# Andreas Embirikos

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Greek surrealist poet and psychoanalyst

Andreas Embirikos Andreas Embiricos in Lausanne, 1920 Native name Ανδρέας Εμπειρίκος Born 2 September 1901 Brăila, Kingdom of Romania Died 3 August 1975(1975-08-03) (aged 73) Athens, Greece Occupation Psychoanalyst, writer, poet Education National and Capodistrian University of Athens, University of Genoa Literary movement Surrealism, Generation of the '30s Notable works The Great Eastern, Ypsikaminos Signature

**Andreas Embirikos**[a] ([/ɛmbɪˈrɪkɒs/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English); [Greek](/source/Greek_language): Ανδρέας Εμπειρίκος [\[embiˈrikos\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Greek) *Andréas Empeiríkos*; September 2, 1901 – August 3, 1975) was a [Greek](/source/Greeks) [surrealist](/source/Surrealist) poet, writer, photographer, and one of the first Greek [psychoanalysts](/source/Psychoanalysis).[1][2] As a writer, he emerged from the [Generation of the '30s](/source/Generation_of_the_'30s) and is considered one of the most important representatives of Greek surrealism. He studied psychoanalysis in France and was the first to practice it as a profession in Greece in the years 1935–1951. Out of his entire literary work, his first collection of poetry, titled *[Ypsikaminos](/source/Ypsikaminos)*, stands out as the first purely surrealist Greek text.[3] Among his [prose](/source/Prose) works, his bold [erotic novel](/source/Erotic_literature) *[The Great Eastern](/source/The_Great_Eastern_(Embirikos_novel))* was completed over a period of several decades becoming the lengthiest [modern Greek novel](/source/Modern_Greek_literature). Described as Embirikos' "lifework", It was received with both praise and criticism for its [libertine](/source/Libertine) nature and highly erotic content. A large part of Embirikos' work was published well after his death.

## Life

Embirikos was born in 1901 in [Brăila](/source/Br%C4%83ila), [Romania](/source/Kingdom_of_Romania) into a wealthy [Greek](/source/Greeks_in_Romania) family. His father Leonidas Embirikos was an important [ship-owner](/source/Ship-owner) and politician.[4] A year later, his family moved to [Ermoupolis](/source/Ermoupolis) on the [Aegean](/source/Aegean_Sea) island of [Syros](/source/Syros). When Embirikos was only seven years old they moved to [Athens](/source/Athens). While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the School of Philosophy of the [National and Capodistrian University of Athens](/source/National_and_Capodistrian_University_of_Athens), but he decided to move to [Lausanne](/source/Lausanne) to stay with his mother without graduating from the university.

The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in [France](/source/France) and in the [United Kingdom](/source/United_Kingdom) where he studied at [King's College London](/source/King's_College_London); however it was in [Paris](/source/Paris) where he decided to study [psychoanalysis](/source/Psychoanalysis) together with [René Laforgue](/source/Ren%C3%A9_Laforgue) and joined the [International Psychoanalytical Association](/source/International_Psychoanalytical_Association).[5]

### Timeline

- **1929** Meets with the surrealists and is interested in [automatic writing](/source/Automatic_writing).

- **1931** Returns to Greece and works for some time at the shipdocks.

- **1934** Develops an intermittent companionship to [Marguerite Yourcenar](/source/Marguerite_Yourcenar).

- **1935** Gives the famous lecture On surrealism (Περί σουρρεαλισμού) in Athens and publishes *Blast furnace*; a pure surrealist text.

- **1940** Gets married with poet Matsi Hatzilazarou; nevertheless, they divorced four years later. The same year he divorced (1944), despite his leftist sympathies, he was taken hostage by the [communist](/source/Communist) [OPLA](/source/Organization_for_the_Protection_of_the_People's_Struggle)[6] after the [Dekemvriana](/source/Dekemvriana) events in Athens and was treated in a humiliating way. On the road he managed to escape.

- **1947** Gets married for the second time with Vivika Zisi. A year later, his father, with whom Embeirikos' relationship was rather normal, dies in [Geneva](/source/Geneva).

