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QUESTION: Elytis’ deep involvement, which connects him with the visual arts and especially with the technique of collage, stemmed from his meeting in Paris artists like Chagall, Leger, Max Ernst. Thanks to his friendship with the French Surrealists, he felt the link poetry-painting more tangibly. Although he has been engaged in the visual arts, Worthy It Is (1959) becomes the foundation for his international reputation. He met his true teacher, the poet Paul Eluard, in 1946. Then followed a second trip to Paris in 1948, where he met Picasso and Matisse, and realized he could easily be a painter. In fine arts Elytis was influenced mostly by neo-Impressionism but also by Surrealism. He showed his works at the exhibition of Surrealists in Athens (1935), and had an individual exhibition in Stockholm (1979). Some of his books are illustrated with his collages (Open Cards) and water-coulors (Private Road). Did Elytis continue to look at himself as an artist when he was at the height of his fame as a poet?

ILIOPOULOU: This is the exhibition of the Surrealists hosted at the home of the poet Andreas Embirikos in 1935. Elytis did not expose his other works before 1979 and 1980 in Sweden and Athens. He is not an artist. He did not illustrate his books. He published some of them like Private Road and Garden of Illusions and presented in parallel some of his visual works. He loved painting very much, he had profound theoretical knowledge, but he had not studied painting and theory of colours. So, he was self-educated admirer of this art, not an artist. Once he wrote that had he not been born a Greek and had he not availed himself of this specific language tool, then he would have probably been a painter.

QUESTION: This year marks one hundred years from the birth of one of Elytis’s translators into Bulgarian – the poet Hellenist Stefan Gechev. A few years ago you visited Sofia for a discussion on "Elytis of Fine Arts" held in the hall for cultural events at the Greek embassy there, named after the Bulgarian poet. Do you share the view that not only the year of their birth connects them, but poetry as a way of life too, poetry as "the other face of pride" in the words of Elytis himself?

ILIOPOULOU: Yes, this connection is right. A common understanding of the meaning of life, of spiritual priorities connected them. They had a mutual appreciation of each other, the bond between the two of them was one of shared respect and trust.

On the occasion of World Poetry Day coinciding with the vernal equinox – 21 March - the National Book Centre of Greece and the Society of Writers organized a poetry evening dedicated to Odysseas Elytis.