Μικρά έργα
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1859
Songs, fragments and unfinished poems in which private grief, natural beauty and the struggle for freedom meet in startling images.
Books that leave you in awe
These books share a sense of scale: something vast and old pressing on ordinary lives, whether it is Dante's carefully built afterlife in The Divine Comedy or the doomed oaths and long wars of The Silmarillion. You come to them for images that stay with you and for the feeling of standing at the edge of something larger than yourself.
A page that shows it
For a moment, even nature seems to hold its breath.
Ἡσύχασε καὶ ἔγινε ὅλο ἡσυχία καὶ πάστρα,Σὰν περιβόλι εὐώδησε κ’ ἐδέχτηκε ὅλα τ’ ἄστραΚἄτι κρυφὸ μυστήριο ἐστένεψε τὴ φύσηΚάθε ὀμορφιά νὰ στολιστῇ καὶ τὸ θυμὸ ν’ ἀφήση.Δὲν εἶν’ πνοὴ ’ς τὸν οὐρανό, ’ς τὴ θάλασσα, φυσῶνταςΟὔτε ὅσο κάνει ’ς τὸν ἀνθὸ ἡ μέλισσα περνῶνταςὍμως κοντὰ ’ς τὴν κορασιά, ποῦ μ’ ἔσφιξε κ’ ἐχάρη,Ἐσειότουν τ’ ὁλοστρόγγυλο καὶ λαγαρὸ φεγγάριΚαὶ ξετυλίζει ὀγλήγορα κάτι ποῦ ἐκεῖθε βγαίνει,Κι’ ὀμπρός μου ἰδοὺ ποῦ βρέθηκε μία φεγγαροντυμένη.Ἔτρεμε τὸ δροσᾶτο φῶς ’ς τὴ θεϊκιὰ θωριά της,’Σ τὰ μάτια της τὰ ὁλόμαυρα καὶ ’ς τὰ χρυσᾶ μαλλιά της. -
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Οι Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι, σχεδίασμα Β΄
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1859
At the siege of Missolonghi, hunger and danger contend with spring’s beauty, remembered love and the will to remain free.
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The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri, 1321
A guided tour of the afterlife in which every punishment is a portrait of the sin, and every heaven a lesson in desire.
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Διονυσίου Σολωμού
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1859
The good poet of modern Greece whose greatest works survive as fragments. Read what he finished, what he abandoned, and what his friends remembered.
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Moby Dick
Herman Melville, 1851
A sea story that keeps stopping to joke, lecture on whales, and stare into the abyss, led by a captain who has turned grief into a single, ruinous purpose.
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Ο φτωχός άγιος
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1901
Στις αρχές του 1900, ο Παπαδιαμάντης γράφει για έναν φτωχό τσοπάνο που σπεύδει να προειδοποιήσει το χωριό του· μια ιστορία θυσίας, πίστης και αγάπης για την πατρίδα.
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The Silmarillion
J. R. R. Tolkien, 1977
The creation myth and lost legends of Middle-earth: cosmic music, doomed oaths, and the wars that made Frodo's world.
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Dune
Frank Herbert, 1965
A desert planet, a spice that lets navigators fold space, and a boy being trained into a messiah he never asked to be.
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East of Eden
John Steinbeck, 1952
Two generations of a California family, a retelling of Cain and Abel, and one Hebrew word that means 'thou mayest.'
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The Iliad
Homer, -750
A war stalled outside a city, a commander's wounded pride, and the best fighter in the army refusing to fight. Seven weeks of rage, grief and armour.
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Ποιήματα
Κ.π. Καβαφης, 1935
The 154 poems Cavafy chose to keep, plus thirteen he hid — history, desire and irony in a voice that still sounds like nobody else's.
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The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway, 1952
An old Cuban fisherman, eighty-four days without a fish, rows out alone and hooks something enormous.
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The Call of the Wild
Jack London, 1903
A pampered dog is stolen, sold to the Klondike gold rush, and taught the club before he learns the sled — then something older starts calling.
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Paradise Lost
John Milton, 1667
A blind poet turns the fall of Adam and Eve into an epic of free will, ambition, and married love, and gives the devil its most persuasive voice.
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Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1859
A fierce, strange prose satire that turns Zakynthian society into a stage for hypocrisy, war, and moral judgment.
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Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883
A prophet comes down from the mountain to tell you your values were borrowed, your comfort is a cage, and you could become something else.
