Tasos Leivaditis' Triptych

‘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