George Seferis
Born
in Urla, Smyrna (then Asia Minor), Turkey
December 13, 1901
Died
September 20, 1971
Genre
Influences
|
Ποιήματα
by
—
published
1950
—
52 editions
|
|
|
Collected Poems
by
—
published
1969
—
38 editions
|
|
|
Έξι νύχτες στην Ακρόπολη
by
—
published
1974
—
12 editions
|
|
|
Complete Poems
by
—
published
1969
—
10 editions
|
|
|
Μέρες Α΄
by
—
published
1975
|
|
|
Novel and Other Poems
by |
|
|
Μυθιστόρημα
by
—
published
1935
—
5 editions
|
|
|
A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951
by
—
published
1974
—
15 editions
|
|
|
Στροφή
by
—
published
1931
|
|
|
Μέρες Β΄
by
—
published
1975
—
3 editions
|
|
“Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.”
―
―
“My old friend, what are you looking for?
After years abroad you’ve come back
with images you’ve nourished
under foreign skies
far from you own country.’
‘I’m looking for my old garden;
the trees come to my waist
and the hills resemble terraces
yet as a child
I used to play on the grass
under great shadows
and I would run for hours
breathless over the slopes.’
‘My old friend, rest,
you’ll get used to it little by little;
together we will climb
the paths you once knew,
we will sit together
under the plane trees’ dome.
They’ll come back to you little by little,
your garden and your slopes.’
‘I’m looking for my old house,
the tall windows
darkened by ivy;
I’m looking for the ancient column
known to sailors.
How can I get into this coop?
The roof comes to my shoulders
and however far I look
I see men on their knees
as though saying their prayers.’
‘My old friend, don’t you hear me?
You’ll get used to it little by little.
Your house is the one you see
and soon friends and relatives
will come knocking at the door
to welcome you back tenderly.’
‘Why is your voice so distant?
Raise your head a little
so that I understand you.
As you speak you grow
gradually smaller
as though you’re sinking into the ground.’
‘My old friend, stop a moment and think:
you’ll get used to it little by little.
Your nostalgia has created
a non-existent country, with laws
alien to earth and man.’
‘Now I can’t hear a sound.
My last friend has sunk.
Strange how from time to time
they level everything down.
Here a thousand scythe-bearing chariots go past
and mow everything down”
―
After years abroad you’ve come back
with images you’ve nourished
under foreign skies
far from you own country.’
‘I’m looking for my old garden;
the trees come to my waist
and the hills resemble terraces
yet as a child
I used to play on the grass
under great shadows
and I would run for hours
breathless over the slopes.’
‘My old friend, rest,
you’ll get used to it little by little;
together we will climb
the paths you once knew,
we will sit together
under the plane trees’ dome.
They’ll come back to you little by little,
your garden and your slopes.’
‘I’m looking for my old house,
the tall windows
darkened by ivy;
I’m looking for the ancient column
known to sailors.
How can I get into this coop?
The roof comes to my shoulders
and however far I look
I see men on their knees
as though saying their prayers.’
‘My old friend, don’t you hear me?
You’ll get used to it little by little.
Your house is the one you see
and soon friends and relatives
will come knocking at the door
to welcome you back tenderly.’
‘Why is your voice so distant?
Raise your head a little
so that I understand you.
As you speak you grow
gradually smaller
as though you’re sinking into the ground.’
‘My old friend, stop a moment and think:
you’ll get used to it little by little.
Your nostalgia has created
a non-existent country, with laws
alien to earth and man.’
‘Now I can’t hear a sound.
My last friend has sunk.
Strange how from time to time
they level everything down.
Here a thousand scythe-bearing chariots go past
and mow everything down”
―
“And a soul
if it is to know itself
must look
into its own soul:
the stranger and enemy, we've seen him in the mirror.”
―
if it is to know itself
must look
into its own soul:
the stranger and enemy, we've seen him in the mirror.”
