Dimitris Lyacos
Encyclopedia
Dimitris Lyacos (born on October 19, 1966) is a contemporary Greek
poet and playwright
. He was born and raised in Athens
where he studied Law. From 1988-1991 he lived in Venice
, then moved to London
, studied philosophy at University College London
and stayed there for thirteen years. He is currently based in Berlin
.
of the vision of God. The trilogy has been written back to front. The third part appeared
first (O protos thanatos) in Greek and was later translated in English, Spanish and Italian.
The second part was published in 2001 in Greek and German; it came out in English in 2005.
Various artists have brought Lyacos' work in different artistic media. Austrian artist
Sylvie Proidl, presented a series of paintings in 2002 in Vienna. In 2004 a sound and
sculpture installation by sculptor Fritz Unegg and director Piers Burton-Page as well as a
video stemming from Nyctivoe, by Gudrun Bielz were produced. The Myia dance company
has been performing a contemporary dance version of Nyctivoe in Greece since spring 2006.
, Aeschylus
and Dante
as well as the darker aspects of romantic poetry together with symbolism, expressionism, and an intense religious and philosophical interest permeate the work. The first of the three pieces, Z213: Exit
(Z213:ΕΞΟΔΟΣ), accounts a man's escape from a guarded city and his journey through dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, lands; in the second book, Nyctivoe (Νυκτιβόη), a man possessed by demons attempts to resurrect the body of a lover but ends in his joining her in the grave. The third book, The First Death
(Ο Πρώτος Θάνατος) opens with a marooned man on a rocky island and details his struggle for survival as well as the disintegration of his body and the unrolling of its memory banks.
and situation in Nyctivoe, as well as a hard lyrical kind of poetry used to depict the break-up and eventual apotheosis of the body in the First Death. The possibilities of difference between the perceived and the objective outside world are exploited; we are watching the irregular flow of an internal monologue, an event in the external world, or even an event reflected onto the thinking and feeling surfaces of the protagonist's mind. Nevertheless the characters' bodies and the physical context of their lives are presented with impressive solidity.
The man escaping from his city into a closely detailed, yet somehow Kafkaesque, world, has the everyday persona of an L.A.private eye in a 40's detective novel along with the intimation of being on the verge of an extraordinary adventure.
Nyctivoe starts with the man from St. Mark's
gospel living in a cemetery, tormented by demons, and cutting himself with stones. He searches in the soil for the grave of Nyctivoe, and in the urgency of his desire projects life into the body he has scraped up from the tomb, whose passage back to life is described with horrifying materiality. The grave becomes a "fine and private place" for lovers still capable of embracing.
In the opening of The First Death a place is denied to the mutilated body which grinds against the rocks and suffers continuing degradation, physical and mental, as even the mechanisms of memory are dislocated. Yet the bond between person and body that ensures life still persists, and, "at that point without substance/ where the world collides and takes off" , the mechanical instincts of the cosmos rumble into action and sling this irreducible substance again into space -prompting, perhaps, a future regeneration.
Dimitris Lyacos
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
poet and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
. He was born and raised in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
where he studied Law. From 1988-1991 he lived in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, then moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, studied philosophy at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
and stayed there for thirteen years. He is currently based in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Career
In 1992 Lyacos set about writing a trilogy under the collective name "Poena Damni", referring to the hardest trial the condemned souls in Hell have to endure, i.e. the lossof the vision of God. The trilogy has been written back to front. The third part appeared
first (O protos thanatos) in Greek and was later translated in English, Spanish and Italian.
The second part was published in 2001 in Greek and German; it came out in English in 2005.
Various artists have brought Lyacos' work in different artistic media. Austrian artist
Sylvie Proidl, presented a series of paintings in 2002 in Vienna. In 2004 a sound and
sculpture installation by sculptor Fritz Unegg and director Piers Burton-Page as well as a
video stemming from Nyctivoe, by Gudrun Bielz were produced. The Myia dance company
has been performing a contemporary dance version of Nyctivoe in Greece since spring 2006.
Summary/Context
The trilogy would appear to belong to a context of tragic poetry and epic drama, albeit distinctly postmodern at the same time. HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
and Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
as well as the darker aspects of romantic poetry together with symbolism, expressionism, and an intense religious and philosophical interest permeate the work. The first of the three pieces, Z213: Exit
Z213: Exit
Z213: Exit is a book by the Greek writer Dimitris Lyacos. The book is the first installment in the “Poena Damni” trilogy.- Synopsis :The work recounts, in what reads like a personal journal, in verse form or postmodern poetic prose, the wanderings of a man who escapes from a guarded building in a...
(Z213:ΕΞΟΔΟΣ), accounts a man's escape from a guarded city and his journey through dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, lands; in the second book, Nyctivoe (Νυκτιβόη), a man possessed by demons attempts to resurrect the body of a lover but ends in his joining her in the grave. The third book, The First Death
The First Death
Dimitris Lyacos’s The First Death is the latest installment of a narrative sequence entitled Poena Damni.-History:The book was originally published in Greek in 1996 and has been translated in English, German,Spanish and Italian...
