Since 1991 (when I completed my doctoral dissertation on Sikelianos), there have been some extremely valuable additions to the Sikelianos bibliography; indeed, many of these could be described as essential resources for research on this most unmodish and underrated of Modern Greek poets. Most notably, there is the very useful Chronography (Kostas Bournazakis, Χρονογραφία Άγγελου Σικελιανοὐ, Athens: Ikaros 2006), which could serve as a partial basis for a future biography; several volumes of letters (including Kostas Bournazakis [ed.], Άγγελος Σικελιανός, Γράμματα στην Εύα Πάλμερ Σικελιανοῦ, Athens: Ikaros 2008) and two excellent studies by Athina Voyatzoglou: Η Μεγἀλη Ιδέα του Λυρισμού (Crete: Panepistimiakes Ekdoeseis Kritis 1999) and Η Γένεση των πατέρων (Athens: Kastaniotis 2005). In 2003, the very welcome collection of short pieces on Sikelianos by G.P. Savidis appeared, gathered together under the title Λυχνοστάτες για τον Σικελιανό and edited by Voyiatzoglou (Athens: Ermis). Quirkier publications, but still of some biographical interest, are the slim volume of further reminiscences by the poet's widow, Anna Sikelianou (Ο Ποιτής Άγγελος Σικελιανός, Athens: Ikaros 2002), and the brief off-beat memoir of her drug-addicted father (one of the poet's grandsons), The Book of Jon, by Eleni Sikelianos (San Francisco: City Lights 2004). The present volume, however, is the longest-awaited and perhaps the most welcome of all. It has had a very unfortunate publishing history.

On 26th February 1992, George Savidis expressed the hope, in a letter to Anna Sikelianou (copied to me), that she would be able to survive on her pension for long enough to find not only a new publisher but also a new editor for a revised edition of Λυρικός Βίος before the Sikelianos copyright expired in 2001 [sic: Savidis is referring to the old 50-year rule]. It was also to be hoped, he went on, that this new editor's experience and care in dealing with the philological and editorial problems posed by Sikelianos would be equal to those of the old one. Anna was negotiating at the time with three publishers, Ikaros, Kedros and Nepheli, but Savidis assured her that none of them was going to produce the 6,000,000 drachmas she was demanding. He was right.

The context of these somewhat acerbic remarks was a planned new edition of the complete works of Sikelianos, edited as before by Savidis, but this time including at the back of each volume the relevant bibliographical, historical, metrical and linguistic notes, much in the style of his revised edition of the Cavafy Canon (G. P. Savidis, Κ. Π. Καβάφη, Τα Ποιήματα, Athens: Ikaros 1991). These notes had originally been planned as part of the sixth volume of the poet's complete works (G. P. Savidis (ed.), Άγγελος Σικελιανός, Λυρικός Βίος, Athens: Ikaros 1968–9), the volume containing juvenilia and late uncollected poems, but given that this would have more than doubled the page count, it was decided to relegate them to a separate seventh volume. To the editor's intense disappointment, the projected (and indeed printer-ready) seventh volume was then dropped by Ikaros as not commercially viable. Twenty-three years later, the new 6-volume edition with expanded notes at the back of each volume, for which a preliminary agreement had been made with Nepheli, foundered on the rocks of Anna Sikelianou's excessive demands for copyright payment.

Another twenty years have passed since these unhappy events. G.P. Savidis (b. 1929) died in 1995; Anna Sikelianou (b. 1900) died in 2006, and the Sikelianos copyright, which has still not expired (he died in 1951), has been acquired by Bournazakis (and, for the record, none of Sikelianos's descendants has ever made a penny from it). It is entirely due to the support of Manolis Savidis and the Centre for Modern Greek Studies he founded that we finally have the invaluable Notes to Λυρικός Βίος, a volume that has indeed been edited with the care, if not quite the experience (given the rather large age difference), of the original editor by Natalia Deliyannaki.

The volume opens with G. P. Savidis' original Preface from c. 1969, lightly revised in the 1990s for the planned new edition (pp.9-10). Savidis notes that the poet himself intended, in the early 1930s, to publish his collected works in a series of 4 or 5 volumes, and that the 3-volume edition that eventually materialised, without the poet's lengthy Introduction (which had already been written), must have represented some sort of compromise between the poet and his publishers. One might add that the omission of the Orphic and other mystical symbols that accompanied the original, limited (non-commercial) de luxe edition of Αλαφροΐσκιωτος, paid for by Eva Palmer Sikelianou, probably did not reflect the poet's wishes either. As he did with Cavafy, Savidis attempted to restore most of the poet's editorial/publishing preferences (though not the illustrations) in his magisterial edition of Λυρικός Βίος, which, together with the Savidis editions of Cavafy, remains the gold standard for collected works of Modern Greek poetry. In 1989, Savidis oversaw and edited a new de luxe Αλαφροΐσκιωτος in the original A4 format, hard bound with cloth-and-board cover, containing a facsimile of the original text and illustrations, accompanied by a reprint of his own extremely useful booklet, ‘Πως Υποδέχτηκαν τον Αλαφροΐσκιωτο’ (Athens: Morphotiko Idryma Ethnikis Trapezas).

The ‘old’ editor's Preface to the Notes is followed by a Foreword by the present editor. Deliyannaki deals briefly with the (non-)publication history of the Notes, referring the interested reader to a relevant article by Kokolis (p.11, n.1). She explains the organization of the notes and the rationale for this, and what they contain: bibliographical information about first (and sometimes subsequent) publications, main textual differences between earlier publications of the poems and the 3-volume 1946–7 edition, and other ‘individual’ or ‘case-by-case’ notes (of which more below). Some new material has been added, based on recent bibliography. The index of titles and first lines and the glossary, all prepared by Savidis, have been included and cross-referenced to the Savidis edition of Λυρικός Βίος.

Although Savidis had planned to include new metrical notes, as he did in the revised (1991) edition of his collected Cavafy, he did not live to complete this work, which was suspended when the planned 1990s edition was abandoned. In some ways, it is a pity that Deliyannaki did not pursue this, given her acknowledged expertise in Greek metrics, but providing metrical descriptions for all the poems would have been a major additional undertaking, and perhaps, considering the controversial nature of the ‘free verse’ of Πρόλογος στη Ζωή (which occupies an entire volume in the series), a thankless task.

The main part of the volume is, of course, taken up by the Notes themselves. These are followed by an Appendix containing an index of titles and first lines of all the poems, an index of names, an index of publications in which the poems appeared and a glossary, which is a particularly useful tool. Reading Sikelianos without recourse to a dictionary of Lefkaditika is well-nigh impossible. Peter Mackridge, who prepared an (unpublished) glossary for his undergraduate students at Oxford, has pointed out certain improvements that could be incorporated into a future revised edition. For example, he notes that the definition of ‘Αφουκρώμαι’ (or ‘αφουκράζομαι’) should probably read ‘ακούω προσεκτικά’ (e-mail to Natalia Deliyannaki, copied to me, 28 June 2013). The volume is usefully cross-referenced to Λυχνοστάτες για τον Σικελιανό.

I will close with three examples in the form of translated excerpts (followed by my own comments in italics) from the Notes, to give some indication of the wealth of information that has lain buried in their pages for some 40 years and finally sees the light of day in this elegant, unassuming and utterly indispensable volume: