page_title: The First Death
hierarchical_section_title: The First Death
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the second English Edition of Dimitris Lyacos's The First Death, third part of the Poena Damni trilogy.
context_page_description: Dimitris Lyacos's The First Death is the latest installment of the Poena Damni trilogy. The book tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen poem-sections, recounting his relentless struggle for survival as well as his physical and mental disintegration. The work alludes simultaneously to a modern Philoctetes, an inverted version of Crusoe as well as the myth of dismemberment of Dionysus. The dense and nightmarish imagery of the poem, replete with sensations of hallucination, delirium, synesthesia and putrefaction have drawn comparisons to Lautreamont, Trakl and Beckett. Despite being first in the publication history of the Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death is the latest installment of the narrative sequence.
context_section_description: Dimitris Lyacos's The First Death is the latest installment of the Poena Damni trilogy. The book tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen poem-sections, recounting his relentless struggle for survival as well as his physical and mental disintegration. The work alludes simultaneously to a modern Philoctetes, an inverted version of Crusoe as well as the myth of dismemberment of Dionysus. The dense and nightmarish imagery of the poem, replete with sensations of hallucination, delirium, synesthesia and putrefaction have drawn comparisons to  Lautreamont, Trakl and Beckett. Despite being first in the publication history of the Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death is the latest installment of the narrative sequence.
caption: Cover of Dimitris Lyacos' The First Death, Second Edition, 2017
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