SOURCE: "Odysseus Elytis, 84, Poet and Nobel Laureate Who Celebrated Greek Myths and Landscape," in The New York Times, March 19, 1996, p. D23.

In the following essay, Gussow presents an overview of Elytis's life and career.

Odysseus Elytis, a Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet celebrated for his lyrical and passionate evocations of his country's history, myths and rugged landscape, died yesterday at his home in Athens. He was 84.

When Mr. Elytis (pronounced ee-LEE-tis) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979, the Swedish Academy said that his poetry, "against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness." He was the second Greek poet to be named a Nobel laureate; the first was George Soferis in 1963. Both were part of a group of poets sometimes called the Generation of the 30's, and had a profound effect on Greek literature.

The Swedish Academy...