Iconostasis of Anonymous Saints

Ritsos' "Iconostasis" is embellished with an almost Joycean richness of words, including outrageous puns, unprecedented, though ineffably poetic, erotica and miraculous flights of language.

This work of Ritsos, is it a novel with an emphatic question-mark added by the poet himself? Is it a roman fleuve in the sense of the Proust's "Remembrance of things past"? Is it a wild prose-poetic fling in a "sarcastic climate"? Or is it an autobiography of Greece's most human poet, whom Aragon hailed as the "greatest poet of his time"? And what about the strange title? How are the established Orthodox saints, traditionally decorating the panels near the altar, how are they replaced by anonymous human beings? -everyday people from Ritsos' neighbourhood members of his family and simple inhabitants of Monemvasia; unassuming fellow-prisoners on exile islands and a closely-knit band of friends. [...]