If someone wanted to read the story of the century, they would find it intact in the poetry of Yiannis Ritsos: in the poems that recorded it like a chronicle. In the wake-up songs, in hymns to heroes and elegies. In the poetically transformed biography of his, scattered across various compositions.

And even deeper, in the internal journey of the poet, which he captured day by day with clarity or allusively. And this "allusively" says more about the violence of the regime, the mindsets and conventional morality, the ideological coercions. With masks and borrowed voices, he articulates his truth.

The ambiguities, contradictions, and vacillations bear witness to the hard struggle of the thinker who receives the ominous messages of the times while linking his destiny to the highest vision of humanity.

Over a hundred poetic collections and compositions, nine prose works (he calls them novels), four plays, as well as studies about his fellow writers constitute the main body of his work. Numerous translations, newspaper articles, and other publications complete the picture of the tenacious creator.

[Excerpt from the text of the introduction of the edition]