(Ο Πρώτος Θάνατος) opens with a marooned man on a rocky island and details his struggle for survival as well as the disintegration of his body and the unrolling of its memory banks.
Survey
The work is hard to classify since it crosses the usual boundaries of genre. It often takes narrative form, mixing poetry and prose, but moves into dramatic representation of characterand situation in Nyctivoe, as well as a hard lyrical kind of poetry used to depict the break-up and eventual apotheosis of the body in the First Death. The possibilities of difference between the perceived and the objective outside world are exploited; we are watching the irregular flow of an internal monologue, an event in the external world, or even an event reflected onto the thinking and feeling surfaces of the protagonist's mind. Nevertheless the characters' bodies and the physical context of their lives are presented with impressive solidity.
The man escaping from his city into a closely detailed, yet somehow Kafkaesque, world, has the everyday persona of an L.A.private eye in a 40's detective novel along with the intimation of being on the verge of an extraordinary adventure.
Nyctivoe starts with the man from St. Mark's
St. Mark's
- Europe :* St. Mark's Church, Belgrade, Serbia* St. Mark's Church, Zagreb, CroatiaItaly* St Mark's Basilica, Venice* St Mark's Campanile, Venice- North America :United States* St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church...
gospel living in a cemetery, tormented by demons, and cutting himself with stones. He searches in the soil for the grave of Nyctivoe, and in the urgency of his desire projects life into the body he has scraped up from the tomb, whose passage back to life is described with horrifying materiality. The grave becomes a "fine and private place" for lovers still capable of embracing.
In the opening of The First Death a place is denied to the mutilated body which grinds against the rocks and suffers continuing degradation, physical and mental, as even the mechanisms of memory are dislocated. Yet the bond between person and body that ensures life still persists, and, "at that point without substance/ where the world collides and takes off" , the mechanical instincts of the cosmos rumble into action and sling this irreducible substance again into space -prompting, perhaps, a future regeneration.
External links
- http://www.lyacos.net
- http://www.reconstruction.gr/en/actions_dtls.php/32 (extracts 1, 2 from Z213: Exit in Greek original and English translation)
- http://www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol23/lyacos/index.html (extracts 2 and 3 from Z213: Exit in English translation)
- http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/dimitris_lyacos/poems/22681 (translation of extract 5 from Z213: Exit)
- http://www.nthposition.com/z213exit.php (translation of extract 5 from Z213: Exit as a previous draft)
- http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2006/10/poem-by-dimitris-lyacos.html (translation of extract 7 from Z213: Exit)
- http://poeticanet.com/en/poets.php?subaction=showfull&id=1182856481&archive=&start_from=&ucat=41&show_cat=41 (Greek original and translations of extracts 6 and 8 from Z213: Exit)
- http://www.poetrybay.com/fall2007/lyacos1.html (English translation of extract 9 from Z213:Exit)
- http://mgversion2.free.fr/esect/mgv2_en_02/dlyacos.html (English translation of extract 10 from Z213: Exit)
- http://poetrysz.blogspot.com/2008/07/dimitris-lyacos.html (English translation of extracts 11,12 from Z213: Exit)
- http://www.mid.muohio.edu/segue/7/7lyacos.swf (Extracts 10,11,12 are also published in Segue, University of Miami, followed by an interview with the author).
- http://www.snreview.org/0208Lyacos.html (English translation of extracts 13,14,15 from Z213: Exit)
- http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1717 (Draft English translation of extracts 13,14,15 from Z213: Exit)
- Dimitris Lyacos | Arabesques Review (extract 16 from Z213: Exit/ draft English translation)
- http://issuu.com/mgversion2/docs/mg65?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml&backgroundColor=2A5083&showFlipBtn=true (extract 18 from Z213: Exit /English translation - French translation)
- http://www.zianet.com/lunarosity/lyacos.html (New Mexico) (English translation of extract 20 from Z213:Exit)
- http://www.ducts.org/content/extract-23-from-z213-exit/ (English translation of extract 23 from Z213:Exit)
- http://www.thebluejewyorker.com/Issue5/Issue5pages/Lyacos.html (New York) (English translation of extracts 22-24 from Z213:Exit)
- http://www.oregonlitrev.org/v1n2/OLR-lyacos.htm (audio extract from Nyctivoe)
- http://www.wordsontheweb.net/diadromes..%5B1%5D%5B1%5D.pdf Anthology of three Greek and three Irish poets (Nanos Valaoritis, Tassos Denegris, Dimitris Lyacos, Patrick Chapman, Susan Millar Dumars, Kevin Higgins) containing extracts from Lyacos' trilogy.
Dimitris Lyacos