George Seferis
George Seferis, born Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades in 1900 in Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey), was a prominent Greek poet and diplomat known for his influential contributions to modern Greek literature. After moving to Athens during World War I, he pursued studies at the Sorbonne, where he was deeply influenced by French Symbolist poets. His poetic works, beginning with "Turning Point" (1931) and "The Cistern" (1932), reflect a blend of classical Greek imagery and modern themes, often influenced by the works of T.S. Eliot, whom he translated into Greek.
Seferis’s poetry often explores human suffering and the nature of artistic vision, merging past and present through references to ancient Greek mythology. He served as a diplomat throughout his life, significantly impacting Greek foreign affairs, notably during the independence negotiations of Cyprus. In 1963, he became the first Greek recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, solidifying his international reputation. Seferis's legacy includes a rich body of work that combines clarity of style with profound imagery, making him a key figure in 20th-century poetry. He passed away in 1971, leaving behind a lasting influence on both Greek literature and the broader literary world.
Subject Terms
George Seferis
Greek poet, translator, diarist, and essayist
- Born: March 13, 1900 (old style, February 29, 1900)
- Birthplace: Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey)
- Died: September 20, 1971
- Place of death: Athens, Greece
Biography
Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades, who would later take the pen name George Seferis (seh-FEHR-ees), was born into a Greek community in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey), at the start of the twentieth century. Interested in poetry even as a child, Seferis moved with his family to Athens at the beginning of World War I. In 1917, Seferis graduated from the First Classical Gymnasium and shortly thereafter went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Although technically a student of law, Seferis continued to write poetry, and he came under the influence of the French Symbolists, including such leading figures as Charles Baudelaire, Jules Laforge, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and, most notably, Paul Valéry.
After receiving his degree and traveling widely throughout the early 1920’s, Seferis took a position with the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1926. His service as a diplomat would eventually take him to Athens, London, and Korçë (Koritsa), Albania. While working as vice consul for the Greek diplomatic service in 1931, Seferis was exposed to the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, two of the most influential poets writing in English during the early and mid-twentieth century. Seferis was particularly attracted to the dramatic voice of Eliot, and he published Greek translations of The Waste Land (1922) and Murder in the Cathedral (1935); these works were collected into Seferis’s volume T. S. Eliot in 1936. At about the same time, Seferis also began publishing poetry of his own, releasing Turning Point in 1931 and The Cistern in 1932.
The Cistern, a lyric poem of twenty-five five-line stanzas (one of them containing nothing but dots), already reflects the profound influence of Eliot. Rhythms are more typical of English pentameter lines than traditional Greek pendecasyllables (fifteen-syllable lines that had been common in Greek poetry since the Byzantine period), and both the poem’s free verse and its imagery appear to be closely modeled upon the works of Eliot. The theme of The Cistern is that the artist’s vision arises out of human suffering and contemplation rather than an objective depiction of the world. The cistern that gives the poem its title is both a repository for the collected sorrow of humanity and a source of sustenance for those who thirst for passion or art.
In the mid-1930’s Seferis returned to Athens, where he published two more volumes of poetry, Mythistorema in 1935 and Gymnopaidia in 1936. He began the poems in Mythistorema even as he continued to translate Eliot’s poetry, and he again adopted a narrative style similar to that of The Waste Land. At the same time, however, Seferis was borrowing freely from ancient Greek images and mythology, often combining classical elements with settings or allusions familiar to those who lived in modern Greece. The result is a poetic world in which past and present are united. In Mythistorema, allusions to such classical figures as the Argonauts, Orestes, and Astyanax appear repeatedly—even as Seferis prefaces the collection with a couplet by the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, dedicates another to the modern composer Maurice Ravel, and includes in a third allusions to the wedding ceremony of the Orthodox church. Another major work, Book of Exercises, published in 1940, contains the first appearance of Stratis Thalassinos (Stratis the Sailor), a literary persona that Seferis would adopt a number of times in his later poetry.
In 1941 Seferis married Maria Zannou. Shortly thereafter, Greece surrendered to Nazi Germany, and Seferis joined the Greek government-in-exile. He spent the war years in Egypt, Africa, and Italy, returning to Greece in 1946. He again went to London as consul to the Greek embassy in 1951, a trip that gave Seferis the opportunity to form a lasting friendship with Eliot. While ambassador to Great Britain from 1957 to 1962, Seferis played a major role in negotiating the independence of the island of Cyprus.