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War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy, 1869
Five families, one invasion, and the small domestic hours that turn out to matter more than the battles. Read it for the people, not the history.
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Cosmos
Carl Sagan, 1980
A lyrical journey through the stars and deep time that asks what it means to be small in a universe of infinite complexity.
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A Brief History of Time
Stephen W. Hawking, 1988
A physicist's guide to the biggest questions—time, black holes, the origin of the universe—written for readers who thought they couldn't do physics.
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Unbroken
Laura Hillenbrand, 2010
A champion runner, a wartime bomber crash, and a fight to survive the Pacific—and the cruelty that follows.
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White Fang
Jack London, 1906
A wolf cub born into a hungry Yukon learns, one hard lesson at a time, what men are for. Cold, fierce, plain sentences.
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Η Ιλιάδα όπως την αφηγούνται οι θεές
Μαριλου Ολιβα, 2023
The Trojan War as told by the goddesses who watched it: power, sacrifice and the price of being mortal.
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Λόγια της Πλώρης
Ανδρέας Καρκαβίτσας, 1899
Sailors, sponge-divers and captains tell of the sea's justice, its monsters and its dead, in stories that turn folk belief into salt-stung literature.
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Μήτηρ Θεού (1916-1917)
Άγγελος Σικελιανός, 1916
A poet walks among the dead as if among family, and finds a language for grief that is closer to feasting than to mourning. One unbroken hymn, in the rhythms of folk song, to a mother larger than any church.
A taste of the feed
Spring has never looked more beautiful—or more dangerous.
Ο Απρίλης με τον Έρωτα χορεύουν και γελούνε, Κι’ όσ’ άνθια βγαίνουν και καρποί τόσ’ άρματα σε κλειούνε. Λευκό βουνάκι πρόβατα κινούμενο βελάζει, Και μες στη θάλασσα βαθιά ξαναπετιέται πάλι, Κι’ ολόλευκο εσύσμιξε με τ’ ουρανού τα κάλλη. Και μες στης λίμνης τα νερά, όπ’ έφθασε μ’ ασπούδα, Έπαιξε με τον ίσκιο της γαλάζια πεταλούδα, Που ευώδιασε τον ύπνο της μέσα στον άγριο κρίνο· Το σκουληκάκι βρίσκεται σ’ ώρα γλυκιά κι’ εκείνο. Μάγεμα η φύσις κι’ όνειρο στην ομορφιά και χάρη, Η μαύρη πέτρα ολόχρυση και το ξερό χορτάρι· Με χίλιες βρύσες χύνεται, με χίλιες γλώσσες κραίνει· Όποιος πεθάνη σήμερα χίλιες φορές πεθαίνει.
Οι Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι, σχεδίασμα Β΄ · Διονύσιος Σολωμός
The moment a poet admits that language has finally run out.
Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice My seeing nothing and my love constrained me. If what has hitherto been said of her Were all concluded in a single praise, Scant would it be to serve the present turn. Not only does the beauty I beheld Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe Its Maker only may enjoy it all. Vanquished do I confess me by this passage More than by problem of his theme was ever O’ercome the comic or the tragic poet; For as the sun the sight that trembles most, Even so the memory of that sweet smile My mind depriveth of its very self.
The Divine Comedy · Dante Alighieri
Some first impressions stay untouched by time.
Η Ζάκυνθος. Ανάμεσα ’ς τα τόσα, ’ς τα γοργά και τα διαβατικά που μας εντυπώνονται, και που τα γράφ’ η μνήμη και τα ξεγράφει, κάποιες ενθύμησες από τα πρώτα χρόνια, κρατειούνται πλέον επίμονα, απείραχτες από τον καιρό. Μια τέτοια ενθύμηση μου απομένει του τόπου που γεννήθηκεν ο Σολωμός, όταν επρωτοπέρασ’ από κείθε, παιδί. Διάβα γληγωρότατο, μιας ώρας μόλις· και ζωηρότατη εντύπωση κόσμου αγνώριστου ως τότε, ονειρευτού. Του αέρα ήταν η αξεθύμαστη μοσκοβολιά· άρχιζε ’ς του νησιού το σίμωμα μέσ’ από το καράβι ακόμα, σα να μη χύνονταν η ευωδιά μονάχ’ από τα περιβόλια, σα να ήταν εκείνη το μοναδικό και το μυστικό χάρισμα γης και αέρα και ουρανού εκεί.
Διονυσίου Σολωμού · Διονύσιος Σολωμός
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