I have left the aesthetic pleasure that the creations of Ritsos provoke in me for last. I am not speaking of his topical poems, which - without outright rejecting them - I consider products of committed thought, but of all the others, which revealed to us the face and soul of Greece.

The poet's breath lifted a wind where fragments from the skin of our earth, seeds from its vegetation, and sparks from its sky float. Without Ritsos's eloquence, Greeks would have forgotten to name a large part of the things that are in front of their eyes.

During the progress of my writing, I avoided individual observations; however, the multitude of excerpts and summaries of the extensive poems I provided allow the reader to make their own judgments and possibly to be elevated in their overall view of the vast work.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]