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In this new edition of George Seferis's poems, the acclaimed translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard are revised and presented in a compact, English-only volume. The revision covers all the poems published in Princeton's earlier bilingual edition, George Seferis: Collected Poems (expanded edition, 1981). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, George Seferis (1900-1971) has long been recognized as a major international figure, and Keeley and Sherrard are his ideal translators. They create, in the words of Archibald MacLeish, a "translation worthy of Seferis, which is to praise it as highly as it could be praised."
Although Seferis was preoccupied with his tradition as few other poets of the same generation were with theirs, and although he was actively engaged in the immediate political aspirations of his nation, his value for readers lies in what he made of this preoccupation and this engagement in fashioning a broad poetic vision. He is also known for his stylistic purity, which allows no embellishment beyond that necessary for precise yet rich poetic statement.
George Seferis
GEORGE SEFERIS was born in Smyrna in 1900 and moved with his family to Athens when he was fourteen. He was appointed to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1926 and subsequently served in Athens, London, and Albania, before accompanying the Greek government in exile to Crete, Egypt, and South Africa. He was stationed in Cairo from 1942–44 and served as Ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq from 1953–56. His books of poems include Mythistorema (1935), Thrush (1947), and Logbook I, II, III (1940, 1944, 1955). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 and died in Athens 1971.
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