Giorgos Seferis was born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, in
1900. He attended school in Smyrna and finished his studies at the Gymnasium
in Athens. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, Seferis studied law at
the University of Paris and became interested in literature. 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 ). 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 end held diplomatic posts in Ankara
(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),
Salonika (1964), and Princeton (1965).
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'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 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. 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.
The recent book of poetry, Tria Krypha Poiemata (Three Secret Poems), 1966,
consists of twenty-eight short lyric pieces verging on the surrealistic.
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.
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).
This autobiography/biography was
written at the time of the award and later published in the book series
Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with
an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state
the source as shown above. |