Portrait of Odysseas Elytis

Birthday profile

Odysseas Elytis

Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1996)

Born
November 2, 1911
Died
March 18, 1996
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1911

About Odysseas Elytis

Odysseas Elytis (; Greek: Οδυσσέας Ελύτης [oðiˈseas eˈlitis], pen name of Odysseas Alepoudelis, Greek: Οδυσσέας Αλεπουδέλης; 2 November 1911 – 18 March 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. == Biography == Panayiotis Alepoudelis and his younger brother Thrasyboulos were both born in the village Kalamiaris of Panagiouthas of Lesbos. Their family had become well-established in the industries of soap manufacturing and olive oil production in Heraklion, Crete in 1895. In 1897 Panagyiotis married Maria E. Vrana (1880–1960) from the village Papados of Gera, Lesbos. From this union and as the last of six siblings, Odysseas was born in the early hours of 2 November 1911. In 1914, the Alepoudelis family moved to Athens (at Solonos 98B), where his father re-situated the soap factory in Piraeus. In 1918, his older sister and firstborn, Myrsine (1898–1918), died of the Spanish influenza. While on summer holidays from their Athens home as guests on the island of Spetses in the Haramis home in the St Nikolaos neighbourhood, his own father also died in the summer of 1925 from pneumonia.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Odysseas Elytis timeline

  1. In 1935, Elytis published his first poem in the journal New Letters (Νέα Γράμματα) at the prompting of such friends as George Seferis.
  2. In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The world when Odysseas Elytis was born

Odysseas Elytis was born in 1911. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1911

  • Best-selling book"The Broad Highway" – Jeffery Farnol

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Indianapolis 500 race
  • Top headlineTriangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 workers
  • Technology milestoneFirst transcontinental airplane flight (49 days)
  • World population~1.71B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam Howard Taft
  • U.S. population93.4M

1911 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Odysseas Elytis's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19112026
Population93.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.