Ritsos, Yiannis

Yiannis Ritsos was born in Monemvasia on the east coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. His parents were landowners. His father and sister suffered from schizophrenia, and he was brought up by relatives after his mother and an older brother had died from tuberculosis. After leaving school, Ritsos worked briefly in Athens, and in 1926, when he was seventeen years old, he began to write poetry and paint. He too developed tuberculosis and spent four years in various sanatoriums where he matured as a poet and he began to study Marxism; he was a devoted Communist throughout his life.