Odysseus Elytis; Greek Poet Won Nobel Prize in 1979

Odysseus Elytis, a Nobel Prize-winning poet known for his sensuous lyrics about the Greek islands and the nation’s turbulent history, died Monday. He was 84.

The poet, who had suffered with lymph and lung problems in recent years, died at his Athens home of a heart attack.

Elytis, a recluse known for his spartan lifestyle, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1979, becoming the second Greek poet to receive the award.

Elytis was best known in Greece as the author of “Axion Esti” (“Worthy It Be”), an epic poem described as a “Bible for the Greek people” by composer Mikis Theodorakis, who set it to music.

The Nobel laureate was born Odysseus Alepoudelis on Nov. 2, 1911, in Iraklion on the island of Crete, the son of a wealthy family of soap manufacturers. Despite his wealth, Elytis lived most of his life in a modest apartment in the Greek capital.

He shunned Athens’ social and intellectual circles, preferring to devote himself to what he called a “constant quest for the truth in my work, where the most difficult thing is to concentrate on the essential, the pure.”

His early poems, inspired by summer holidays with his family on the islands of Lesvos, Spetsai and Crete, were published in an avant-garde Greek literary magazine in 1935.

Except for a few poems based on his war experiences as a soldier in Albania from 1940-41, Elytis was not part of the Greek literary scene until the publication of “Axion Esti” in 1959.

The three-part poem, fusing Elytis’ personal experiences with a eulogy to Greek folklore and history, catapulted him to literary fame.

The poem became a popular anthem for young Greeks when it was set to music by Theodorakis, composer of the award-winning film score for “Zorba the Greek.”

In 1979, the year he won the Nobel Prize, Elytis published three volumes of verse and finished two books of longer poems.

He was then forced out of seclusion to become an unofficial cultural ambassador for Greece, giving lectures at arts festivals worldwide.

In 1982, he confessed that he had not written a single line of poetry since winning the Nobel Prize because he was too busy traveling or answering translators’ queries. But he later resumed writing and his collections were received enthusiastically in Greece.

Elytis, who never married, had lived in recent years with fellow poet Ioulita Ilioupoulou.