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Tasos Leivaditis' Triptych
Battle at the Edge of the Night, This Star Is for All of Us, The Wind at the Crossroads of the World
Edited and translated by N.N. Trakakis
Tasos Leivaditis made his stunning literary debut in 1952-53 with three poetry books, counteracting the violence and oppression of his times with the values of eros and solidarity, freedom and justice.
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About This Book
Tasos Leivaditis (1922-88), one of the undiscovered greats of Modern Greek literature, entered the poetic scene in the middle of the last century with three short poetry books, presented here in English translation for the first time. These works, received with both popular and critical acclaim upon publication in 1952-53, give compelling testimony to the violence of the twentieth century, witnessed by Leivaditis and his generation in the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II and the subsequent civil war (1946-49) between the left and right-wing factions. The latter, internecine battle found Leivaditis, a committed communist, on the defeated side, and he was exiled to concentration camps on various islands for more than three years. Soon after his release, he published a remarkable triptych of poetic works that evoke the horrors of war and, in the midst of this, the yearning for justice and peace.
The first work in the trilogy, Battle at the End of the Night, is set on the Aegean island of Makronisos, which functioned in the civil war years as an internment camp for leftist dissidents. The entire action takes place over a single, seemingly endless, wintry night reeking of terror and death. But the narrator defiantly retains his faith in our common humanity and his conviction that justice will prevail. The second work, This Star Is For All of Us, is also set during the civil war, but this time the focus is the author’s beloved, Maria. Although imprisoned, he is confident that they will meet again, and his love for her becomes by the end universal in scope. The sense of solidarity also deeply marks the final work, The Wind at the Crossroads of the World, the shortest of the three but the most controversial. The book was banned and Leivaditis thrown into prison once again, the authorities unable to tolerate the book’s “subversive proclamation” of freedom and peace.
Reviews
‘Tasos Leivaditis poetically dwells in the indeterminate and interstitial space in which the cruel traumas of history are transformed into an imaginatively sublime meditation on human interiority and its existential destiny. More than the work of his compatriot Yannis Ritsos, or many other European poets of his postwar generation, Leivaditis’ poetry glorifies the marginal, the insignificant and the ordinary that have been crushed by injustice and abuse of power and restores them to their pristine completeness and formal harmony. His three early works which we read in the superb translation by Dr Nick Trakakis, a poet of great merit and distinction himself, delineate the great dilemmas of conscience that marked the postwar European experience. The Triptych poems pave the way for Leivaditis’ restorative catharsis that will be accomplished by his later poetry, some of which has already been translated by Dr Trakakis.’ —Vrasidas Karalis, Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek, University of Sydney, Australia
‘Due to their very high quality the translations will make an outstanding contribution to the discipline. Based on my extensive knowledge of Leivaditis’ output in the Greek original, I can confirm that Trakakis’ English version conveys the depth and complexity of this poetry. The translations are comparable to other high-quality scholarly translations of major Greek poets like Ritsos, Seferis and Elytis, who are internationally recognised. Leivaditis is a major postwar Greek and European poet and his works capture, in an exemplary poetic manner, significant aspects of the historical experience of these times. The present Triptych will therefore fill a huge gap in the discipline and will undoubtedly generate a lot of interest, not only among researchers and scholars in the field, but also among students of Greek literature at various levels and the wider Hellenic admiring public who currently have no other access to this rich material.’ —George Vassilacopoulos, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Politics Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University, Australia
Author Information
N. N. Trakakis is from Melbourne, Australia, where he teaches philosophy and writes and translates poetry. His translation of Tasos Leivaditis’ Autumn Manuscripts (2020) was the joint winner of the 2021 New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize.
Series
Anthem Impact
Table of Contents
Translator’s Note; Introduction; Battle at the Edge of the Night; This Star Is For All of Us; The Wind at the Crossroads of the World; Appendix I: ‘Don’t Take Aim At My Heart’; Appendix II: ‘Literature On Trial’.
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Translator, N.N. (Nick) Trakakis, talks to SBS Radio (Australia) about Tasos Leivaditis’ Triptych.
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