The Nobel Prize in Literature 1979
Awarded on: 1979-10-18
"for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness"
Odysseus Elytis
Born: 1911-11-02 in Iráklion, Crete (now Greece)
Gender: male
Field: Greek poet and art critic
Biography
Odysseas Elytis was a Greek poet, man of letters, essayist and translator, regarded as the definitive exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. He is one of the most praised poets of the second half of the twentieth century, with his Axion Esti "regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry". In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.