González Vaquerizo, Helena. La Grecia que duele: Poesía griega de la crisis [The Greece that Hurts: Greek Poetry of the Crisis]. Madrid: Catarata, 2024.

La Grecia que duele (The Greece that Hurts) is born of a debt—not only the financial one that marked Greece between 2009 and 2018, but also the symbolic one, the burden of a country turned into ruin, postcard, and myth. As a classical philologist and a scholar of the modern Hellenic world, I felt the need to listen to what contemporary Greek poetry had to say about its present, and to translate it for those who, unfamiliar with the language, also seek to understand the pain, resistance, and beauty that emerge in times of crisis.

I first visited Greece in 2004, during the summer of the Olympic Games, when the country seemed to be living its ‘European dream’. There was a sense of optimism in the air, a belief in progress, in belonging to a shared European future. I remember walking through the streets of Athens, newly paved and polished for the world’s gaze, and feeling the weight of history and the lightness of celebration coexisting. Twenty years later, as I was writing this book, that dream had fractured. The crisis had left deep scars—economic, social, existential. And yet, in the midst of that fracture, poetry had not only survived; it had become a vital space of resistance and reimagination.

This volume is the result of years of work within the framework of the Marginalia Classica project, which allowed me to explore how ancient myths are rewritten in contemporary terms—how Penelope stops waiting, how Antigone becomes a symbol of civil disobedience, how the lotus-eaters are no longer a threat but a metaphor for the necessary oblivion that allows survival. Recent Greek poetry does not merely lament loss: it interrogates it, transforms it, and turns it into a political act.

This book brings together the voices of poets such as Anna Griva, Yannis Doukas, Nikos Erinakis, Evi Boukli, Katerina Iliopoulou, Dimitra Kotoula, Stamatis Polenakis, Yannis Stiggas, Lenia Safiropoulou, and Nikos Violaris, among many others. It also includes established figures like Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Dimitris Charitos, Titos Patrikios, Phoebe Giannisi and Kyriakos Charalampidis, alongside emerging voices such as Christos Siorikis, Danae Sioziou, Konstantina Korryvanti, Chistodoulos Makris, Lina Fytili, Chloe Koutsoumbeli, and Jazra Khaleed—all poets writing from the margins, the diaspora, or at the intersection of languages and cultures.

The book is structured in two parts: the first one offers a historical, cultural, and poetic context for modern Greece—from independence to the financial crisis, through wars, dictatorships, and migrations. In this first section, the poems are not commented upon; they serve instead to illuminate the path. As in Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s ‘A History of Too Much’, which speaks of modern Greek history as a tale of excess and grand ideas; in Titos Patrikios’ «Η Πύλη των Λεόντων» (‘La puerta de los leones’), commenting on the crushing weight of the past; or in Katerina Iliopoulou’s «Η Σειρήνα» (‘Sirena’) and Stamatis Polenakis’ «Η ποίηση δεν αρκεί» (‘La poesía no es suficiente’), each offering their own vision of the poetic craft. The poems on the lotus-eaters, for instance, enter into dialogue around the meaning of the pharmakon as drug, both cure and poison at once, around the polysemy of debt and the apportioning of blame in times of crisis, reminding us that the pharmakon—like money—was something we all consumed together.

Gender and women are everywhere, especially in the poems on Penelope, which begin with the magnificent trajectory of Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, but also in other compositions, such as Anna Griva’s meditation on identity and the metamorphoses of Circe («Κίρκη»).

Death, too, casts a long shadow. The death of migrants in Jazra Khaleed’s stark text «Αιγαίο ή η κωλοτρυπίδα του θανάτου» (‘El Egeo o el agujero del culo de la muerte’), or in Lenia Safiropoulou’s ‘Brand him with R for Refugee’. The living death of those stricken by the crisis, who dwell among the ruins of Antiquity, in Apostolos Thivaios’ «Πραγματικότητα» (‘Realidad’), Elena Penga’s  «Διάδρομοι» (‘Pasillos’) or Yannis Doukas’ «Επιτάφιος» (‘Epitafio’), a poem that reverberates with echoes of Pericles’ ‘Funeral Oration’ («Λόγος Ἐπιτάφιος») and Yannis Ritsos’ celebrated cry against the brutality and repression of the Metaxas dictatorship ‘Epitaph’ («Επιτάφιος»).   

Through these poems, an emotional and political map of a country unfolds—one that, amid collapse, has made language both a refuge and a trench. This book is thus also an invitation to read with open eyes and a willing heart, to let oneself be pierced by a Greece that is not the one in textbooks, but the one of streets, refugee camps, resisting bodies, and bleeding myths.

I wanted the translations to preserve the tension of the original—their rhythm, their edge, their truth. It is not just about conveying meaning but about accompanying each poem on its journey into another language without losing its breath. For example, I never doubted that the offensive terms in Greek should remain equally offensive in Spanish. Thus, the phrase «κωλοτρυπίδα του θανάτου» in the previously mentioned poem by Khaleed had to be rendered as ‘agujero del culo de la muerte’ (‘hole in Death’s ass’), not as ‘anus of death’, which is how it appears in some English versions of the text. Particularly challenging in this respect was Christodoulos Makris’ poem ‘Civilization’s Golden Dawn. A Slideshow,’ which blends katharévousa terms and Ancient Greek expressions with Greeklish. In this and all other cases, I have prioritised readability: opting for translation over transliteration and avoiding the philological temptation of footnotes to justify my choices.

Another challenge was preserving something akin to the ‘tone of the author’s voice’ in translation—ensuring, for instance, that the fragments by Dimitra Kotoula introducing the epilogue, titled ‘Un instante de luz’, resonate as parts of a coherent whole, warm without sentimentality and beautiful without aestheticism, for these are the qualities that define Kotoula’s poetic voice.

Fortunately, Greek and Spanish are languages with rich poetic traditions, immense grammatical and lexical resources, and structures that often allow for word-for-word translation without sacrificing the original Greek’s marvellous rhythm. This is true of the closing lines of Doukas’ 'Επιτάφιος' which seem to translate themselves: «στεφάνους καταθέτουμε και κλαίμε / αλλά είμαστε ό,τι θάβουμε, ό,τι καίμε» (‘depositamos coronas y lloramos / pero somos lo que enterramos, lo que quemamos’).

I would never claim that nothing is lost—some things inevitably vanish in translation. I hope, at least, paraphrasing Anghelaki-Rooke, «πως ό,τι [το ποίημα] χάνει σε αφή / κερδίζει σε ουσία» (‘que lo que [el poema] pierde en tacto / lo gane en esencia’).

La Grecia que duele is not a nostalgic tribute, but an act of listening and care. I have always felt that the act of translation, beyond its inevitable betrayal—of meaning, of form, or of both at once—also carries within it a gesture of listening and of care. To pour these poems into one’s own language demands, first, an attentive ear to the new Greek voices, and second, a resolve to let their echoes resound.

I count myself fortunate they gave me the Spanish language—one spoken by some six hundred million people across the globe—and equally fortunate to have devoted my life to Greek, a tongue modest in number yet vast in tradition and cultural weight. It seemed to me, then, an inescapable responsibility to offer the Spanish-speaking world a glimpse of the recent Greek poetic phenomenon. In a time of growing interest in Greek literature, at least here in Spain, this is my contribution—one that joins the efforts of professional translators and scholars of modern Greece, all of us listening with care and attention to what the Greeks have to say in these turbulent days. Because, as I write in the epilogue, poetry does not save, but it illuminates. And in dark times, every light matters.