Οδυσσέας Ελύτης Το φωτόδεντρο και η δέκατη τέταρτη ομορφιά- To fotodentro kai i dekati tetarti omorfia Odysseas Elytis The Light Tree And The Fourteenth Beauty  Printed by IKAROS in Athens in 1971 First Edition, First Printing One of Elytis’ masterpieces Clearly signed and dedicated by the Author on the first white page Front Piece by Greek Artist Nikos Nikolaou 8vo, Pages 67+3 Fine Half Leather Binding with Front Covers well Preserved. Text: Greek The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty contains some of his finest lines. On one level the book marks a return to an earlier world. to his poems of light and hope, but here he is led to the realization that "I finally did feel and let them call me mad that our Paradise is out of nothing born". The poet is thoroughly committed to the revelatory power of poetry, attributing what are essentially magical properties to it, the power to transubstantiate evil into good and to thereby create a new and higher morality which is revealed in the old divine moments, the 'exactitudes" I mentioned earlier. Odysseas Elytis pen name of Odysseas Alepoudellis, Greek: Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλλης; 1911 – 1996) was a Greek poet, man of letters, essayist and translator, regarded as the definitive exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. He is one of the most praised poets of the second half of the twentieth century, with his Axion Esti  regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry". In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Source: Wikipedia He has a romantic and lyrical mind, which deploys a metaphysic of complete intellectual sensuality-the rocks, the islands, the blue Greek sea, the winds; they are at once "real" and also "signatures" in the alchemical sense. He makes his magic with them, and it is peculiarly Greek magic that he makes. His poems are spells, and they conjure up that eternal Greek world which has haunted and continues to haunt the European consciousness with its hints of a perfection that always remains a possibility. The Greek poet aims his heart and his gift directly at the sublime - for nothing else will do. How lucky, too, that he has found in Kimon Friar a translator who can transplant his poetry into English, so that its freshness and spontaneity still shock and delight.' - Lawrence Durrell