- **1962** Together with [Yorgos Theotokas](/source/Yorgos_Theotokas) and [Odysseas Elytis](/source/Odysseas_Elytis), he was invited to travel to the [USSR](/source/USSR) by the "Greco-Soviet" Union; the trip inspired him to write the poem *ES ES ES ER Rossia*.

- **1975** He dies in [Kifissia](/source/Kifissia); his mother preceded him by only two years.

## Poetry

Andreas Embirikos

His poetry can be defined by two major tendencies. On the one hand, he was one of the major representatives of surrealism in Greece. His first poetic collection, Ipsikaminos (i.e. blast furnace), was a [heretic](/source/Heresy) [book](/source/Book), characterized by the lack of the punctuation and the peculiarity of the language. As the poet himself admitted it was precisely the originality and extravagance of his work that contributed to his relative commercial success.

On the other hand, together with [Yorgos Seferis](/source/Yorgos_Seferis), Embirikos was the most important representative of the "[Generation of the '30s](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_der_30er_Jahre)".[7] He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters and he helped change once and for all the poetic atmosphere of Greece.

## *Megas Anatolikos*

Α significant work by Embirikos is his most popular novel *[The Great Eastern](/source/The_Great_Eastern_(Embirikos_novel))* (Μέγας Ἀνατολικός) written between 1940–c. 1970 and published only after his death in 1990. In this work, Embirikos narrates the first trip of the ocean liner [Great Eastern](/source/SS_Great_Eastern) from England to America. Embirikos describes the Great Eastern as a hedonic vessel, where the multitude of the passengers enjoy love without and beyond limits. During the ten-day trip (an allusion to the [Decameron](/source/Decameron)) they discover a new form of happiness and innocence. For this work, [Odysseas Elytis](/source/Odysseas_Elytis) called Embirikos "a visionary and a prophet".[*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*]

## Literary critic

Embirikos also wrote articles of literary criticism; at least two of them are worth-mentioning. The first is "The hidden necrophilia in the works of [Edgar Allan Poe](/source/Edgar_Allan_Poe)"; the second, "[Nikos Engonopoulos](/source/Nikos_Engonopoulos) or the miracle of [Elbassan](/source/Elbassan) and [Bosphorus](/source/Bosphorus)".

## Photography

Embirikos was an enthusiastic photographer all his life, and the sheer volume of his photographic work, no less than his passionate involvement with the medium, suggest that it was, for him, very nearly as important an activity as writing. Yiorgis Yiatromanolakis (Γιώργης Γιατρομανωλάκης), Embirikos's principal Greek scholar, has written that "his three principal identities are those of a poet, a novelist and a photographer".[8] For his part, Embirikos's son, Leonidas, has referred to his father's "vast, vertiginously extensive photographic archive... the negatives alone exceeding 30,000 items".[9]

Embirikos only ever publicly exhibited his photographs once in his lifetime, showing a limited number of prints at the Ilissos gallery in Athens, in 1955. However, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of his birth in 2001, the photographer and critic [John Stathatos](/source/John_Stathatos) (Γιάννης Σταθάτος) was commissioned to research the archive and curate a large exhibition at the Technopolis Arts Centre in Athens. A substantial monograph incorporating Stathatos's text was simultaneously published by Agra Editions.

## Selected works

- *[Ypsikaminos](/source/Ypsikaminos)* (*Ὑψικάμινος*), 1935

- *Hinterland* (*Ἐνδοχώρα*), 1945

- *Writings or Personal Mythology* (*Γραπτά ἤ Προσωπική Μυθολογία*), 1960

- *ES ES ES ER Rossia* (*ΕΣ ΕΣ ΕΣ ΕΡ Ρωσσία*), 1962

- *Argo or Aerostat Flight* (*Ἄργώ ἤ Πλούς Αεροστάτου*), 1964

- *Oktana* (*Ὀκτάνα*), 1980

- *Every Generation or Today as Tomorrow and as Yesterday* (*Αἱ Γενεαί Πᾶσαι ἤ Ἡ Σήμερον ὡς Αὔριον καί ὡς Χθές*), 1985

- *Armala or Introduction to a City* (*Ἄρμαλα ἤ Εἰσαγωγή σέ μία πόλι*), 1985

- *[The Great Eastern](/source/The_Great_Eastern_(Embirikos_novel))* (*Ό Μέγας Ἀνατολικός*), 1990

