George Seferis

La poesia di Seferis, espressa in quella lingua greca che non ha mai smesso di essere parlata, affonda le sue radici nel mondo antico. Questo patrimonio «genetico» è tuttavia rivitalizzato dalla sensibilità di un uomo moderno che ha respirato a pieni polmoni la temperie culturale europea. Non è una poesia facile: il vissuto, il sentimento, è filtrato e lasciato decantare, fino ad essere avvertito solo come calore di fiamma lontana che cova sotto la brace di un’espressione impec­cabile, e si coglie attraverso una rete di rinvii, allusioni e metafore, sempre affascinanti ma talora oscure.

George Seferis is the great Greek poet of the twentieth century, a classic among classics. The formal and thematic versatility of his work, its decisively modern inflections, call Eliot's poems to mind: fastidious and expansive in equal measure. Like Eliot's deep-rooted Modernism, Seferis's never loses touch with the stones and inscriptions of the past. He writes for his and our time, poetically and politically alert: culture can free us or, misapplied, can trammel us. Aptly described as 'the unlocker of ancient stones and sea voyages', Seferis was for Peter Levi 'one of the greatest writers in this century in any language... From Seferis it was possible to learn... what seriousness about poetry is.' And Archibald MacLeish wrote, 'if any contemporary poet can be said to be essential, Seferis is that poet, and this' - referring to an earlier edition of this book - 'is the true body of his work'.

Il porte un titre qui est tiré d’un vers du poète grec Archiloque (XXè siècle avant J.C.) : Entre la vague et le vent, titre pour évoquer les vicissitudes auxquelles la Grèce – et Séféris – furent confrontés en ce dernier XXe siècle dramatique.

Encore un peu
et nous verrons les amandiers fleurir
les marbres briller au soleil
la mer ondoyer

encore un peu
élevons-nous un peu plus haut.

Often compared during his lifetime to T.S. Eliot, whose work he translated and introduced to Greece, George Seferis is noted for his spare, laconic, dense and allusive verse in the Modernist idiom of the first half of the 20th century. At once intensely Greek and a cosmopolitan of his time (he was a career-diplomat as well as a poet), Seferis better than any other writer expresses the dilemma experienced by his countrymen then and now: how to be at once Greek and modern. The translations that make up this volume are the fruit of more than forty years, and many are published here for the first time. 

Le sommeil le comblait de rêves de fruits et de feuilles ; l'éveil ne le laissait pas même cueillir une mûre. Et les deux ensemble partagèrent ses membres entre les Bacchantes.

This is the first and still the only collection of the essays of the Nobel Prize Laureate George Seferis (1900–1971) to be published in English; the essays were selected by Seferis himself, drawing upon his prose work written over a period of thirty years. Seferis was a classicist and a humanist, a man of modern sensibility imbued with a deep respect for Mediterranean tradition. He is present in all these aspects in his essays. When he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1963, the citation spoke of 'his eminent lyrical writings inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture'. Hellenism for Seferis is an enduring style, as alive and as meaningful today as when Homer and Pericles walked the roads of Greece. 'If we were to understand the ancient Greeks,' Seferis writes, 'it is always into the soul of our own people that we should look.' Thus the central group of essays in this collection is concerned with the spirit of Hellenism as it continues to manifest itself in Greek painting, poetry, history, landscape, and religion. But of equal interest are the essays that explore international themes: art and 'engagement'; the poetry of Eliot and Cavafy; the theatre of Pirandello; and the role of the artist in the modern world; and admirers of Seferis's poetry will take particular pleasure in his introduction to his long poem 'The Thrush', which is followed in this edition by the poem itself. Various and occasional as these essays are, they are united by the extraordinary sensibility of their author. And they are to be savoured equally for their wisdom, subtlety, and impeccable style.