Odysseus Elytis has dominantly and insistently been the poet of the bright and affirmative view of life. A worshiper of the sun, he has seen its light bathe and make lucid and diaphanous his eternally youthful Aegean world, which he has wished to see inspired, purified, and sanctified by Eros or Love in both its physical and its spiritual sense. Hence his "solar metaphysics."

Increasingly, however, personal and historical experience, age, mortality, and the approach of death have brought into Elytis's vision the darker, more pragmatic aspects of life as well, to which he constantly opposes his heavenly light. In one major poem after another—e.g., The Axion Esti (1959), "The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty" (1971), Maria Nephele (1979), and now "The Little Mariner"—he has given an account of that struggle. What varies most in these poems is the form, manner, tone, and range of his craft in expressing an unswerving faith in his convictions, yet with an increasing and deepening recognition and consideration of the darkness that must be countered and transcended by spiritual wisdom. In Elytis's later poetry the Platonic belief in the existence of an "upper earth" that is truer than the one on which we live provides solace in the face of approaching death.

In "The Little Mariner," as in Elytis's previous poems, the Pythagorean number seven and its multiples serve as a structural unit in the complex ordering of the fifty-eight pieces that make up the poem, pieces widely divergent in nature, manner, and content, ranging from mostly personal lyricism, to prose accounts, to lists of various kinds—the latter making their first appearance in his poetry. The title itself reminds one of the "sailor boy in the garden" of Elytis's early verse, who, however, now approaches the end of his odyssey.

A short opening selection titled "Entry" asks, "Golden air of life, why don't you reach us?" What follows is arranged in four major sections, three long and one somewhat shorter. The former are each divided into four parts under identical headings, whereas the latter has only two divisions. Under the first heading, "The Little Mariner," a "Projector" speaks in each major subsection, enumerating prominent injustices and political crimes committed throughout Greek history from ancient times to the present. This is the guilty side of life that needs purging. Under the second heading, "Smelling the Best," four major subsections, each containing seven poems, provide the mariner's account of his growth through experience and the attainment of the wisdom necessary to combat the evil inherent in life. Under the third heading, "With Life and with Death," three of the four subunits contain seven poems each, in which the forces of light clash with the forces of darkness, then eventually merge on a higher plane of transcendence. Finally, in the first three of the four, the common heading "Whatever One Loves" unites the poems "Traveling Bag," "Guide through the Aegean," and "Snapshots." Each selection provides lists of literary and artistic works, quotations, vocabulary, and a view of different places and women, all of which represent the indispensable treasures that the Little Mariner has gathered during his life's journey. The poem ends appropriately with a piece titled "Exit."

"The Little Mariner" stands unquestionably on a level with Elytis's other major poems and also constitutes a comprehensive summation of his life and creativity.