Titos Patríkios

During the German occupation he joined a left-wing resistance group and narrowly escaped death at the hands of collaborators. He published his first poem in 1943. After the civil war he was arrested for his left-wing sympathies and imprisoned on ‘concentration islands’ for three years. In 1954 he published his first book of poems and helped set up the influential progressive magazine Epitheórisi Téchnis (Arts Review), to which he contributed features, reviews and poetry. In those years he worked as a lawyer, journalist and translator. In 1959-1964 he took postgraduate courses in sociology and philosophy in Paris. From 1964 he worked as head of research at the Greek Centre of Social Sciences, until the military dictatorship (1967-1974) forced him to seek refuge in Italy and France. Since his return to Athens he has worked as a lawyer, sociologist and translator. He has several sociological studies to his name.

Apart from fifteen collections of poetry, Patríkios has published essays and three books of prose. He translated work of Lukács, Aragon, Stendhal, Balzac and Valéry. A three-volume edition of his poems appeared in 1998: Poems I, 1943-1953; Poems II, 1953-1959; and Poems III, 1959-1973. His poetry was translated into French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Arabic, and other languages. In 1992 Italy honoured him with the ‘Salerno ’92’ international poetry prize, and in 1994 he received the Greek national poetry prize for his entire oeuvre. [Titos Patríkios took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2000. This text was written on that occasion.]

Also on this site
{id="2440" title="Poetic and political ethics"}
Essay by Dimitris Maronitis.


Bibliography (selection)
Poems I, 1943-1953
Poems II, 1953-1959
Poems III, 1959-1973