Giorgos Seferis

Giorgos Seferis studied at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. The recorded working language is French, English and Modern Greek. Residence is recorded at Pangrati, Athens. Positions recorded include ambassador. Distinctions recorded are Nobel Prize in Literature and doctor honoris causa from the University of Aix-Marseille.

Seferis was born in Smyrna in Asia Minor, in the Aidin Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey). His father, Stelios Seferiadis, was a lawyer, and later a professor at the University of Athens, as well as a poet and translator in his own right. He was also a staunch Venizelist and a supporter of the demotic Greek language over the formal, official language (katharevousa). Both of these attitudes influenced his son. In 1914, the family moved to Athens, where Seferis completed his secondary school education. He continued his studies in Paris from 1918 to 1925, studying law at the Sorbonne. 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 Anatolia. 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 of Odysseus. Seferis was also greatly influenced by Constantine P. Cavafy, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He returned to Athens in 1925 and was admitted to the 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 the United Kingdom (1931–1934) and Albania (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 Greek government-in-exile to Crete, Egypt, South Africa, and Italy, and returned to liberated Athens in 1944. He continued to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held diplomatic posts in Ankara, Turkey (1948–1950) and London (1951–1953). He was appointed minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953–1956), and was 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 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 Turkey 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 the Cyprus 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]."

In 1967, the repressive nationalist, right-wing Regime 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, 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 of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which had itself been prompted by the junta's attempt to overthrow Cyprus's president, Archbishop Makarios 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. 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 the First Cemetery of Athens.

Source: 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)

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)

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