Andreas Mpelezinis

Andreas Belezinis (1929-2011) was born in Patras. He grew up in the district of Agios Andreas and in Aroi (Halili). He completed his secondary education at the then eight-grade gymnasium at the Middle School and the last two grades at the 4th Boys' Gymnasium of Patras. He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens (Department of Philology), the D.M.E., and pursued a brief period of postgraduate studies in history. He taught at a tutoring center and for 5 years in public education. He resigned in 1966, moved to Athens, and returned to tutoring. A "promoter of poetry," he said much, wrote less, and published very little. He published and co-directed the magazines "Ostrako" (in Patras, three issues) and "Speira" (in Athens, in three periods). He was a founding member of the Poetry Symposium and its honorary president. He passed away in Athens in January 2011. In his obituary in the newspaper "Avgi" on January 23, 2011, Alexis Ziras wrote about Andreas Belezinis: "Andreas Belezinis (Patras 1929 - Athens 2011) was the quintessential type of scholar who, when he reached his prime, during the years of his critical maturity, after 1980, did not engage in what was within his capabilities, composition. His impressive energy, this restlessness that distinguished him and was accompanied by an expression of continuous tension and intense emotion in his movements, reactions, and manner of speaking, was partly absorbed, not insignificantly, by teaching and his love for his students. [...] The fact that Belezinis was late in taking the step towards composition is immediately apparent from the fact that his first related study, "The Neolithic Nocturne in Kronstadt by Nikos Karouzos: a reading," was published in 1987, when he was fifty-eight years old, although many shorter studies on contemporary Greek poetry - his privileged field of critical interest - had preceded it. In the twenty-four years that followed, apart from another compositional study on the poems of Late Elytis (1999), all of Andreas Belezinis's other books were collections of articles, presentations, and book reviews: "Eusimi and Asimi Logoi" (1988), "Critical Triptych" (1991), "Presentations of Poets" (2004), "For Nikos Engonopoulos" (2007). Fortunately, because as we all know, scattered studies face the fate of inactive texts, scattered and buried in various mostly short-lived publications. [...] I say, without believing I am exaggerating, that Belezinis worked "fine needlework" inspired by the "encounters" or "receptions" of the poet. And let us not forget at all, the no less important and absolutely characteristic of his critical mind and critical discourse, that his speech, even from his earliest writings, was imbued with a euphoria, with the joy and mental clarity of a reader who was thrilled to converse with high and fruitful poetry. A euphoria that was not unrelated to his highly impulsive and explosive character and that, not infrequently, led him to endless digressions. Not, however, to show off his knowledge through them, but to convey to anyone who happened to read him the ecstasy of his discoveries, intertextual or contextual, as in his critiques one followed the other in an endless series! [...]"