Editing Giorgos Seferis

{{Short description|Greek poet and diplomat (1900–1971)}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name             = Giorgos Seferis
| image            = George Seferis.JPG
| caption          = Seferis in 1921
| birth_name       = Georgios Seferiadis
| birth_date       = February 28, 1900
| birth_place      = [[Urla, İzmir|Urla]], [[Aidin Vilayet]], [[Ottoman Empire]]
| death_date       = {{death date and age|1971|9|20|1900|3|13}}
| death_place      = [[Athens]], [[Kingdom of Greece|Greece]]
| alma_mater       = [[University of Paris]]
| occupation       = Poet, diplomat
| movement         = [[Modernism]], [[:de:Generation der 30er Jahre|Generation of the '30s]]<ref>Eleni Kefala, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tGXEdVSYIn0C&dq= ''Peripheral (Post) Modernity''], Peter Lang, 2007, p. 160.</ref>
| awards           = {{Awards|[[Nobel Prize in Literature]]|1963}}
| spouse           = Maria Zannou
| signature        = Giorgos-seferis-signature.svg
}}

'''Giorgos''' or '''George Seferis''' ({{IPAc-en|s|ə|ˈ|f|ɛr|ɪ|s}}; {{langx|el|Γιώργος Σεφέρης}} {{IPA|el|ˈʝorɣos seˈferis|}}), the pen name of '''Georgios Seferiadis''' (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης; March 13 {{OldStyleDate||1900|February 28}} – September 20, 1971), was a Greek [[poet-diplomat|poet and diplomat]]. He was one of the most important [[modern Greek literature|Greek poets]] of the 20th century, and a [[Nobel Prize|Nobel]] laureate.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1963/seferis/facts/|title= The Nobel Prize – Giorgos Seferis }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.ekathimerini.com/culture/253156/the-diplomat-behind-the-poet/|title= The Kathimerini (30.5.2020) – Giorgos Seferis – The diplomat behind the poet }}</ref>

==Biography==
Seferis was born in [[Smyrna]]<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.kathimerini.gr/culture/563504431/edo-itan-kapote-to-spiti-mas/|title= The Kathimerini (12.3.2025) – Giorgos Seferis – Εδώ ήταν κάποτε το σπίτι μας}}</ref> 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 [[Venizelism|Venizelist]] and a supporter of the [[Modern Greek|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 [[University of Paris|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 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 of [[Odysseus]]. Seferis was also greatly influenced by [[Constantine P. Cavafy|Kavafis]],<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Rexine|first=John E.|date=1987|title=The Diaries of George Seferis as a Revelation of His Art|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40143001|journal=World Literature Today|volume=61|issue=2|pages=220–223|doi=10.2307/40143001|jstor=40143001 |issn=0196-3570|quote=...Seferis was almost obsessed with the study of Cavafy...}}</ref> [[T. S. Eliot]]<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Keeley|first=Edmund|date=1956|title=T. S. Eliot and the Poetry of George Seferis|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1768289|journal=Comparative Literature|volume=8|issue=3|pages=214–226|doi=10.2307/1768289|jstor=1768289 |issn=0010-4124}}</ref> and [[Ezra Pound]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Thaniel|first=George|date=1974|title=George Seferis' "Thrush" and the Poetry of Ezra Pound.|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40246210|journal=Comparative Literature Studies|volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=326–336|jstor=40246210}}</ref>

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) 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 Free 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 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).

===Cyprus===
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 (play)|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 "[[liberalism|liberal]] and democratic [or republican]."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beaton |first1=Roderick |title=George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel |date=2003 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=456}}</ref>

===Nobel Prize===
{{main|1963 Nobel Prize in Literature}}
[[Image:Giorgos Seferis 1963.jpg|right|thumb|George Seferis in 1963]]
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."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1963/press.html |title=Nobel Prize in Literature 1963 – Presentation Speech |access-date=August 16, 2005 |archive-date=November 12, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051112014727/http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1963/press.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Seferis was nominated in total four times for the Nobel Prize. [[Romilly Jenkins]] nominated him in 1955, [[T. S. Eliot|T.S. Eliot]] nominated him in 1961, [[Eyvind Johnson]] and [[Athanasius Trypanis|Athanasius Trypanis Trypanis]] both nominated in 1962, and it was the 1963 nomination again by Eyvind Johnson that won him the prize.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nomination Archive. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024 |date=3 January 2024 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=12135}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1963/seferis-speech.html |title=Giorgos Seferis – Banquet Speech |access-date=August 16, 2005 |archive-date=January 8, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090108120402/http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1963/seferis-speech.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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 [[Culture of Greece|Greek culture]] and [[Greek literature|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]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1963.html |title=Candidates for the 1963 Nobel Prize in Literature |publisher=Nobel Prize |year=2013 |access-date=January 3, 2014}}</ref>

===Later life===
In 1967, the repressive nationalist, right-wing [[Greek military junta of 1967–1974|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,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.protagon.gr/themata/misos-aiwnas-apo-to-istoriko-diaggelma-tou-seferi-sto-bbc-kata-tis-xountas-44341806928|title=Το πάντα επίκαιρο διάγγελμα του Σεφέρη κατά της χούντας|access-date=September 10, 2020}}</ref> 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 [[Turkey]]'s 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.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/09/21/archives/george-fieieris-dies-at-71-poet-won-63-nobel-prize.html|title=George Seferis Dies at 71; Poet W on '63 Nobel Prize|date=1971-09-21|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-02-04|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

At his funeral, huge crowds followed his coffin through the streets of Athens, singing [[Mikis Theodorakis]]' setting of Seferis's poem [[Denial (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]].

