes’ faithful, resourceful, and unpretentious translation makes getting to know the multitude of characters easy and unforgettable.

Even though it is set in eighteenth-century China, for a twentieth/twenty-first-century English reader like myself, the family dynamics, tragedy, and romance here are palpable thanks to Hawke’s understanding and translation.

Stanley Kunitz, with Max Hayward’s translation of Poems of Akhmatova from Russian, is another book that I find myself going back to over and over again.

This is a poet’s translation of a poet, and not only that, but a poet who is willing to give himself entirely to the art of translation in order to bring another poet’s voice in another language back to life, as he puts it in his Translator’s Note, “...to record what we have heard, and to try to give it back in the language that we love.”

This is why I love these translations; I love that I can hear her through him, the translator as a medium, and the result is pure and uncontrived, hitting me right in the heart as I read and taste these poems out loud. This is a poet-translator who has “walked through many lives” (from Kunitz’s poem, “The… show more.

This is a dreamer’s book—notes about life, literature, and the universe written by the author after accepting on the spur of the moment a Greek friend’s invitation to go island-hopping in a little sailing boat.

I like it not just because I knew the author’s late daughter and treasure his affectionate references to her, but also for its erudite musings and reflections. They remind me of how, even from the deck of one of today’s decidedly unromantic ferries, the glinting sea and island silhouettes induce a state of semi-trance or reverie, pushing your thoughts into overdrive.

The author was a heavyweight figure on Greece’s literary scene, but this little book is charming, short, and accessible.

I can see that I tend to choose books with nice illustrations that emphasize the story more. This was the most recent reading I did. These dreamy, whimsical illustrations caught my eye when I browsed in the local bookstore.

I’m glad I came across this book at the beginning of summer when it is much easier for our minds to fall in love. Before the weather gets colder, I plan to bring this book to a picnic and enjoy it fully outside.

This is the best collection of the Greek Myths I believe, and of course covers the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the direct inspiration for my book. In the classical myth the poet and musician Orpheus loses his love, Eurydice, and sings his way into Hades, overcoming all opposition, until even Hades agrees to let him have Eurydice back in the living world, so long as he does not look back at her until returned there. Once in daylight he does look back, and loses her forever as she hasn't stepped into daylight too. However, unlike Orpheus my young hero succeeds.

I was captivated by the slow and deliberate flirtation of Dionysus with Ariadne as he revealed his own story with passion and intimacy. I felt the shared sense of abandonment between him and Ariadne, one mortal, the other immortal. I found that weaving in Phaedra’s story with the lively interactions between the two sisters with such different personalities was a clever plot devise, it was intriguing and added to the complexity of the story.

The characters evolve: innocence, abandonment, depravity, and new awarenesses show in a tragic tale where Theseus, Daedalus, Icarus, Hippolytus, and Perseus support a story basically describing the differing points of view of the two sisters. A great choice for readers like me, who enjoy stories based on Greek mythology with a feminist slant.

Greek Gods and Godesses are usually a very over done genre, but Josephine nails her take on a retelling.

This series is hands down one of my top series even after all this time and I squealed with joy when I saw that she continued the series when we thought it was done!

Vernant was an influential scholar when I began writing about women in ancient Greece in the 1990s. His discussions of the social, political and religious institutions of the time, and their relationship with popular mythology, were informed by French structuralist theory.  For me his analysis of the role of marriage in a society devoted to virgin goddesses was particularly stimulating.