Yánnis Rítsos published, in 1934, his first poems of social content in a book belligerently entitled Tractor. Although influenced by Palamás' interest in machines and written in traditional meter, stanza and rhyme, they retain some of the sarcastic pessimism of Kariotákis, are harsh, violent, almost barbaric in tone, with such revealing titles as "To Marx," "To the Soviet Union," "To Christ," and with individual portraits and caricatures such as "The Individualist," "The Intellectual," "The Undecided," "Revolutionaries." (p. 89)

In his early career. Rítsos may be considered to be the heir of Várnalis, whose proletarian books of poems, The Burning Light and Slaves Besieged, it will be recalled, had been published in 1922 and 1927, during and after the Asia Minor Disaster. Like Várnalis, and like Kazantzákis after him, Rítsos also places Christ among the revolutionary heroes of the world…. Haunted by death, driven...