SOURCE: "The Poets' Greece," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXVII, No. 11, June 26, 1980, pp. 40-4.

In the following excerpt, Green traces Elytis's relationship to the tradition of Greek poetry.

When the Swedish Academy announced its choice for the Nobel Prize in literature last year, the general reaction was one of bewilderment. Who on earth, people asked, was Odysseus Elytis? Some students of the international literary scene ("irritated," as a friend wrote me, "at the selection of a man who hadn't been published by Penguin") hinted that the Academy's recent habit of honoring elderly obscure poets such as Vicente Aleixandre or Harry Martinson was rapidly becoming an affectation. This is unfair to Elytis, a poet of large achievement; but it does pinpoint, with some force, the problems involved in getting Greek poetry across to a Western audience. An unfamiliar alphabet and language are only the first hurdles...