Giorgos Seferis

Giorgos Seferis
Aidin Vilayet, Ottoman Empire
Died	September 20, 1971(1971-09-20) (aged 71) Athens, Greece
Occupation	Poet, diplomat
Nationality	Greek
Alma mater	University of Paris
Literary movement	Modernism, Generation of the '30s[1]
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature 1963
Signature

Giorgos or George Seferis (/səˈfɛrɪs/; Greek: Γιώργος Σεφέρης [ˈʝorɣos seˈferis]), the pen name of Georgios Seferiadis (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης; March 13  [O.S. February 29] 1900 – September 20, 1971), was a Greek poet and diplomat. He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate.^[2]

He was a career diplomat in the Greek Foreign Service, culminating in his appointment as Ambassador to the UK, a post which he held from 1957 to 1962.^[3]

Biography

Seferis was born in

Seferis first visited Cyprus in November 1953. He immediately fell in love with the island, partly because of its resemblance, in its landscape, the mixture of populations, and in its traditions, to his childhood summer home in Skala (Urla). His book of poems Imerologio Katastromatos III was inspired by the island, and mostly written there–bringing to an end a period of six or seven years in which Seferis had not produced any poetry. Its original title Cyprus, where it was ordained for me… (a quotation from Euripides' Helen in which Teucer states that Apollo has decreed that Cyprus shall be his home) made clear the optimistic sense of homecoming Seferis felt on discovering the island. Seferis changed the title in the 1959 edition of his poems.

Politically, Cyprus was entangled in the dispute between the UK, Greece and

In 1963, Seferis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture."^[8] Seferis was nominated in total four times for the Nobel Prize. Romilly Jenkins nominated him in 1955, T.S. Eliot nominated him in 1961, Eyvind Johnson and Athanasius Trypanis Trypanis both nominated in 1962 and it was the 1963 nomination again by Eyvind Johnson that won him the prize.^[9] Seferis was the first Greek to receive the prize (followed later by Odysseas Elytis, who became a Nobel laureate in 1979). But in his acceptance speech, Seferis chose rather to emphasise his own humanist philosophy, concluding: "When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: 'Man'. That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus."^[10] While Seferis has sometimes been considered a nationalist poet, his 'Hellenism' had more to do with his identifying a unifying strand of humanism in the continuity of Greek culture and literature. The other five finalists for the prize that year were W. H. Auden, Pablo Neruda (1971 winner), Samuel Beckett (1969 winner), Yukio Mishima and Aksel Sandemose.^[11]

Later life

In 1967 the repressive nationalist, right-wing

At his funeral, huge crowds followed his coffin through the streets of Athens, singing Mikis Theodorakis' setting of Seferis's poem 'Denial' (then banned); he had become a popular hero for his resistance to the regime. He is buried at First Cemetery of Athens.

Legacy

His house at

There are commemorative blue plaques on two of his London homes – 51 Upper Brook Street,^[14] and at 7 Sloane Avenue.

In 1999, there was a dispute over the naming of a street in İzmir Yorgos Seferis Sokagi due to continuing ill-feeling over the Greco-Turkish War in the early 1920s.

In 2004, the band Sigmatropic released "16 Haiku & Other Stories," an album dedicated to and lyrically derived from Seferis's work. Vocalists included recording artists

I woke with this marble head in my hands;
It exhausts my elbows and I don't know where to put it down.
It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream.
So our life became one and it will be very difficult for it to separate again.

Stephen King quotes several of Seferis's poems as epigraphs in his 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot.

The composer Richard Causton wrote a piece for solo flute, Sleep, which is inspired by Mythistorema.^[15]

Works

Poetry

Source:^[16]

• Strophe, 1931 (Στροφή)
• The Cistern, 1932 (Στέρνα)
• Mythical narrative, 1935 (Μυθιστόρημα)
• Book of Exercises, 1940 (Τετράδιο Γυμνασμάτων)
• Log Book I, 1940 (Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος Ι)
• Log Book II, 1944 (Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος ΙΙ)
• The Thrush, 1947 (Κίχλη)
• Log Book III, 1955 (Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος ΙΙΙ)
• Three Secret Poems, 1966 (Τρία Κρυφά Ποιήματα)
• Book of Exercises ΙΙ, 1976 (Τετράδιο Γυμνασμάτων II)

Prose

• Essays (Δοκιμές) 3 vols. (vols 1–2, 3rd ed. (ed. G.P. Savidis) 1974, vol 3 (ed. Dimitri Daskalopoulos) 1992)
• Translations (Αντιγραφές) (1965)
• Days–diaries (Μέρες) (9 vols., published posthumously, 1975–2019)
• Six Nights on the Acropolis (Έξι νύχτες στην Ακρόπολη) (published posthumously, 1974)
• Varnavas Kalostefanos (Βαρνάβας Καλοστέφανος) (published posthumously, 2007)

English translations

• George Seferis's 'On a Winter Ray' Cordite Poetry Review [Greek and English texts]
• Three Secret Poems, trans. Walter Kaiser (1969). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [Greek and English texts]
• Complete Poems trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. (1995) London: Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN [English only]
• Collected Poems, trans. E. Keeley, P. Sherrard (1981) [Greek and English texts]
• A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945–1951 trans. Athan Anagnostopoulos. (1975) London: Harvard University Press. ISBN
• On the Greek Style: Selected Essays on Poetry and Hellenism trans. Rex Warner and Th.D. Frangopoulos. (1966) London: Bodley Head, reprinted (1982, 1992, 2000) Limni (Greece): Denise Harvey (Publisher),
  ISBN 960-7120-03-5
• Poems trans. Rex Warner. (1960) London: Bodley Head; Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.
• Collected Poems trans. Manolis (Emmanuel Aligizakis). (2012) Surrey: Libros Libertad.
  ISBN 978-1926763-23-1
• Six Nights on the Acropolis, trans. by Susan Matthias (2007).

• This Dialectic of Blood and Light, George Seferis – Philip Sherrard, An Exchange: 1946–1971, 2015 Limni (Greece): Denise Harvey (Publisher)
  ISBN 978-960-7120-37-3

• Black, David, (1983), review of Collected Poems edited by
  ISSN 0264-0856