Nicolas Calas
(1907-1988) was a truly international poet, critic and polemicist. He wrote in
Greek, French and English. He designed a chess-set with André Breton, wrote an
anthropological study with Margaret Mead, appeared in a film by Hans Richter
and first translated Louis Aragon, Benjamin Péret and TS Eliot into Greek. One
of the early Greek Surrealists, he tried to combine avant-garde poetics with
Trotskyism, Freudianism and Marxism, first in Athens, then in Paris and New
York.
Oedipus is Innocent is the first collection of Calas’ poems in English
translation, a selection of his best work from 1933-82. From Futurist and Surrealist
experiment to harsh satire, revolutionary fervour to dispassionate mockery, Calas’
work employed shock, paradox, surprise, alienation and transformation to lay
bare what he regarded as the falseness of Western society and the dishonesty of
capitalist morality.