#Manolis Aligizakis

[o-link]

"I’ve lived on this earth as if out of place"

Maria Polydouri, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “A Cold Breath Froze,”

[mournfulroses]

Maria Polydouri, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “A Cold Breath Froze,”

[limejuicer1862]

Manolis Aligizakis: Four Modern Greek Poets

[derangedrhythms]

I recognise you...

"I recognise you; I know you again, from a dream or another life…"

⁠— ⁠Jeanette Winterson, from ‘Weight’⁠

"Long before I met you / I had waited for you. I had always waited for you."

⁠— ⁠Tasos Livaditis, Selected Poems; from 'This Star is For All of Us,1952', tr. Manolis Aligizakis

"If I had never seen her before I should still have known her."

"As for the strange fact that she appeared familiar to me from the first glance, do not lovers always experience the feeling that they have seen each other before and that a mysterious bond has long existed between them?"

⁠— ⁠Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl and Other Stories; from ‘The Blind Owl’, tr. D. P. Costello

"I didn't meet him, I recognised him. Love ravages me."

⁠— ⁠Art of Style: Jean Cocteau

"I loved you before I was born. / It doesn't make sense, I know."

⁠— ⁠Li-Young Lee

"From the beginning of my life / I have been looking for your face"

⁠⁠— Rumi, The Love Poems of Rumi; from 'Looking for Your Face', tr. Deepak Chopra & Fereydoun Kia Rider

"And he’s been here in my heart before I even knew him. Understand? He’s always been here. Always."

⁠— Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; from 'Never Marry a Mexican'

"I remember / but it hasn’t happened yet"

⁠— Björk, I Miss You

"I wandered through the world / without knowing you existed / however / (now I know) / since the uncertain mist of the beginning / I went searching for you / among the faces."

⁠— Claribel Alegria, Fugues; 'Now I Know', tr. Darwin J. Flakoll

"Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee, / Before I knew thy face or name;"

⁠— John Donne, from ‘Air and Angels’

"Though you had never possessed me / I had belonged to you since the beginning of time"

⁠— Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Futurism × Feminism: The Circle Squared (Poems 1914–1920); from 'Three Moments in Paris'

"Say my name. Say it. / The way it’s supposed to be said. / I want to know that I knew you / even before I knew you." 

⁠— Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman; from ‘Dulzura’

"You have been mine before, / How long ago I may not know:"

⁠— ⁠Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from ‘Sudden Light’

"Your heart and my heart / Are very, very old / Friends.

⁠— Hafiz, The Gift: from 'Your Mother and My Mother', tr. Daniel Ladinsky

[betweenthetimeandsound]

“She had the sea within her soul, continuously.” — Salvatore Quasimodo, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “The Tall Schooner,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

"Coraline is longing for the sea, but is afraid of the water And maybe the sea is inside her" -- "Coraline", Maneskin

In her dreams she hears seagulls, calling her name.

Her friends only listen to drum and bass with nostalgic synthesizers playing to attract them to a sinking city, lit up by neon lights. Under them a jaundiced girl sleepwalks, dreaming not to land in another person's arms, but in the gelid waves, where they only break in rhythm, not when she's writhing as she's tied with live wires and trying to escape the memories which besiege her.

A languid cloud colors her reality; acid rain tarnishes her painted face, revealing a crescent moon on her left side. It doesn't shine for her; instead, it marks the wounds God opened to teach her patience--instead, she cuts them open to gain a slither of beauty.

In her dreams she sleeps in frothy clouds, with nobody to find her in the vines.

As the temperatures rise, and the swamps catch fire, her friends flee towards the mountains to find solace or salvation. She stands alone with the waves tickling her ankles, the seaweed wrapping around her legs like tentacles waiting for its prey and to throw her into the depths as if she were Persephone's sister gone astray.

Yet it's not the kraken which scares her

.It's the shells which want her to keep shut and make her into a prize to be won by filthy hands and women who want to emerge out of them fully anew. The milk which feeds the girl grows sour as the sun dawns with a lime green cast, and she awakens with the sea salt carting her back to the rocks, tormented and scarred, scared of how the day swallows her in their orbit. --Elda Mengisto

[uneeorchidee]

What do you love about the sea ? 🌊

“A coolness, exhaled from the sea, gives me back my soul. All the aromas of love accumulate in the waves.”

