Reading Seferis

It is clear that the poetic work of Giorgos Seferis, as it has been handed down to us, does not present the editorial and other difficulties found, say, in the work of Kornaros or Solomos, Kalvos or even Sarantaris. This does not mean, of course, that a philological approach, in the broadest sense of the term, is not essential for the study of Seferis’s poetry. On the contrary; this groundwork will help the reader engage with the poem, underpin the analysis, the interpretation and, ultimately, the act of criticism. With the poem itself always as a guide, the scholar will gather the diverse material that appears to shed light on it. However, they will—they must—be aware that this process is nothing more than preparation (for themselves or for whoever takes up the baton) to return to the poem. It is worth recalling here the still young Seferis, who argues for the need to ‘move away from analyses, which, however useful they may be, are truly useful only when one forgets them entirely in order to return to the work and [to] admit that a poem is not something made up of various parts—which we always separate arbitrarily—but an organic whole, in which elements of the external and internal worlds have been used, and where these elements are never as they were. They are precisely transformed by the nature of the poem. Excerpt from the introduction to the edition.