==Legacy==
[[Image:Blue plaque George Seferis, Sloane Avenue.jpg|right|thumb|[[Blue plaque]] at 7 [[Sloane Avenue]], London]]
His house at [[Pangrati]] district of central [[Athens]], just next to the [[Panathinaiko Stadium]] of Athens, still stands today at Agras Street.

There are commemorative [[blue plaque]]s on two of his London homes – 51 Upper Brook Street (residence of the Greek Ambassador),<ref>{{openplaque|1}}</ref> 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 (1919–1922)|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 [[Laetitia Sadier]], [[Alejandro Escovedo]], [[Cat Power]], and [[Robert Wyatt]]. Seferis's famous [[stanza]] from ''Mythistorema'' was featured in the Opening Ceremony of the [[2004 Athens Olympic Games]]:

''I woke with this marble head in my hands;''<br />
''It exhausts my elbows and I don't know where to put it down.''<br />
''It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream.''<br />
''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 (composer)|Richard Causton]] wrote a piece for solo flute, ''Sleep'', which is inspired by ''Mythistorema''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sleep-9780193359871?cc=us&lang=en&# |title=Sleep |date=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-335987-1 |location=Oxford, New York}}</ref>

==Works==

=== Poetry ===
Source:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Σεφέρης |first=Γιώργος |title=Ποιήματα |publisher=Ίκαρος |edition=19th |location=Αθήνα |pages=353–55}}</ref>
* ''Strophe'', 1931 ({{lang|el|Στροφή|italic=yes}})
* ''The Cistern'', 1932 ({{lang|el|Στέρνα|italic=yes}})
* ''Mythical narrative'', 1935 ({{lang|el|Μυθιστόρημα|italic=yes}})
* ''Book of Exercises'', 1940 ({{lang|el|Τετράδιο Γυμνασμάτων|italic=yes}})
* ''Log Book I'', 1940 ({{lang|el|Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος Ι|italic=yes}})
* ''Log Book II'', 1944 ({{lang|el|Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος ΙΙ|italic=yes}})
* ''The Thrush'', 1947 ({{lang|el|Κίχλη|italic=yes}})
* ''Log Book III'', 1955 ({{lang|el|Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος ΙΙΙ|italic=yes}})
* ''Three Secret Poems'', 1966 ({{lang|el|Τρία Κρυφά Ποιήματα|italic=yes}})
* ''Book of Exercises ΙΙ'', 1976 ({{lang|el|Τετράδιο Γυμνασμάτων II|italic=yes}})

===Prose===
* ''Essays'' ({{lang|el|Δοκιμές|italic=yes}}) 3 vols. (vols 1–2, 3rd ed. (ed. G.P. Savidis) 1974, vol 3 (ed. Dimitri Daskalopoulos) 1992)
* ''Translations'' ({{lang|el|Αντιγραφές|italic=yes}}) (1965)
* ''Days–diaries'' ({{lang|el|Μέρες|italic=yes}}) (9 vols., published posthumously, 1975–2019)
* ''Six Nights on the Acropolis'' ({{lang|el|Έξι νύχτες στην Ακρόπολη|italic=yes}}) (published posthumously, 1974)
* ''Varnavas Kalostefanos'' ({{lang|el|Βαρνάβας Καλοστέφανος|italic=yes}}) (published posthumously, 2007)

===English translations===
* [http://cordite.org.au/translations/karalis-seferis/ 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).

=== Correspondence ===
* ''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}}

==Reviews==
* Black, David, (1983), review of ''Collected Poems'' edited by [[Edmund Keeley]] and Phillip Sherrard, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), ''[[Cencrastus]]'' No. 12, Spring 1983, pp.&nbsp;47 & 48, {{issn|0264-0856}}

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

== References ==
* "Introduction to T. S. Eliot," in ''[[Modernism/modernity]]'' 16:1 (January 2009), 146–60 ([http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modernism-modernity/v016/16.1.matthias_sub01.html online]).
* Beaton, Roderick (2003). ''George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel – A Biography''. New Haven: Yale University Press. {{ISBN|0-300-10135-X}}.
* Loulakaki-Moore, Irene (2010). ''Seferis and Elytis as Translators.'' Oxford: Peter Lang. {{ISBN|3039119184}}.
* Tsatsos, Ioanna, Demos Jean (trans.) (1982). ''My Brother George Seferis''. Minneapolis, Minn.: North Central Publishing.

==External links==
* {{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4112/the-art-of-poetry-no-13-george-seferis| title=George Seferis, The Art of Poetry No. 13| author=Edmund Keeley| journal=The Paris Review| date=Fall 1970| volume=Fall 1970| issue=50}}
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/greek/seferis.shtml Listen to Seferis on the BBC (''in Greek'')]
* {{Nobelprize}} including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1963 ''Some Notes on Modern Greek Tradition''

{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1951-1975}}
{{1963 Nobel Prize winners}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seferis, Giorgos}}
[[Category:1900 births]]
[[Category:1971 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Urla, Izmir]]
[[Category:People from Aidin vilayet]]
[[Category:Smyrniote Greeks]]
[[Category:Modern Greek poets]]
[[Category:Generation of the '30s]]
[[Category:Ambassadors of Greece to the United Kingdom]]

[[Category:20th-century Greek poets]]
[[Category:Translators of T. S. Eliot]]
[[Category:Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Greece]]
[[Category:Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars]]
[[Category:Nobel laureates in Literature]]
[[Category:Greek Nobel laureates]]
[[Category:Burials at the First Cemetery of Athens]]
[[Category:University of Paris alumni]]