1 I would like to thank Peter Bien and Dimitris Papanikolaou for their careful reading of the paper and their constructive criticism. Dr Papanikolaou’s thoughtful comments in particular have contributed to its improvement and final form.

2 Veloudis, G., Γιάννης Ρίτσος: Προβλήματα μελέτης τον έργον τον (Athens 1982) 93–4Google Scholar.

3 Ritsos, G., #Ποιήματα, II (Athens 1961) 130-1Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 427-32.

5 Clair, J., ‘The fantasies of origin and the origin of fantasies’, in Delvaux and Antiquity (Wommelgem, Brussels and Athens 2010) 62 Google Scholar.

6 For a discussion of this matter see Giannakopoulou, L., ‘Sculpture and stones in the poetry of Seferis and Ritsos’, Κάμπος. Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 10 (2002) 51–64 Google Scholar.

7 This is an issue that has been explored widely in a number of articles. I mention here indicatively Veloudis, G., ‘#O καβαφικός Ρίτσος’ in Προαεγγίσεις ото έργο τον Γιάννη Ρίτσου (Athens 1984), 114-42Google Scholar and Peri, M., ‘Καβάφης/Ρίΐσος’, in Kokoris, D. (ed.), Εισαγωγή στην ποίηση του Ρίταον (Heraclion 2009) 139-61Google Scholar.

8 Έμείς τον παρασιέκαμε και πάλι / με την αφοσίωοή μας ή το φθάνο μας - αδιάφορο - τον παραστέκαμε’ (11. 2-3).

9 ‘Km τότε, εκείνος / έβγαλε το δεξί μαρμαρωμένο πόδι του απ’ то μάρμαρο / σα να πατούαε otov αναβατήρα ενός αλόγου / κ’ εχάθη καβαλλάρης μες ото φως. Μα εμείς δεν κλάψαμε - / ξέραμε πως γυρνσύσε πάλι ανάμεσά μας απ’ τον άλλο δρόμο, / Ισως λιγότερο μεγάλος κ’ ίσως πιότερο δικός μας’ (11. 8-13).

10 As we shall see below, some of these themes were to be explored later in more adverse and politically charged situations. In the late 60s and 70s the imagery of the poet as sculptor will be used in poems such as ‘O άγνωοτος αντίπαλος του Φειδία’, ‘О τεχνιτης’, ‘Λσκοπη επι,μονή’ or Έμπειρίες’, but in order to express the frustration the artist is experiencing in politically oppressive and trying circumstances.

11 Cf. de Chirico, ‘The joys and enigmas of a strange hour’ (1913) and Delvaux, ‘The sirens’ (1947) or ‘The meeting at Ephesus’ (1967).

12 Rubin, W., ‘De Chirico et la modernité’, in al, W. Rubinét. (eds.), Giorgio de Chirico (Paris 1983) 11–12 Google Scholar, 14.

13 See for example K. Koutsomallis, ‘Magic and fantasy in the work of Paul Delvaux’, in Delvaux and Antiquity, 21-37 and Loizidi, N., О Τζιόρτζιο ντε Κίρικο και η σονρεαλιοτική επανάσιαση (Athens 1987)Google Scholar.

14 Palamas’ poem #‘Τάφοι του Κεραμεικού’ (1892).

15 See Loizidi, О Τζιόρτζιο ντε Κίριχο, 126–7.

16 As well as artistic fulfillment. For etymological associations and interpretations of the term, see Fowler, B. H., ‘The centaur’s smile: Pindar and the Archaic aesthetic’, in Moon, W. G. (ed.), Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison 1983) 166-8Google Scholar.

17 According to Heffernan, J., Museum of Words (Chicago 1993) 3 Google Scholar, pictorialism is when something is represented in poetry with the aid of pictorial techniques but without reference to a recognizable work of art.

18 For more on various uses of this technique, see for example Adamovicz, E., Surrealist Collage in Text and Image (Cambridge 1998)Google Scholar.

19 See the quatrain ‘[Κλώνος του Απόλλωνα to χέρι]’ in Sikelianos, A., Λυρικός Βίος, VI (Athens 1969) 110 Google Scholar and 11. 31-7 of ‘To κατορθωμένο σώμα’ of H Σννείόηση της Προσωπικής Δημιονργίας (1946), in Λυρικός Βίος, III (Athens 1965) 246.

20 See Prevelis, P., O ποιητής Γιάννης Ρίτσος. Συνολική θεώρηση του έργον του (Athens 1992) 394 Google Scholar. Peter Bien, in his insightful study ‘Ritsos’s painterly technique in long and short poems’ (To Yiofiri. Periodical of Modern Greek Studies 11 (1990-1) 9-10), makes the interesting observation that such a technique is developed in Ritsos’ poetry as a reaction to the Metaxas dictatorship.

21 For aspects of these in the work of surrealists and the influence of Freud’s essay, ‘Das Unheimliche’, see Loizidi, О Τξιόρτζιο ντε Κίριχο, 156 and 173. Also A. Farnoux, ‘Avant-garde and antiquity, 1919-1949’, in Delvaux and Antiquity, 149-69.

22 Scott, D., Paul Delvaux: Surrealizing the Nude (London 1992) 12 Google Scholar.

23 Pliny, Book VII, 127, in Sellers, E. (ed.), The Elder Pliny’s Chatters on the History of Art, tr. Jex-Blake, K. (London 1896) 219 Google Scholar.

24 Mango, C., ‘Antique statuary and the Byzantine beholder’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963) 55–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (60).

