Maro Seferis

Maro Seferi was born Marika Zannou in Athens to a French mother, who died in childbirth. She was raised by her grandmother in France until the age of twelve, when her father brought her to Greece. She was a beautiful woman of Athens high society, with a strong personality. Her first husband was Andreas Lontos, with whom she had two daughters. The 38-year-old Marika’s acquaintance, in early 1936, with Giorgos Seferis, a poet and diplomat two years her junior (who served in the First Directorate of Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), was fateful, and their love affair sent shockwaves through intellectual Athens. Despite the objections of both families, their romantic relationship endured, and four days after the German invasion of Greece, on 10 April 1941, they married, and Maro followed Seferis to Crete and then to Alexandria in Egypt, alongside the exiled Greek government. She lived with him for 35 whole years, as his inseparable companion, and her children became among the poet’s most beloved people. Following the death of G. Seferis, Maro donated the poet’s library to the Vikelas Municipal Library of Heraklion, his Archive to the Gennadius Library, and his photographs to the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, and published G. Seferis’s unpublished poems, as well as their their ‘Correspondence’ (the first volume edited by Michalis Z. Kopidakis, published by the Vikelas Library in 1989, and the second edited by Maria Stasinopoulou, published by Ikaros in 2005, together with the second edition of the first) – correspondence which reflects their profound connection. He died in Athens “having lived a full life” in March 2000, at the age of 102.