Andreas Embirikos

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Andreas Embirikos
National and Capodistrian University of Athens, University of Genoa
Literary movementSurrealism, Generation of the '30s
Notable worksThe Great Eastern, Ypsikaminos
Signature

Andreas Embirikos (or Embiricos;

surrealist poet, writer, photographer, and one of the first Greek psychoanalysts.[1][2] As a writer, he emerged from the Generation of the '30s and is considered one of the most important representatives of Greek surrealism. He studied psychoanalysis in France and was the first to practice it as a profession in Greece in the years 1935–1951. Out of his entire literary work, his first collection of poetry, titled Ypsikaminos, stands out as the first purely surrealist Greek text.[3] Among his prose works, his bold erotic novel The Great Eastern was completed over a period of several decades becoming the lengthiest modern Greek novel. Described as Embirikos' "lifework", It was received with both praise and criticism for its libertine
nature and highly erotic content. A large part of Embirikos' work was published well after his death.

Life

Embirikos was born in 1901 in

National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne
to stay with his mother without graduating from the university.

The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studied at King's College London; however it was in Paris where he decided to study psychoanalysis together with René Laforgue and joined the International Psychoanalytical Association.[5]

Timeline

Poetry

Andreas Embirikos

His poetry can be defined by two major tendencies. On the one hand, he was one of the major representatives of surrealism in Greece. His first poetic collection, Ipsikaminos (ie blast furnace), was a heretic book, characterized by the lack of the punctuation and the peculiarity of the language. As the poet himself admitted it was precisely the originality and extravagance of his work that contributed to his relative commercial success.

On the other hand, together with

Yorgos Seferis, Embirikos was the most important representative of the "Generation of the '30s".[7]
He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters and he helped change once and for all the poetic atmosphere of Greece.

Megas Anatolikos

Α significant work by Embirikos is his most popular novel

Decameron) they discover a new form of happiness and innocence. For this work, Odysseas Elytis called Embirikos "a visionary and a prophet".[citation needed
]

Literary critic

Embirikos also wrote articles of literary criticism; at least two of them are worth-mentioning. The first is "The hidden necrophilia in the works of

Bosphorus
".

Photography

Embirikos was an enthusiastic photographer all his life, and the sheer volume of his photographic work, no less than his passionate involvement with the medium, suggest that it was, for him, very nearly as important an activity as writing. Yiorgis Yiatromanolakis (Γιώργης Γιατρομανωλάκης), Embirikos's principal Greek scholar, has written that "his three principal identities are those of a poet, a novelist and a photographer".[8] For his part, Embirikos's son, Leonidas, has referred to his father's "vast, vertiginously extensive photographic archive... the negatives alone exceeding 30,000 items".[9]

Embirikos only ever publicly exhibited his photographs once in his lifetime, showing a limited number of prints at the Ilissos gallery in Athens, in 1955. However, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of his birth in 2001, the photographer and critic John Stathatos (Γιάννης Σταθάτος) was commissioned to research the archive and curate a large exhibition at the Technopolis Arts Centre in Athens. A substantial monograph incorporating Stathatos's text was simultaneously published by Agra Editions.

Selected works

  • Blast furnace (Ὑψικάμινος), 1935
  • Hinterland (Ἐνδοχώρα), 1945
  • Writings or Personal Mythology (Γραπτά ἤ Προσωπική Μυθολογία), 1960
  • ES ES ES ER Rossia (ΕΣ ΕΣ ΕΣ ΕΡ Ρωσσία), 1962
  • Argo or Aerostat Flight (Ἄργώ ἤ Πλούς Αεροστάτου), 1964
  • Oktana (Ὀκτάνα), 1980
  • Every Generation or Today as Tomorrow and as Yesterday (Αἱ Γενεαί Πᾶσαι ἤ Ἡ Σήμερον ὡς Αὔριον καί ὡς Χθές), 1985
  • Armala or Introduction to a city (Ἄρμαλα ἤ Εἰσαγωγή σέ μία πόλι), 1985
  • The Great Eastern (Ό Μέγας Ἀνατολικός), 1990
  • Zemphyra or The Secret of Pasiphae (Ζεμφύρα ή Το Μυστικόν της Πασιφάης), 1997
  • Nikos Engonopoulos or the miracle of Elbassan and Bosphorus, 2000
  • Lecture 1963, 2000
  • prologue in
    Marie Bonaparte's
    book The hidden necrophilia in the work of Edgar Poe, (Η λανθάνουσα νεκροφιλία στο έργο του Έδγαρ Πόε, 2000)
  • A Case of Obsessive-Compulsive Neurosis with Premature Ejaculations and Other Psychoanalytic Texts (Μια Περίπτωσις Ιδεοψυχαναγκαστικής Νευρώσεως με Πρόωρες Εκσπερματώσεις και Άλλα Ψυχαναλυτικά Κείμενα, 2005)
  • a translation of Picasso's The four little girls, 1980
  • Amour, Amour: writings or personal mythology, tr. N. Stangos, A. Ross (1966).

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-313-30813-0
    .
  2. ISBN 978-3-030-82555-3
    .
  3. ^ Barbeito, Patricia Felisa; Calotychos, Vangelis. Andreas Embiricos, Six Poems from Inner Land. Translated with Patricia Felisa Barbeito. MondoGreco 5 (Spring 2001): 6-12.
  4. ISBN 978-0-85323-694-8
    . Embirikos himself was born into a well - known Greek family of ship owners
  5. ^ "Andreas Embirikos. A hundred years from his birth". Agra. Retrieved 19 August 2019. Between 1926 and 1931 he lived in Paris where he became acquainted with Andre Breton and other Surrealists, and began psychoanalysis with Rene Laforgue.
  6. ELAS
    in charge of executing its enemies.
  7. ^ Eleni Kefala, Peripheral (Post) Modernity, Peter Lang, 2007, p. 160.
  8. ^ Yiorgis Yiatromanolakis, "Taxidevontas sti Rossia meta 48 eti" ("Travelling in Russia after 48 Years"), in the Vivliothiki supplement of Eleftherotypia newspaper, Athens 8 June 2001.
  9. ^ Quoted in Yannis Stathatos, Fotofrachtis: I fotografies tou Andrea Embirikou, Agra Editions, Athens 2001, p.12

External links

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