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Andreas Embeirikos (Greek: Ανδρέας Εμπειρίκος) (Brăila, 2 September 1901 – Athens, 3 August 1975) was a Greek surrealist poet and the first Greek psychoanalyst.

The work of Embeirikos -literary, photographic and psychoanalytic- deals with the “Greek trauma”. In 1935 he gave the famous lecture "On surrealism" in Athens and published "Ypsikaminos", a pure surrealist text, a heretic book characterized by the lack of the punctuation and the peculiarity of the language. His poetry can be defined by two major tendencies. On the one hand, he was one of the major representatives of surrealism in Greece. On the other hand, together with Yorgos Seferis, Embirikos was the most important representative of the generation of the 1930s. He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters.

In Fotofrachtis (The Light Shutter) (written in 1960 and included in his Oktana collection) Embeirikos correlates the act of photography with daydreaming, not as nostalgia or longing for death, but in the sense of reconciliation with the paradox of time, as a blistering dive in the restless consistency of things.

Assuming that poetry can be translated into a language different to the original, you may taste this poem below or more of his poetry in English by visiting this link.

The Light Shutter

"The hours flow through the iridescences and play of the waters,just like the transparent waters flow through the anemones. With its keys, remembrance opens the horizons, which continuously expand and grow, like the ripples of a stone that falls on a surface that is imperturbable by mortal and bastard acts. Dawn is the first hour. Behind it, the beautiful morning, with red hands which quickly (I almost would say unexpectedly) turn and become golden. A lens with an amazing shutter seizes even the most fleeting moment and transfers it onto the surface of a smooth plate of unbelievable sensitivity. And now that the shutter opened and closed like an incorruptible eye and time was arrested, remembrance expands life and gives to every image the movement and flexibility that, from the depths of a fountain (its own), calls forth its most secret meaning. And behold, it transforms the image completely. It changes it from a static (let's say, 'pinned') moment to a multiply-waved dance of hours and plastic bodies with good rhythm, to a tangible and specific realisation (materialisation) of every vision, of every desire."

Andreas Embirikos, Oktana (Athens: Ikaros, 1960), p. 29.

Translation assisted by Liana Theodoratou.

Also read here an interesting essay titled "The Night of Memory: Andreas Embiricos and the Optical Unconscious" by Eduardo Cadava of Princeton University, published in "Culture & Memory. Special Issue of Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand) 2006.