NOVEL AND OTHER POEMS

Παρουσίαση

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. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Introduction
NOVEL
The angel-messenger
Another waterhole
I awoke to find this head of marble in my arms
Argonauts
We did not know those people
The garden with the ornamental fountains
South Wind
But what do our souls seek
The harbour is old
Our country is a closed place
Your blood would freeze
Message in a bottle
Hydra
Three russet doves
Sleep enfolded you, like a tree
On the racetrack
Astyanax
I regret having let a broad river pass
Even if the wind does blow
[Andromeda]
We who set out
Because so very many things have passed
A little more
Here end the works of the sea
- From TURNING POINT
Motor Car
Refusal
Fog
Folk Song
- Love's Discourse
O rose of fate
Forgotten on the shore
Dark shudder
Two fair and sluggish snakes
Where now the two-edged day
- From LOGBOOK II
Days of June '41
An Old Man on the River Bank
Stratis Thalassinos at the Dead Sea
Mountebanks, Middle East
Last Stop
- From LOGBOOK III
Engomi
THREE SECRET POEMS
- On a Ray of Winter Sun
Leaves of rusted tin
There burns the white seaweed
The companions had driven me mad
Years ago you said
What swollen river has taken us?
A small breath and another breath: squall
Fire is cleansed by fire
- Onstage
Sun, you play a game with me
Signals struck
What were you seeking?
The sea; how did it get like this, the sea?
Who heard at midday
When will you speak once more?
But even there, on the other shore
- Summer Solstice
The sun at its greatest on the one hand
They all have their visions
But in this sleep
In the senseless scattering of wind
The world coiled tight in the drugged sheets
Down among the laurels
The poplar in the little garden
The white paper, hard mirror
You spoke of things they didn't see
The moment when dreams come true
The sea they call serenity
Now the blood is bursting
A little farther and the sun will cease
Now
Other Books by Seferis in English Translation