Jenny Mastoraki

Jenny Mastoraki was born in Athens on 21 February 1949. She studied Byzantine and medieval literature at the University of Athens between 1967 and 1972. Her early writing emerged during the military dictatorship and belongs to the literary constellation known as the Generation of the 1970s. These young writers questioned inherited social language and conventions, without sharing a single programme or poetic voice.

Poems appeared in Dimitris Iatropoulos’s Anti-Anthology in 1971. Her first collection, Διόδια (Tolls), followed in 1972 at Kedros, after her work attracted Yannis Ritsos and publisher Nana Kallianesi. Ritsos chose its title. Three further poetry books appeared during her lifetime, ending with Μ’ ένα στεφάνι φως (With a Crown of Light) in 1989. Alongside poetry, translation became a sustained professional and creative activity, encompassing novels, theatre and children’s literature.

She first read Salinger in 1968, translated The Catcher in the Rye in 1977, and returned to it for a new version in 2014. Her other authors included Canetti, Böll, Kleist, Lorca and Pinter. The Ministry of Culture awarded her the 2020 Grand Prize for Letters, announced in July 2021. She died on 30 July 2024; publication and archival broadcasts have continued to renew contact with her work.

Διόδια (Tolls, 1972) uses short poems to challenge the worn language and assumptions of postwar society. Το σόι (Kin, 1978) brings that questioning into the family: affection, protection and authority do not always fit comfortably together. The school-anthologised poem Περίληψη (Summary) turns maternal protection into unsettling images involving sleep, dreams and enclosure. Its speaker should be read as a poetic construction, rather than a transparent family record.

Ιστορίες για τα βαθιά (Tales of the Deep, 1983) expands the role of myth, inherited stories and prose-like movement. Μ’ ένα στεφάνι φως (With a Crown of Light, 1989) continues an intense conversation with poetic tradition, including Solomos. Her changes in form and rhythm connect apparently ordinary language with darker, less stable worlds. The four collections make a compact but changing body of work.

Translation gave this attention to voice another setting. Revisiting Salinger, Mastoraki reconsidered slang and the title instead of treating an earlier translation as fixed. In April 2026 Agra published Κι όλα τα κακά σκορπά... (And Scatters All Evils...), a standalone posthumous edition of a text written in 2001 and first published in a magazine in 2002, with an afterword by Dionysis Kapsalis. It extends the conversation between prose, fear, myth and poetic rhythm.

Mastoraki remains present in school anthologies, theatre translations and ERT’s recordings of her reading. Begin with the title Το σόι (Kin), then consult the Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek on the Centre for the Greek Language’s portal. Compare το σόι with οι συγγενείς: both can refer to relatives beyond one household, but σόι has a more familiar conversational tone. Write Την Κυριακή θα δω τους συγγενείς μου, then replace the noun phrase with το σόι μου. Say who you would use each sentence with. This small B1 exercise explores register, a question central to her translations; reading a whole poem calls for further support with imagery and context.

• Yannis Ritsos chose the title of Διόδια, her first collection.
• Translated Salinger’s novel in 1977 and again in 2014.
• Her 2020 Grand Prize for Letters was announced in July 2021.