―
Polls
The best winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Sully Prudhomme (1901)
Han Kang (2024)
Bob Dylan (2016)
Toni Morrison (1993)
José Saramago (1998)
Annie Ernaux (2022)
Jon Fosse (2023)
Gabriel García Márquez (1982)
László Krasznahorkai (2025)
Albert Camus (1957)
Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)
Rudyard Kipling (1907)
Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea) (1954)
John Steinbeck (1962)
Orhan Pamuk (2006)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)
Samuel Beckett (1969)
Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021)
Louise Glück (2020)
Theodor Mommsen (A History of Rome) (1902)
W.B. Yeats (1923)
George Bernard Shaw (1925)
Hermann Hesse (1946)
Naguib Mahfouz (1988)
Seamus Heaney (1995)
Elfriede Jelinek (2004)
Henri Bergson (1927)
T.S. Eliot (1948)
Selma Lagerlöf (1909)
Rabindranath Tagore (1913)
William Faulkner (1949)
Bertrand Russell (1950)
Halldór Laxness (1955)
William Golding (1983)
Gao Xingjian (2000)
Peter Handke (2019)
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903)
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)
Romain Rolland (1915)
Sigrid Undset (1928)
Yasunari Kawabata (1968)
Odysseas Elytis (1979)
Herta Müller (2009)
Svetlana Alexievich (2015)
Knut Hamsun (Growth of the Soil) (1920)
Anatole France (1921)
Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931)
Winston Churchill (1953)
Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956)
Patrick White (1973)
Saul Bellow (1976)
Czesław Miłosz (1980)
Joseph Brodsky (1987)
Wisława Szymborska (1996)
Günter Grass (1999)
Doris Lessing (2007)
Alice Munro (2013)
Frédéric Mistral (1904)
José Echegaray (1904)
Giosuè Carducci (1906)
Maurice Maeterlinck (1911)
Karl Gjellerup (1917)
Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)
Jacinto Benavente (1922)
Władysław Stanisław Reymont (The Peasants) (1924)
Sinclair Lewis (1930)
John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) (1932)
Luigi Pirandello (1934)
Pearl S. Buck (1938)
Frans Emil Sillanpää (1939)
Gabriela Mistral (1945)
Pär Lagerkvist (1951)
Boris Pasternak (1958)
Ivo Andrić (1961)
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)
Pablo Neruda (1971)
Eugenio Montale (1975)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
Jaroslav Seifert (1984)
Claude Simon (1985)
Octavio Paz (1990)
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
Patrick Modiano (2014)
Paul Heyse (1910)
Carl Spitteler (Olympian Spring) (1919)
Grazia Deledda (1926)
Eugene O'Neill (1936)
Roger Martin du Gard (The Thibaults) (1937)
Johannes V. Jensen (1944)
André Gide (1947)
François Mauriac (1952)
Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)
Saint-John Perse (1960)
George Seferis (1963)
Nelly Sachs (1966)
Eyvind Johnson (1974)
Harry Martinson (1974)
Vicente Aleixandre (1977)
Elias Canetti (1981)
Wole Soyinka (1986)
Camilo José Cela (1989)
Derek Walcott (1992)
Kenzaburō Ōe (1994)
V.S. Naipaul (2001)
Imre Kertész (2002)
J.M. Coetzee (2003)
Tomas Tranströmer (2011)
Mo Yan (2012)
Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1908)
Gerhart Hauptmann (1912)
Verner von Heidenstam (1916)
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1933)
Mikhail Sholokhov (And Quiet Flows the Don) (1965)
S.Y. Agnon (1966)
Heinrich Böll (1972)
Nadine Gordimer (1991)
Dario Fo (1997)
Harold Pinter (2005)
J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008)
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
The World's Liter...:
Modern
|
8 | 70 | Oct 26, 2010 05:11PM | |
Netherlands & Fla...:
Lente 2016 - Rondje om de wereld (16)
|
54 | 110 | Jun 19, 2016 11:19PM | |
| Suomalainen lukup...: 39. Nobel-voittajan kirjoittama kirja | 10 | 42 | Aug 15, 2016 02:34AM | |
| All About Books: December 2016 - What will you be reading? | 40 | 47 | Dec 30, 2016 08:27AM | |
| All About Books: Leslie's Going to the Movies in 2016 | 374 | 193 | Jan 15, 2017 06:32AM | |
| Netherlands & Fla...: Nobelprijs voor literatuur | 50 | 199 | Oct 11, 2019 03:21AM | |
| The Reading Chall...: Jazzy's Nobel Laureates by Decade | 13 | 10 | Dec 29, 2021 07:37AM |






























