“Odysseus Elytis once wrote about “the world the small, the great”. And today, one day before the 113th anniversary of his birth, we breathe new life into this world.” This is what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in his speech at the opening of the “House of Elytis” museum.

“Mr. President, Madam Minister, Mr. Mayor, dear Mrs. Iliopoulou,

Odysseus Elytis once wrote about “the world the small, the great”. And today, one day before the 113th anniversary of his birth, we breathe new life into this world. As said by Ms Ministerwe inaugurate the museum named after him, the “House of Odysseus Elytis”, effectively creating an ark of his work and at the same time a living cradle of modern Greek poetry and thought.

Thus, this exemplary renovated building in the heart of Athens, where Greekness meets modernity, becomes another important landmark in the country’s centuries-long cultural journey. A building worthy of its mission and compatible with its aesthetics. It is evidenced by the simplicity and the abundant light that surrounds it.

In the halls of the museum, visitors will now be able to explore the poet’s oeuvre, with the original editions of all 52 of his books, exhibited together for the first time. Here, too, rare visual and audio evidence of his life is housed, as well as his basic archive, now open to the admiration of all of us.

In the same space, however, as was said before -and I can’t wait to see it-, the environment of Elytis’s creative, but also extremely simple everyday life is relived: his office, which accompanied him in the house on Skoufa Street, as well as the personal items so important to him. With each of them telling its own story about the poet, who lived with restraint but wrote with passion.

He, of course, believed that “it is not enough to have cement and iron to tell us that you also have a house”.

Today’s event, however, was a historical debt of the state, much more so as this neoclassical signifies – and will signify much more – than a simple building. It is, however, also a strong proof that our priority is investing in modern Greek culture, including, among other things, emblematic buildings of the capital in the daily life of the Athenians. Buildings that acquire a new role, a new life.

After all, the same direction is served by the restoration of the familiar Palamas, which is also progressing at a rapid pace.

Ladies and gentlemen, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Elytis described Greece as “a country small in space and vast in time”. I believe that the space we are in today embodies this perception, now radiating its content far beyond the limited “here” and the ephemeral “now”.

Congratulations are therefore due to the Ministry of Culture and those who worked to make this vision a reality, and of course to the many donors who supported this project.

However, we owe gratitude primarily to Ioulita Iliopoulou and to “AERTON”, for their reverent dedication to the preservation, but also the utilization of this priceless archive of our poet.

And I am very sure that this new museum will quickly establish itself not only as a center of memory and due respect to Elytis, but also as a dynamic, “open” institution, which young people in particular will detect in his work, which he wished, how to become, that is, the same “architects of the world”, as he had said.

Nowadays, in fact, his words acquire a new dimension, as long as we remember his call to creators “to lead technical perfection to its natural state” or the opinion he shared with those around him that “it is the most difficult and the most “Greek” thing to use the minimum to extract the maximum”.

A good start, then, in this new spiritual “lung” of the capital, where our poetry and culture will both breathe and inspire. A meeting place for scholars but also for those who are still fascinated by the art of speech. A bridge between today and yesterday, where tomorrow will actually be traced.

Thank you and good start to the new museum “Odysseus Elytis».