THE Greek poet Odysseus Elytis, who won the 1979 Nobel literature prize, died at his home in Kolonaki in central Athens at the age of 85 following a heart attack.
His lawyer, Mr George Stephanakis, said Elytis would be buried at Athens First Cemetery in a small family ceremony today. "I pass on his last wish that his death be encompassed by a deep Christian silence," he said.
Several Greek radio stations broke into their regular programmes to say the poet, a virtual recluse in recent years, had died at his home.
Elytis was born in 1911 in Iraklion in Crete. Disliking his given family name Alepoudhelis, Elytis derived his pseudonym from a compound of three Greek words Ellas the name for Greece itself Elpida meaning hope, and Elefteria, meaning freedom.
From 1948 to 1952, Elytis lived in Paris and was part of the same circle as poets such as Andre Breton and Paul Eluard.
His key work, To Axion Esti ("He is worthy"), was published in 1959 and became world famous after it was set to music in the form of an oratorio by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.
The poem is a celebration of sea and light and islands in the Aegean Sea, and includes lyric images of his experiences on the front lines when Greek troops drove back invading Italian fascists during the second World War.
Twenty years after it was published, To Axion Esti was singled out for the Nobel Prize by the Swedish Academy as one of the "most concentrated and richly faceted poems" in 20th century literature.
At the time of the award, Elytis was found on a remote island oblivious that he had won the Nobel prize, like two other Nobel literature winners also tracked to Greece to be informed of their awards - the German author Heinrich Boll and the Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
Elytis was the second Greek poet to win the Nobel prize for literature after George Seferis, who received the prize in 1963. His work, which stretched the Greek tradition of heroism and myth to modern times, blended ancient mythology and the human condition with surrealism. His poems were sung by millions of Greeks in tavernas and coffee houses all over the country.
Elytis also became a noted translator of works by poets such as Bertolt Brecht, Jean Giraudoux, Arthur Rimbaud, Federico Garcia Lorca and Vladimir Mayakovski.
During the period of military rule in Greece from 1967 to 1974, Elytis refused to publish. However, he took no part in protests against the colonels' regime.
Towards the end of his life his nationalism became more pronounced, and he was strongly opposed to the use of the name Macedonia to denote Greece's northern neighbour, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, at a time when Athens was contesting Skopje's right to use the name.
Although he was often in hospital, Elytis remained a prolific writer and published a volume of poems last year.