25 See Scott, Delvaux, 41-2.

26 Chevalier, J. and Gheerbrant, A. (ed.), A Dictionary of Symbols, tr. Buchanan-Brown, J. (London 1996) 19 Google Scholar, entry ‘Amazon’. See also the entry ‘girdle’ (433) which states that ‘in Classical antiquity, to say that a girl had unloosed her girdle implied her sexual surrender’.

27 The best-known story is the medieval legend of the Venus and the Ring. In it, a young man falls in love with a statue of Aphrodite which, of course, remains indifferent and ‘frigid’. The story has many versions but it always ends with a scene of sexual assault in which the young man is the victim and the statue is mysteriously present. For a detailed discussion of the story and its numerous variants, see Ziolkowski, T., Disenchanted Images: A Literary lconology (Princeton 1977) 18–77 Google Scholar.

28 For a discussion of the irrational in Ritsos’ poetry see Dokos, T., ‘Από τη βεβαιότητα οτην αμφιβολία: H αίσθηοη του παραλόγου στην ώριμη ποίηοη του Γίάννη Ρίτσου’, Ελίτροχος 4–5 (1994–5) 235-47Google Scholar. Dokos discusses this development in relation to the poet’s reaction to the Occupation and the Civil War and emphasizes its presence from 1960 onwards as a result of Ritsos’ growing existential preoccupations and his disappointment at the lack of religious, metaphysical or other roots in modern man.

29 See for example Hamilakis, Y. and Yalouri, E., ‘Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society’, Antiquity 70 (1996) 125-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 ‘Γνωσιές συνέπειες’, dated 17.3.71 (θυρωρείο).

31 Hamilakis, Y., The Nation and lts Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford 2007) 205-41Google Scholar.

32 See Giannakopoulou, L., The Power of Pygmalion: Ancient Greek Sculpture in Modern Greek Poetry, 1860-1960 (Bern 2007) 199–201 Google Scholar.

33 As Hamilakis (The Nation and its Ruins, 245?) points out with reference to Makronisos: ‘The main purpose of Makronisos was the ideological indoctrination not only of its detainees but also of the whole of the dissenting population of Greece.’

34 Ritsos, G., Πθίήματα, IV (Athens 1975) 305 Google Scholar.

35 The poem refers to the famous statue of the Charioteer of Delphi, a bronze complex erected in 474 B.C. It was dedicated to Apollo by Polyzalus, the tyrant of Gela, who wanted to thank the god for his victory in the chariot race at the Pythian games. It is said that it represents the driver at the moment of this victory, presenting his chariot and horses to the crowd. It is a triumphant moment, which is nevertheless counterbalanced by the restraint of movement and expression that characterizes the young person.

36 Seferis, G., ‘Δελφοί,’, in Δοκψές, II (Athens 1984) 137-52Google Scholar.

37 Pindar, Olympian 9 (80-3).

38 In Homer the motif refers to the gods, for example the flight of Zeus in his chariot across the heaven in order to observe the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. In the case of Telemachus searching for his father, it also represents a journey towards knowledge, self-knowledge and coming of age. For a detailed and informative analysis see Slaveva-Griffin, S., ‘Of gods, philosophers, and charioteers: content and form in Parmenides’ proem and Plato’s Phaedrus’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 133 (2003) 227-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Slaveva-Griffin, ‘Of Gods’, 230, n.10.

40 A first reading brings Ήνίοχος 1970’ closer to Seferis’ Μυθιστόρημα KA’, in which the encounter with statues is associated with fragmentation and death. But unlike Seferis’ poem, in which death affects the viewers who are standing in contemplation (Όρθοί οτα πόδια μας πεθαίνουμε’), Ritsos’ Ήνίοχος 1970’, as we shall see, turns that imagery of fixity and petrification into a statement of struggle and communication.

41 For the word’s occurrence see Kokolis, X. A., Πίνακας λέξεων των 154 ποιημάτων του К. П. Καβάφη (Athens 1976)Google Scholar. Its political aspect appears in ‘Απολεύπειν о θεός Αντώνιον’ and ‘H σατραπεία’. ‘Πέρασμα’, on the other hand, endows the verb with an unambiguously erotic meaning: the sensual limbs of the young man in the poem give in to the ‘deviant erotic rapture’ to which they are exposed ( Cavafy, C. P.. The Collected Poems, tr. Sachperoglou, E. (Oxford 2007) 101 Google Scholar.

42 See ‘Ένας θεός των’, Τια τον Αμμόνη’, ‘Μύρης’ and “Οσο μπορείς’. In the latter the word #ξένη refers to the dangers of one’s life becoming a burdensome and alien element if one does not do one’s best to preserve one’s own values against the levelling impact of the crowd.

43 Cf. Seferis’ poem “Ονομα ô’ Ορέστης’ (Μνθιστόρημα’ΣΓ), in which the poet’s predicament is also expressed with the help of the charioteer imagery, in this case the rider having lost control over his horses.

44 Politis, K., Eroica, ed. Mackridge, P. (Athens 1982) 7–8 Google Scholar.

45 Compare with similar suggestive imagery in Seferis’ Μνθιστόρημα B’: ‘Τα δάχτυλα ото φιλιατρό, καθώς έλεγε о ποιητής. / Та δάχτυλα νιώθουν τη οροσιά της πέτρας λίγο’ (6-7).

46 Cf. ‘Για tov καινούργιο θερισμό του μυσπκού ασταχυσύ’, lines 2-5 and 22-35. The restoration of this fragmented body is again described as a Kouros, in ‘Προς την Ποίηοη-Πράξη’, lines 1-7: Αυρνκός Βίος, III, 237 Google Scholar, 238 and 240.