In 1963, Seferis became the first Greek to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His reputation grew among the international community as his works were translated into numerous languages. In the last two decades of his life, he was awarded honorary degrees by Cambridge, Oxford, and Princeton Universities as well as by the University of Thessaloniki (Salonica) in northeastern Greece. He returned to Athens, where he became an outspoken opponent of the military dictatorship of George Papadopoulos. Seferis died in 1971 from complications following stomach surgery.
In the decades following his death, Seferis's correspondence with his translator Edmund Keeley, fellow writer P.L. Fermor, and editor G. P. Savvidē, among others, have been collected and published. Interviews and diaries have likewise been put into print. Both of Seferis's novels were published posthumously.
Seferis left behind works that combined clarity of style with the rich imagery that he borrowed from Eliot and the French Symbolists. Embracing all of Greek history at once, his poems take their inspiration equally from classical legend, Byzantine folk literature, and the modern Greek landscape.
Author Works
Poetry:
Strophe, 1931 (Turning Point, 1967)
E sterna, 1932 (The Cistern, 1967)
Mythistorema, 1935 (English translation, 1960)
Gymnopaidia, 1936 (English translation, 1967)
Emerologio katastromatos I, 1940 (Logbook I, 1960)
Tetradio gymnasmaton, 1940 (Book of Exercises, 1967)
Emerologio katastromatos II, 1944 (Logbook II, 1960)
Kichle, 1947 (Thrush, 1967)
Poiēmata, 1950
Emerologio katastromatos III, 1955 (Logbook III, 1960)
Poems, 1960 (includes Mythistorema, Logbook I, II, and III)
Tria krypha poiemata, 1966 (Three Secret Poems, 1969)
Collected Poems, 1967, 1981, 1995 (includes Turning Point, The Cistern, Gymnopaidia, Book of Exercises, Thrush, and others)
Poiēmata me zōgraphies se mikra paidia, 1975
Translations:
Phoniko stèn ekklesia, pb. 1935 (of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral)
T. S. Eliot, 1936
Antigraphes, 1965
Asma asmaton, 1966 (of The Song of Songs)
E Apokalypse tou Ioanne, 1966 (of The Apocalypse of St. John)
Hē erēmē chōra, 1967 (of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land)
Nonfiction:
Dokimes, 1944
Treis meres sta monasteria tes Kappadokias, 1953
Delphi, 1962 (English translation, 1963)
Discours de Stockholm, 1964
‘E glossa sten poiese mas, 1965
On the Greek Style: Selected Essays in Poetry and Hellenism, 1966
Meres tou chilia enneakosia saranta pente-chilia enneakosia penēnta hena, 1973 (A Poet’s Journal: Days of 1945-1951, 1974)
Panō nera, 1973
Politiko hēmerologio, 1979 (Alexandrou Xyde, editor)
Metagraphes, 1980
Syzētēsē me ton Giōrgo Sepherē / A Conversation with George Seferis, 1982 (with Edmund Keeley)
Ho Kavaphēs tou Sepherē, 1984 (G.P. Savvidēs, editor)
To vyssini tetradio: Anemologio, lexeis, votana kai orthographika, 1987
George Seferis: South African Diaries, Poems & Letters, 1990 (Roy Macnab, editor)
Synomilia, 1991 (Ann Philip, interviewer)
Giōrgos Sepherēs, Kypros Chrysanthēs kai "Hoi gates t' Haē Nikola", 1995
A Levant Journal, 2007 (Roderick Beaton, editor)
Long Fiction:
Hexi nychtēs stēn Akropolē, 1974 (Six Nights on the Acropolis, 2007)
Varnavas Kalostephanos: Ta schediasmata, 2007
Bibliography
Beaton, Roderick. George Seferis. Bristol, England: Bristol Classical, 1991. A critical study of selected works by Seferis. Includes bibliographic references.
Hadas, Rachel. Form, Cycle, Infinity: Landscape Imagery in the Poetry of Robert Frost and George Seferis. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1985. Compares the literary style and similarities of Robert Frost and Seferis. Includes a bibliography and an index.
Kapre-Karka, K. Love and the Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis: An Interpretation with Detailed Poem-by-Poem Analysis. New York: Pella, 1982. A critical study of selected works by three poets. Includes an index and bibliography.
Kapre-Karka, K. War in the Poetry of George Seferis: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis. New York: Pella, 1985. A critical study of selected works by Seferis. Includes an index and bibliography.
Thaniel, George. Seferis and Friends. Toronto, Ont.: Mercury Press, 1994. Entertaining and informative correspondence from Seferis’s wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including Henry Miller, T. S. Eliot, and Lawrence Durrell.
Tsatsou, Ioanna, and Jean Demos, trans. My Brother George Seferis. St. Paul, Minn.: North Central, 1982. An in-depth biography. Includes index.