From the book "Antinoos" by Fernando Pessoa
Introduction - Transalation: Yannis Souliotis - Drawings: Andreas Nicolaou
Athens 2007, ed. Parousia
... Andreas Nicolaou with his creatively subtle contribution complements the aesthetic and sensuous dimension of the poem. His drawings whisper what the words leave untold. Through abstraction and aesthetic distance from his nude bodies with their fluid lines, the artist creates a sense of motion which is frozen in a distant silence. He does not drown them in the emotion that makes these bodies appear to be made of sorrow. Like the poem, so Nicolaou's drawings immortalize mortality and tame death. They leave us with the faint memory of a fleeting gesture, that of a hand laying a cloak of sadness on the marble shoulders of Antinoos that subdues death. This ultimate victory had been announced by Hadrian:
Yet thy true deathless statue I shall build
Wiil be no stone thing, but that same regret
By which our love's eternity is willed.
Constance Tangopoulos
Indianapolis University, Athens