Yiannis Ritsos Museum, Monemvassia

 
In July this year, the house on Monemvassia where Yiannis Ritsos grew up opened as a museum dedicated to his life and work.
 

Monemvassia is a place like no other - a vast rock, linked by a causeway and bridge to the mainland at the southeastern corner of the Peloponnese. As you approach the rock, you notice, of course, the high walls of the fort that run along the top of the rock, but where do the people live? To enter the fortified village, you must first walk the length of it and, at the back, you will find the impressive front gate. How many times must the young Ritsos have walked that road and entered through that gate?
 
Once through the gate, he would immediately have taken the steep stone path up to the family home - the first house in the village. Not large, but certainly one of the larger ones on the rock. The poet’s daughter, Eri, sold it in 2021, together with some of its furnishings, to the municipality.
 
In summer, Monemvassia attracts many tourists. Each day, a cruise ship that has anchored in the bay overnight, delivers its human cargo to the rock. It is quite clear that almost none of its passengers has any interest in visiting a museum that honours a Greek poet, even less so did many seem keen to undertake the long, hard climb to the highest point of the fort. Our fellow visitors to the museum were almost all Greeks - those for whom the works of Ritsos had some meaning. They paid quiet attention to the artefacts and displays.
 
It is a notable feature of Greek museums now, how very well most of them are presented - the Acropolis Museum seems to have raised the standards across the country. The Ritsos Museum provides a clear account of the poet’s life and the people in it, illustrated with relevant photographs, but it does not make the mistake of providing too much information so as to over-load the visitor. Rather, I came away with a strong sense of the man and poet.
 
As often happens when visiting a museum, it can be a small piece of information that captures our attention: among his very many awards, Ritsos received an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham University - a few days before our visit we had attended the graduation in its Great Hall of our daughter, Zoe. Well done, Birmingham!
 
The museum displays a number of the poet’s works - inevitably, his poem Monemvassia is prominently displayed. There is a striking large-scale presentation of many of the covers of his poetry collection. This was a day, if ever there was one, when it was a particular pleasure for me to be able to read and understand the Greek language.
 
There was a helpful young guide who answered my every question. If she wasn’t in the room where I was, for sure she would be in the next one. The museum was not at all crowded, the experience of visiting it was an intimate one. She was clearly impressed that I had seen Ritsos and heard him read his own poetry - at the KNE Festival (where else?) of 1977. In my bag, I took with me my copy of Το Καπνισμένο Τσουκάλι - a gift I was given that year. I saw it as a sort of homecoming for the slim volume.
 
The last piece of information the guide gave me was where I could find the house where Ritsos was born - he moved to the museum house when he was two. The following morning, we returned to the rock and walked to the very furthest end of it, towards the lighthouse, to find ΤΑ ΚΕΛΛΙΑ. Originally, this was a long row of rooms along one side of the square outside the church of Panagia Chrysafitissa - some of them have now been incorporated in the smart Xenonas Kellia Hotel.
 
Ritsos’ father had been a wealthy landowner; he made a donation to the church and, in return, was allowed to bring his family to live in the top floor of cells for a period of two years. This is where Yiannis was born. His earliest childhood memories are the smell of the beeswax candles that were made on the ground floor of ΤΑ ΚΕΛΛΙΑ, and the endless sound of the sea beating against the great rock.
 
The young Ritsos was not a good student at the village school - he was happiest drawing flowers. He moved, with his mother, to Gytheio to attend gymnasio. And, as fortune had it, our next stop after Monemvassia was Gytheio. What was then the gymnasio is now the lykeio and we were staying a few doors away from it. Ritsos left school and went to Athens where he worked as a dancer and actor, but we weren’t following him there - we were heading down into the Mani, enriched by our visit to Monemvassia.
 
The poet’s last journey was back to Monemvassia. He is buried in the cemetery there - over the bridge, along the causeway, below the high walls, before the gate at the back of the rock.
 
Richard Devereux