Giorgos orGeorge Seferis (/səˈfɛrɪs/;Greek:Γιώργος Σεφέρης[ˈʝorɣosseˈferis]), the pen name ofGeorgios Seferiadis (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης; March 13 [O.S. February 28] 1900 – September 20, 1971), was a Greekpoet and diplomat. He was one of the most importantGreek poets of the 20th century, and aNobel 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]
Seferis was born inSmyrna[4] inAsia Minor, in theAidin Vilayet of theOttoman Empire (nowİzmir, Turkey). His father, Stelios Seferiadis, was alawyer, and later a professor at theUniversity of Athens, as well as a poet and translator in his own right. He was also a staunchVenizelist and a supporter of thedemoticGreek language over the formal, official language (katharevousa). Both of these attitudes influenced his son. In 1914, the family moved toAthens, where Seferis completed his secondary school education. He continued his studies in Paris from 1918 to 1925, studying law at theSorbonne. While he was there, in September 1922, Smyrna/Izmir was taken by the Turkish Army after a two-year Greek military campaign on Anatolian soil. Many Greeks, including Seferis's family, fled from Asia Minor. Seferis would not visit Smyrna again until 1950; the sense of being an exile from his childhood home would inform much of Seferis's poetry, showing itself particularly in his interest in the story ofOdysseus. Seferis was also greatly influenced byKavafis,[5]T. S. Eliot[6] andEzra Pound.[7]
He returned to Athens in 1925 and was admitted to the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the following year. This was the beginning of a long and successful diplomatic career, during which he held posts in England (1931–1934) andAlbania (1936–1938). He married Maria Zannou ('Maro') on April 10, 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of Greece. During the Second World War, Seferis accompanied the Free Greek Government in exile toCrete, Egypt, South Africa, andItaly, and returned to liberated Athens in 1944. He continued to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held diplomatic posts inAnkara, Turkey (1948–1950) and London (1951–1953). He was appointed minister toLebanon, Syria,Jordan, andIraq (1953–1956), and was Royal Greek Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1961, the last post before his retirement in Athens. Seferis received many honours and prizes, among them honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Cambridge (1960), Oxford (1964), Thessaloniki (1964), and Princeton (1965).
Seferis first visitedCyprus 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 poemsImerologio 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 titleCyprus, where it was ordained for me... (a quotation fromEuripides'Helen in whichTeucer states thatApollo 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 andTurkey over its international status. Over the next few years, Seferis made use of his position in the diplomatic service to strive towards a resolution of theCyprus dispute, investing a great deal of personal effort and emotion. This was one of the few areas in his life in which he allowed the personal and the political to mix. Seferis described his political principles as "liberal and democratic [or republican]."[8]
In 1963, Seferis was awarded theNobel Prize for Literature "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture."[9] 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 andAthanasius Trypanis Trypanis both nominated in 1962, and it was the 1963 nomination again by Eyvind Johnson that won him the prize.[10] Seferis was the first Greek to receive the prize (followed later byOdysseas 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."[11] While Seferis has sometimes been considered a nationalist poet, his 'Hellenism' had more to do with his identifying a unifying strand ofhumanism in the continuity ofGreek culture andliterature. The other five finalists for the prize that year wereW. H. Auden,Pablo Neruda (1971 winner),Samuel Beckett (1969 winner),Yukio Mishima andAksel Sandemose.[12]
In 1967, the repressive nationalist, right-wingRegime of the Colonels took power in Greece after a coup d'état. After two years marked by widespread censorship, political detentions and torture, Seferis took a stand against the regime. On March 28, 1969, he made a statement on the BBC World Service,[13] with copies simultaneously distributed to every newspaper in Athens. In authoritative and absolute terms, he stated "This anomaly must end".
Seferis did not live to see the end of the junta in 1974 as a direct result ofTurkey's invasion of Cyprus, which had itself been prompted by the junta's attempt to overthrow Cyprus's president, ArchbishopMakarios III. He died in Athens on September 20, 1971. The cause of death was reported to be pneumonia, aggravated by a stroke he had suffered after undergoing surgery for a bleeding ulcer about two months earlier.[14]
At his funeral, huge crowds followed his coffin through the streets of Athens, singingMikis 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 theFirst Cemetery of Athens.
There are commemorativeblue plaques on two of his London homes – 51 Upper Brook Street (residence of the Greek Ambassador),[15] and at 7Sloane Avenue.
In 1999, there was a dispute over the naming of a street in İzmirYorgos Seferis Sokagi due to continuing ill-feeling over theGreco-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 artistsLaetitia Sadier,Alejandro Escovedo,Cat Power, andRobert Wyatt. Seferis's famousstanza fromMythistorema was featured in the Opening Ceremony of the2004 Athens Olympic Games:
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.
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),ISBN960-7120-03-5
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.ISBN978-1926763-23-1
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)ISBN978-960-7120-37-3
Black, David, (1983), review ofCollected Poems edited byEdmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.),Cencrastus No. 12, Spring 1983, pp. 47 & 48,ISSN0264-0856
