or Odysseas Elytēs, orig. Odysseus Alepoudhelis
born Nov. 2, 1911, Iráklion, Crete
died March 18, 1996, Athens, Greece
Greek poet.
The scion of a prosperous Cretan family, he began publishing verse influenced by French Surrealism in the 1930s. His first two collections reveal his love of the Greek landscape and the Aegean Sea. During World War II he joined the antifascist resistance and became something of a bard among young Greeks. One of his best-known poems is The Axion Esti (1959); later works include The Sovereign Sun (1971) and The Little Mariner (1986). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979.