“When you are seventeen, no songs exist, which may bring tears to your eyes. All songs are new to you; you listen to them for the first time. You have not related them with any adventure of your life. The real life is ahead and it’s waiting for you carrying all the music of the world. But when you have reached forty, every song that you have loved is a small wound.” - Nikos Davvetas -

Radio Art welcomes this month a great modern poet and writer, Nikos Davvetas,
who has been righteously placed among
“the most characteristic and distinct voices of his generation.”

While reading Nikos Davveta’s work, you distinguish a very sensitive man with great intellectual background,
culture, depth of thought and true motive.
Characteristics only met to important writers.

Nikos Davvetas reveals himself by creating through silences, the senses, the undefined sounds and the reflections of memory, no matter how cruel they many times are.

Death, time, our relationship with them, loneliness, the empty contacts with people but also the tragic historical events become the gear of his work for serious thinking abolishing any distance with the reader.

His last book “White towel in the Ring” is a truly exceptional book. It refers to a dark era of the Greek History, the
civil war, in a different way; clever and unexpected that shocks and awakens. Indirectly Nikos Davvetas shows that
the civil war has never ended, it keeps on penetrating every side of the present time by tearing apart people, family relationships, ideals, friendships.
The masks with the hidden faces are still around us, in our days, in the cultivated or outspoken lies with the hidden truths, the hypocrisy, the alibis that are invented to justify mutated moralities.
In the end are these masks always someone else? Or we ourselves?

At this point Nikos Davvetas answers with his own shattering way.

- Lambros Mitropoulos -

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Nikos Davvetas was born in Athens. He firstly published his poems in 1981 in the magazine “Diagonios” of
Thessaloniki and his writings in 1986 in the magazine “TRAM”.

He was one of the first collaborators of Manos Hatzidakis in the magazine Tetarto.

He has published up until now seven poetic collections,

• Lovers of Ostria (“Plethron”, 1983).
• Requiem for a morning’s end (“Yakinthos”, 1985).
• White Fugue (“Roptro”, 1986).
• The secret burial of Eleonora Tilsen (“Roptro”, 1988).
• The apples of Eden (“Kastaniotis”, 1990).
• Yellow darkness of Van Gogh (“Kedros”, 1995).
• 15 October 1960 («Kedros», 1999).
• The collection of stories “Stories of a breath” (“Kedros”, 2006).
• The novelette “The game” (“Kedros”, 2006).
• the novel “White towel in the ring” (“Kedros”, 2006).

His poems have been translated in English, in Spanish, in Swedish and in Hungarian, while his stories have been translated in German and Spanish.

He was also engaged with literary critic by publishing book critics in newspapers and magazines.

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From the poetic collection “The secret burial of Eleonora Tilsen”

In the mountain of memory it snows endlessly

let the night remain outside
let paths
to the borders
flow alone

curtail your presence in my dreams
dry your clothes
on my burning body

before dawn comes
you will have no age

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From the poetic collection “The yellow darkness of Van Gogh”

At twilight a blind sea follows me
Through the labyrinthine city
I hear her stick tapping on the flagstones
her white dog barking
At the crossroads;
I try to get away from her
my aimless walk
takes on strength and purpose
sometimes I turn up unknown alleys
vainly seeking a safe refuge.

Myself in front and sea behind
as the years pass I’ve become accustomed
to her calling me Acheron
to her believing poor creature
that sometime
I shall go back with her
to the forests of the deep.

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From the poetic collection “15 October 1960”

Don’t you hear the rain falling in me
It drenches your dead image
And spreads out to my extremities, my fingers grow numb.

don’t you hear the trains whistling
I had a ticket for you in my pocket
Through time it turned to pulp in the hem
dust absorbed by the skin

When this life
Becomes a past life
a memory stored in the ground
and there are no more messages
nothing to send from nowhere
in my deepest dreams there are only your eyes
the colour of honey which drip with
the light of evening and shatters
the form of the glass and blinds me.

When our whole lives become
An amateurish film three minutes long
With musical accompaniment as a death rattle
I would like to see your figure for a moment
At the Gloucester Road station
Beguiling mute still
And behind your back the final credits
Rolling slowly in English.

We woud like to thank Nikos Davvetas for the very interesting discussion we had
and for the kind offer of his work for the purposes of this dedication.