Andreas Embirikos was a Greek surrealist poet and the first Greek psychoanalyst.
Embirikos came from a wealthy family as his father was an important ship-owner. He was born in Br膬ila, Romania, but his family soon moved to Ermoupolis in Syros, Greece. When Embirikos was only seven years old they moved to Athens. While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne to stay with his mother.
The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studies at King's College London.
However it was in Paris where he decided to study psychanalysis together with Ren茅 Laforgue.
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", 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 1930s. He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters and he helped change once and for all the poetic atmosphere of Greece.
Arguably, the most significant and influential work by Embirikos is "Megas Anatolikos". The poet dedicated many years of work to this particularly long novel, that consists of more than one hundred chapters. In this work, Embirikos narrates the first trip of the ocean liner Great Eastern (螠苇纬伪蟼 峒埼轿毕勎课晃刮合屜�) from England to America. Embirikos describes the Great Eastern as a hedonic vessel, where the multitude of the passengers enjoy love without and beyond limits. During the ten-day trip (an allusion to the Decameron) they discover a new form of happiness and innocence. For this work, Odysseas Elytis called Embirikos "a visionary and a prophet".
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 Edgar Allan Poe"; the second, "Nikos Engonopoulos or the miracle of Elbassan and Bosphorus".
I am really not a poetry person. I don't think poetry is for reading a whole book in a day, you should take it slow, read one poem at a time. But that is not my style at all. Depends I guess on the poems, because my first try was Bukowski and I absolutely loved it. Anyway, I will say objectively the book deserves 4 stars even if I had to struggle. And also: 蔚喂谓伪喂 蟿伪 渭伪蟿喂伪 渭慰蠀 未喂伪蠁伪谓蔚蟼 伪蠀位伪委蔚蟼 慰蟿伪谓 蟿伪谓慰喂纬蠅 尾位蔚蟺蠅 蔚渭蟺蟻慰蟼 渭慰蠀 慰,蟿喂 魏喂 伪谓 蟿蠀蠂蔚喂 慰蟿伪谓 蟿伪 魏位蔚喂谓蠅 尾位苇蟺蠅 蔚渭蟺蟻慰蟼 渭慰蠀 慰,蟿喂 蟺慰胃蠅
I recognized this verse immediately, probably I remember it since high school, so definitely the book worths many stars. I remember I liked Embirikos then, because we did analysis on the poems. I should really search for poetry books that also include analysis, that way I would enjoy more.