— Paul Valéry, tr. by Hilary Corke, from “The Young Fate” 

“Who can face the sea and not inherit it’s loneliness?”

— Olin Ivory, from “Bad Year Anthem” by Matthew Nienow 

“She, pure daughter of the sea, her heart has always belonged to the waves;”

— Paul Valéry, tr. By Hilary Corke, from The Collected Works; “She Only Seems Dead” 

“And my mind, following the waves, became itself a wave, unresisting, submissive to the rhythm of the sea.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. by Carl Wildman, from “Zorba the Greek” 

"There is one thing I'm good at, and that's looking at the sea."

— Marguerite Duras 

“The sea: I didn't lose myself in it; I found myself in it.”

— Albert Camus, Notebooks (1942 – 1951)  

“And what is this secret connection between the soul, and sea, clouds and perfumes? The soul itself appears to be sea, cloud and perfume.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. By Carl Wildman, from “Zorba the Greek” 

“You would rather have gone on feeling nothing, / emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace / of the deepest sea, which is easier / than the noise and flesh of the surface.”

— Margaret Atwood, from Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986; “Eurydice”

“(She had the sea within her soul, continuously.)”

— Salvatore Quasimodo, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “The Tall Schooner”

[godsopenwound]

I remembered the first night when we buried father—oh, how I hated him for the role of the servant he played, opening our door to the great darkness,

forlornness, and only the cracked walls made visible the horrible faces, the silent faces we often pass by.

There I lived so lonely, that I heard the other voices, and when night came, the dead stole my blanket and lied outside the door until the new day broke and the rooster’s call was crucified on top of my body.

— Tasos Livaditis, “Silent Faces” from Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems (tr. by Manolis Aligizakis)

[wolf-eagle]

In the tiniest moment with you, I lived all my life.

― Tasos Leivaditis  ||  This Star Is For All Of Us || Translated by Manolis Aligizakis

[oldwinesoul]

…and when I’ll show my wounds to the stars, I’ll be dead.

—Maria Polydouri, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, “I’m  the Flower,” wr. c. 1925

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

“You are flooded by fairies and their ephemeral beauty with the secret peaceful light of my dream.”

— Maria Polydouri, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “How Can I Say It To You”

[elladastinkardiamou]

A third volume of poems by the iconic modern Greek poet Yannis Ritsos has just been published in English by writer and translator Manolis Aligizakis, one of the most prominent translators of Greek poetry today.

Ritsos, who lived from May 1, 1909 to November 11, 1990 was born into a well-to-do family in Monemvasia. He became a Communist and an active member of the Greek Resistance during World War II. While he disliked being regarded as a political poet, he is considered “the great poet of the Greek left.”

[xoxowildspirit]

My soul is but a big courageous forest.

Maria Polydouri, tr. by Manolis Aligizakis, from “All I Have Lost,” c. 1926

[mournfulroses]

Maria Polydouri, translated by Manolis Aligizakis, from “Near You,”

[nvsrworld]

ITHACA 24/644 INITIATION

ITHACA 644 English, Initiation, Manolis Aligizakis, Crete“Lovers-2”, painting by Leonid Afremov, https//afremov.com

  Initiation

Borderless, dreamy image of a cypress in meditation, feathery touch of fingers and breaths experienced, heavenly sounds

and in your eyes, in your teardrop, I want to discover the inconceivable and cryptic initiation of time.

Manolis Aligizakis (Crete)

Translated by the…

[wolf-eagle]

I’ve lived this way. Always.

And when we first met—you remember?—you opened your arms ever so tenderly as though you had known me for years. But of course you knew me. Because before you came to my life you had lived in my dreams my beloved.

— Tasos Livaditis || This star is for all of us || Translated by Manolis Aligizakis

[wolf-eagle]

One day it’ll rain and I’ll die of nostalgia.

— Tasos Livaditis || Unspecified Person ||  translated by Manolis Aligizakis