Odysseas Elitis is one of the largest Greek poets of the 20th century, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize. His poetry is known in Russia mainly from translations by Irina Kovaleva and Sofia Ilyinskaya, published in the journal World Literature. Each of the translators who worked with Elitis's poetry notes how difficult it is to convey in Russian the entire identity of a Greek poet deeply rooted in the language and culture of his native country.
The more important is the appearance in Russian of the pinnacle of Elitis's work, the poem "It is worthy to eat." Translated into almost 30 languages ¿ ¿ of the world, now it has become available to the Russian reader: the poet and translator Ippolit Kharlamov devoted as much as Elitis himself to translating and commenting on this poem - work on it: 10 years.