- *Zemphyra or The Secret of Pasiphaë* (*Ζεμφύρα ή Το Μυστικόν της Πασιφάης*), 1997

- *Nikos Engonopoulos or the Miracle of Elbassan and Bosphorus*, 2000

- *Lecture 1963*, 2000

- Prologue to the Greek edition of [Marie Bonaparte's](/source/Princess_Marie_Bonaparte) book *Deuil, nécrophilie et sadisme: à propos d'Edgar Poe* (*Η λανθάνουσα νεκροφιλία στο έργο του Έδγαρ Πόε*), 2000

- *A Case of Obsessive-Compulsive Neurosis with Premature Ejaculations and Other Psychoanalytic Texts* (*Μια Περίπτωσις Ιδεοψυχαναγκαστικής Νευρώσεως με Πρόωρες Εκσπερματώσεις και Άλλα Ψυχαναλυτικά Κείμενα*), 2005

- A translation of [Pablo Picasso](/source/Pablo_Picasso)'s *[The Four Little Girls](/source/The_Four_Little_Girls)*, 1980

- *Amour, Amour: Writings or Personal Mythology* (tr. Nikos Stangos, [Alan Ross](/source/Alan_Ross)), 1966

## Notes

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Also **Embiricos**

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Merry, Bruce (2004). [*Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature*](https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-lr20SuvfIC&pg=PA124). Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 124. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-0-313-30813-0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-313-30813-0).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Terjesen, Mark D.; Doyle, Kristene A. (2022-10-25). [*Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in a Global Context*](https://books.google.com/books?id=36uXEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA213). Springer Nature. p. 213. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-3-030-82555-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-3-030-82555-3).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Barbeito, Patricia Felisa; Calotychos, Vangelis. [*Andreas Embiricos, Six Poems from Inner Land. Translated with Patricia Felisa Barbeito. MondoGreco 5 (Spring 2001): 6-12*](https://www.academia.edu/29720686).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Smyth, Edmund J. (2000-01-01). [*Jules Verne: Narratives of Modernity*](https://books.google.com/books?id=OswlF3aWWtgC&pg=PA136). Liverpool University Press. p. 136. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-0-85323-694-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-85323-694-8). Embirikos himself was born into a well - known Greek family of ship owners

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** ["Andreas Embirikos. A hundred years from his birth"](https://www.agra.gr/english/31.html). Agra. Retrieved 19 August 2019. Between 1926 and 1931 he lived in Paris where he became acquainted with Andre Breton and other Surrealists, and began psychoanalysis with Rene Laforgue.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** *O.P.L.A – Organization for the Protection of the People's Fighters. The secret police division of [ELAS](/source/Greek_People's_Liberation_Army) in charge of executing its enemies.*

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** Eleni Kefala, [*Peripheral (Post) Modernity*](https://books.google.com/books?id=tGXEdVSYIn0C&dq=), Peter Lang, 2007, p. 160.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Yiorgis Yiatromanolakis, "Taxidevontas sti Rossia meta 48 eti" ("Travelling in Russia after 48 Years"), in the *Vivliothiki* supplement of *Eleftherotypia* newspaper, Athens 8 June 2001.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-10)** Quoted in Yannis Stathatos, *Fotofrachtis: I fotografies tou Andrea Embirikou*, Agra Editions, Athens 2001, p.12

## External links

- Short introduction to the poet. [https://www.academia.edu/31629216/Andreas_Embiricos_Writer_Poet_Photographer_Psychoanalyst_KCL_Alumnus](https://www.academia.edu/31629216/Andreas_Embiricos_Writer_Poet_Photographer_Psychoanalyst_KCL_Alumnus). [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20181002032530/http://www.academia.edu/31629216/Andreas_Embiricos_Writer_Poet_Photographer_Psychoanalyst_KCL_Alumnus) 2018-10-02 at the [Wayback Machine](/source/Wayback_Machine)

- [Matsi Hatzilazarou's poems](http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php/topic,23367.0.html) from Translatum's anthology of [Poets from Thessaloniki](http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php/topic,9084.0.html)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Andreas Embirikos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Embirikos) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Embirikos?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.