Titos Patrikios
In a poem he wrote in 1958, Titos Patrikios sketched Ritsos: «And my teacher told me: / ‘The bourgeoisie have to recognize you first / so you can make your mark on the movement; / till then don’t say that further afield / you’ll get into trouble.’» Patrikios added a contemporary comment on Ritsos: «He was dedicated to the point of submission and at the same time a rebellious dissenter. And he showed that rebelliousness and skepticism in his poems, and not only the late ones. Ritsos was the most important poet of the second half of the 20th century, chiefly because he gave us poetry on so very many levels.»
