It was the night when the Beautiful Helena, Helena of Troy, was embodied today thanks to the poetry of Yannis Ritsos and the crystal voice of the Frenchwoman Irene Jacob. In the presence of his daughter Eris Ritsu, an immersive event dedicated to the poet, organized by the Hellenic Cultural Foundation in Paris, took place in the packed Richelieu amphitheater of the historic Sorbonne University on the evening of Monday, January 16th. in collaboration with the Department of Greek Studies at the Sorbonne and the cultural organization Delphys. The emotion was palpable when the famous actress, the protagonist of Kieślowski’s films, read excerpts in French, while George the Archimandrite, Ph.D., listened in The Fourth Dimension.

It is a collection of 17 polyphonic poems in the form of narrative monologues written between 1956 and 1975. The main characters are mostly drawn from ancient myths, of which “Helen” is the most iconic. “Through the human and vulnerable heroine, she expresses Ritsu’s pain and disappointment in the futility of human things, emphasizes the tragic dimension of the adventure called life, in order to finally sing of her fragile and at the same time eternal beauty,” the archimandrite emphasized. This was followed by a theatrical concert with Jacob, who performed a monologue in Gerard Pierre’s 1975 French translation. Dressed in a typical French marinière and with her sensitive voice, she gave flesh and blood to the heroine of Troy:

“Oh, of course, we will have to grow old, very old, until we become righteous, in order to achieve that manual impartiality, that sweet selflessness in comparisons, in judgments, when our part no longer exists in anything except in this silence,” they heard Helen’s wise words, as the poet intended.

The event ended with a speech by Giannis Ritsu’s daughter, Eri, who, from the stage of the symbolic university amphitheater and to prolonged applause of the audience’s delight and emotion, spoke about the events and situations that inspired her father to write this monologue. The Evening of Honor was sponsored by Andreas and Alexandra Martinou and the Jan Michalsky Foundation and was attended by Director Kostas Gavras, Artistic Director of Hermès and President of the Pierre-Alexis Dumas Museum of Decorative Arts, son of the late Rena Dumas, editor Vera Michalsky-Hoffmann, and many other figures of the academic, artistic and intellectual world of the French capital.