Of course, the Greek literary canon is overfilled with beautiful poets who wrought the conditions of their day into allegorical myths and timeless wit, and this week’s Greek offering into the ever-expanding Write Brain Radical Library is a modern masterpiece on-par with the best of Homer’s disciples.

Odysseus Elytis was born to a family of prominent soap and olive oil manufacturers in a village on the Greek Island of Crete. After the death of his father (who was an unpublished writer himself), young Elytis vowed to become a poet and began studying the Surrealists. However, duty called and Elytis spent time serving in the Greek military (where he saw action in WWII), but not before publishing his first volume of poetry, Prosanatolizmi (Orientations), earning him the nickname of “sun-drinking poet”.

At the end of the war, Odysseus became something of a poet-diplomat (an honored distinction in Greek and Balkan literary circles), acting as commissioner of several Greek cultural institutions, and spending time between Greece and France. However, Elytis’s writing fell silent during this period, but he staged a comeback in the late-50’s and published some of his finest works.

In France, Elytis befriended the old-guard of the avant-garde (Picasso, Matisse, … ), renewing his quest to merge experimental elements from Surrealism with the more austere tradition of Greek poetry. And with 1978’s bold and experimental surprise Nobel-winning Maria Nephele, it would seem he achieved his goal.