CULTURE

Farewell to Marios Ploritis, pioneering Greek critic, journalist and translator

A breadth of knowledge and an elegance and wealth of language define Marios Ploritis’s contribution to Greek journalism and more generally the world of letters. The writer, critic, director, translator, journalist and public commentator lost his long battle with cancer last Friday at the age of 87. Marios Ploritis – whose real name was Marios Papadopoulos – was born in 1919 in Piraeus to a liberal family and studied law and politics at Athens University before turning his hand to the theatrical arts in England and the United States. His first essays were published during the German occupation of Greece in the Kallitechnika Nea magazine. He was among the Karolos Koun group at the opening of the Theatro Technis in 1942 and translated his first of over 200 plays for that company. Ploritis was also one of the founders of the Ikaros publishing company in 1944 and served as director of the Evdomi Techni periodical. From 1945 to 1965 he worked as a theater critic at Eleftheria newspaper, as well as becoming one of the first film critics in the daily press in Greece. He married his first wife, actress Elli Lambeti in 1950, but the marriage ended in divorce three years later. Ploritis also directed some 20 plays for the stage, taught theater history and dramaturgy at Theatro Technis School from 1956 to 1967, and helped publish the Theatro review. The critic left Eleftheria in 1965 and began working for Vima, the newspaper he wrote for until his death. During the junta he left for Paris, returning to Greece in 1974. His funeral took place on Saturday at Athens’s First Cemetery.

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