![]() Who's suffering behind the golden silk, who's dying?Ī woman beating her dry breasts cried out `Cowards, This sun was mine and yours we shared it. They call the one ship that sails AGONY 937. The captain stands like a stone in white and gold.Ĭurtains of mountains, archipelagos, naked granite. The ships hoot now that dusk falls on Piraeus, hoot and hoot, but no capstan moves, no chain gleams wet in the vanishing light, The ELSI, the SAMOTHRAKI, the AMVRAKIKOS. Those who got bored waiting for the ships that cannot move It will be with those who tried to catch the big ship by swimming after it Meanwhile Greece goes on travelling, always travellingĪnd if we see "the Aegean flower with corpses" Wrinkles left on his face by all the birds in the sky. Let the hands of the old photographer smoothe away the The man I saw today sitting against a background of pigeons and flowers They carry hair tonic, have their photographs taken Strange people! they say they're in Attica but they're really nowhere We don't know how bitter the port becomes when all the ships have gone "I met Yianni and he treated me to an ice cream."Īnd we don't know anything, we don't know we're all sailors out of work, "No, I originate from Syntagma," replies the other, pleased Someone comes from Salamis and asks someone else whether What do they want, all those who say they're in Athens or Piraeus? On Spetses, Poros, and Mykonos the barcaroles sickened me. They disappeared only at dawn when Cassandra crowed, My hand was nailed to the gunwale by an arrow shot suddenlyĪt Mycenae I raised the great stones and the treasures of the house of AtreusĪnd slept with them at the hotel "Belle Helene de Menelas" Hearing a pipe play somewhere on the pumice stone On Santorini touching islands that were sinking Slipped through the leaves to fold around my bodyĪs I climbed the slope and the sea came after meĬlimbing too like mercury in a thermometer till we found the mountain waters. On Pelion among the chestnut trees the Centaur's shirt Seferis's collected poems (1924-1955) have appeared both in a Greek edition (Athens, 1965) and in an American one with translations en face (Princeton, 1967). In addition to poetry, Seferis has published a book of essays, Dokimes (Essays), 1962, translations of works by T.S Eliot, and a collection of translations from American, English, and French poets entitled Antigrafes (Copies), 1965. The recent book of poetry, Tria Krypha Poiimata (Three Secret Poems), 1966, consists of twenty-eight short lyric pieces verging on the surrealistic. In Tetradio Gymnasmaton (Book of Exercises), 1940, Emerologio Katastromatos (Logbook I), 1940, Emerologio Katastromatos B (Logbook II), 1944, Kihle (Thrush), 1947, and Emerologio Katastromatos C (Logbook III), 1955, Seferis is preoccupied with the themes he developed in Mythistorema, using Homer's Odyssey as his symbolic source however, in "The King of Asine" (in Logbook I), considered by many critics his finest poem, the source is a single reference in the Iliad to this all-but-forgotten king. His mature poetry, in which one senses an awareness of the presence of the past and particularly of Greece's great past as related to her present, begins with Mythistorema (Mythistorema), 1935, a series of twenty-four short poems which translate the Odyssean myths into modern idiom. Seferis's early poetry consists of Strophe (Turning Point), 1931, a group of rhymed Lyrics strongly influenced by the Symbolists, and E Sterna (The Cistern), 1932, conveying an image of man's most deeply felt being which lies hidden from, and ignored by, the everyday world. His wide travels provide the backdrop and colour for much of Seferis's writing, which is filled with the themes of alienation, wandering, and death. Seferis received many honours and prizes, among them honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Cambridge (1960), Oxford (1964), Salonika (1964), and Princeton (1965). He was appointed minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953-1956), and was Royal Greek Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1961, the last post before his retirement in Athens. He continued to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs end held diplomatic posts in Ankara (1948-1950) and London (1951-1953). During the Second World War, Seferis accompanied the Free Greek Government in exile to Crete, Egypt, South Africa, and Italy, and returned to liberated Athens in 1944. This was the beginning of a long and successful diplomatic career, during which he held posts in England (1931-1934) and Albania (1936-1938 ). He returned to Athens in 1925 and was admitted to the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the following year. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, Seferis studied law at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He attended school in Smyrna and finished his studies at the Gymnasium in Athens. Giorgos Seferis was born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, in 1900.
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