George Seferis (real name George Seferiadis, 1900–1971) was born on 29 February or 13 March 1900 in Smyrna, Asia Minor, and was the son of Stylianos and Despo Seferiadis (née Tenekidis). Stylianos Seferiadis was a distinguished academic and professor of International Law at the Law School of the University of Athens, an author (with a prolific body of scholarly work) and a diplomat. He passed on his love of literature to his three children, George, Angelos and Ioanna (later the wife of Konstantinos Tsatsos), who would all go on to pursue it. In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, the Seferiadis family moved to Athens, where Seferis completed his secondary education in 1917. He then went to Paris, where he studied law until 1924. However, as early as 1918, his love of poetry began to manifest itself and he started writing verses. During his years of study abroad, he had the opportunity to come into direct contact with the literary movements of the time. It was in Paris that he was struck by the Asia Minor Catastrophe, an event that would profoundly influence him and remain etched in his memory. In 1926, George Seferis began his diplomatic career, being appointed as an attaché at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until his retirement in 1962, he served as vice-consul and consul in London (1931–1934) and in Korçë, Albania (1936–1938), as well as press attaché at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he accompanied the Greek Government to Crete, Egypt, South Africa and southern Italy, and after the liberation to Athens, where he remained until 1948. He was subsequently appointed counsellor at the Greek embassies in Ankara and London, later serving as ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, and finally in London (1957–1962). In 1963, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. After retiring from his diplomatic career, he devoted himself entirely to his literary work until his death in 1971. His funeral, taking place in the midst of the dictatorship and following his 1969 Declaration, took on the character of a demonstration against the colonels’ regime.George Seferis’s first work is the collection “Strophe”, published in 1931. This collection provoked a variety of reactions, as it brought a breath of fresh air to Greek poetry. This was followed by “Sterna” (1932) and “Mythistorema” (1935). A year later he wrote “Gymnopedia”, and in 1938, in response to an essay by Konstantinos Tsatsos, he published “Dialogue on Poetry”. In 1940, “Exercise Book 1928–1937” and “Deck Log A” were published, containing important poems such as “Mr Stratis the Sailor” and “The King of Asini”, as well as a collection of his works published up to that point, entitled “Poems”. In 1944, “Deck Diary II” was published, written in Egypt and South Africa, where Seferis had followed the Greek government-in-exile. “Deck Diary II” was followed by the three-part “Kichli” (1947), considered by many to be one of George Seferis’s most important works, and the collection “...Cyprus, Where I Was Born”, which was published in 1955, in the midst of the Cyprus Struggle, and was later renamed “Deck Log C”. In 1950, the collection “Poems 1924–1946” was published, which is an expanded edition of his first collection of works (“Poems I”). The last collection published by George Seferis during his lifetime, which appeared 11 years after “Deck Log C”, is “Three Secret Poems” (1966). The poet’s swan song is “Exercise Book B”, which was published in 1976, edited by G.P. Savvidis, who has also edited most of the poet’s works. Apart from his poetic work, Seferis produced highly acclaimed translations, such as T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1936) and “Murder in the Cathedral” (1963), “Song of Songs” (1965), the “Revelation of John” (1966), “Transcriptions” (1965, containing works by European and American poets such as Ezra Pound, André Gide, Paul Éluard, Pierre-Jean Jouve), and “Transcriptions” (1980, containing texts from ancient literature). Special mention must be made of Seferis’s essays, in which he developed his views on the contemporary problems of language and literature. He wrote about Kalvos, Dante, Palamas, Sikelianos, Makrygiannis, Cavafy and Eliot. These were published under the title “Essays” (1944, published in two volumes in 1974 by Ikaros, edited by G.P. Savvidis; the third volume, also by Ikaros, was published in 1992, edited by Dim. Daskalopoulos.) There is also the poet’s personal diary, with the general title “Days”, which began to be published in 1975, four years after his death (Vol. I–VII, 1925–1960), from which one can glean extremely interesting details both about the poet himself and his work, as well as about political and diplomatic developments in Greece. Following his death, the first two volumes of the “Political Diary” (Ikaros Publications, 1979 and 1985 respectively), edited by Alexandros Xydis. In addition to the above, Seferis also wrote the “Manuscript of September ’41” and the novel “Six Nights on the Acropolis”, which, although begun in 1926–1928, was published in 1974. The final section of Seferis’s writings consists of his correspondence, the first of which to be published being that with Giorgos Theotokas (1930–1966). This is followed (in succession) by his correspondence with Adamantios Diamantis (Cypriot painter, 1953–1971), with Andreas Karantonis (1931–1960), with his wife Maro Seferis (Volume I, 1936–1940), with Zissimos Lorentzatos (1948–1968) and with Edmund Keeley (1951–1971).
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