ABSTRACT
In Andreas Embiricos's, which is set in distant Colombia, the glory and the splendid future of Colombia and neighbouring states were being created around the works and actions of Bolivar, "the triumphant hero of South America and ancestor of great Greek-Albanian poet and painter Nikolaos Engonopoulos". Engonopoulos appears to embrace the surrealists' fascination with the object and how art transforms an objects meaning. Of Albania, Edward Gibbon once remarked that the country "within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America". Something similar could be said of the Albanian instances in Engonopoulos's early poems, which still remain obstinately closed and hermetic. The image of "dancing Albanians" also recalls other similar images, for example, the description of the Suliots' revel in Byron's Childe Harold' Pilgrimage: Each palikar his sabre from his cast, and bounding hand in hand, man linked to man, Yelling their uncouth dirge, long daunced the kirtled clan.
