Collected Poems

by George Seferis, Edmund Keeley (Translator), Philip Sherrard (Translator)

In this new edition of George Seferis's poems, the acclaimed translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard are revised and presented in a compact, English-only volume. The revision covers all the poems published in Princeton's earlier bilingual edition, "George Seferis: Collected Poems" (expanded edition, 1981). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, George Seferis (1900-71) has long been recognized as a major international figure, and Keeley and Sherrard are his ideal translators. They create, in the words of Archibald MacLeish, a "translation worthy of Seferis, which is to praise it as highly as it could be praised."

Although Seferis was preoccupied with his tradition as few other poets of the same generation were with theirs, and although he was actively engaged in the immediate political aspirations of his nation, his value for readers lies in what he made of this preoccupation and this engagement in fashioning a broad poetic vision. He is also known for his stylistic purity, which allows no embellishment beyond that necessary for precise yet rich poetic statement.

Genres: Poetry, Nobel Prize, Greece, Literature, Classics, 20th Century, Cultural

299 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1969

About the author

George Seferis, pen name of Georgios Seferiadis,
Greek: Γιώργος Σεφέρης

Awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture."
First Greek to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgos...

Reviews

[Edita]

who will calculate for us the cost of our decision to forget?
*
and the wind forgets always forgets
but the flame doesn’t change.
*
I’ve come to an end : if only someone
else could begin at the point where I ’ve ended.
*
Your nostalgia has created
a non-existent country, with laws
alien to earth and man.
*
we are
what we are able to be
*
I sleep and my heart stays awake;
*
[…] memory hurts wherever you touch it,
*
- Now, on this pebbled beach, it’s better to forget;
talking doesn’t do any good;
[…]
Who can make himself heard?
Each dreams separately without hearing anyone else’s
nightmare.
*
the Old Sea-god said to me:
“I am the place you belong to;
I may be nobody,
but I can become whatever you want. ”
*
On the stone of patience we wait for the miracle
that opens the heavens and makes all things possible

[Jazzy Lemon]

My favourite poem was 'Say it with a Ukulele'

[Laura Leaney]

I thought these poems were beautiful, enigmatic and somehow immediately knowable. I wish I could read Greek (the library edition I read had the Greek written on the left hand page), but I'll have to settle for translation. The poems are all over the place, yet consistently seem to evoke the ancient world within the modern: He spoke while sitting on what seemed to be / the marble remnant of an ancient gate; / endless the plain on the right and empty,/ on the left the last shadows moved down the mountain ("Memory, II: Ephesus"). All the poems resonate with a whispered nostalgia, a visceral loss. Reading the poems reminded me of visiting the ruins of Europe, of imagining the many great and mythic voices that are now echoes existing solely in imagination.

[Raquel]

Ler Seferis é encontrar doces epifanias. Domínio impecável dos adjectivos; substantivos cheios de luminosidade e recordações. Discreto mas tão revelador. Mais um belíssimo poeta contemporâneo grego. Completamente rendida à escrita mediterrânica. Poemas doces como laranjas, perfumados como rosas de Alexandria e salgados como o mar (ou uma furtiva lágrima?) que lhes emprestou a nostalgia.

❤
-
"The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning
the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels
the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day
and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair
golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.

I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling
among yellow trees in driving rain
on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,
no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.
I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line
a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist
on the sand of the past summer perhaps
they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear
an alien voice around the frozen lake.
The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman
bent as she walks giving her child the breast.
I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered
plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing
neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor
hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.
I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence
I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers
like the breathing of the cypress tree that night
like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles
like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.

I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters
under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells
groping with my veins for those veins that escape me
there where the water-lilies end and that man
who walks blindly across the snows of silence.
I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you
heavy drops on green leaves, on your face
in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir
striking a swan dead in its white wings
living trees and your eyes riveted.

This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try
to recall your childhood years, those who left, those
lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,
however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop
under the harsh branches of the plane trees there
where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still
and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,
the road has no relief; I’ve kept a rein on my life.

The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses"

[Leslie]

3.5*

While I liked some of the poems very much, overall Seferis didn't really speak to me.

[moi, k.y.a.]

Kendime not: Yeni şairler okurken sakın bütün eserlerinin olduğu kitaptan başlama.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

I doubted there was anything left that'd prompt me into contemplating verse. Perhaps nothing will come of this but transcription and some copies. But sometimes even the unexpected possibility is fair enough.

[Georgia]

Δε θέλω τίποτε άλλο παρά να μιλήσω απλά, να μου δοθεί
ετούτη η χάρη.
Γιατί και το τραγούδι το φορτώσαμε με τόσες μουσικές
που σιγά σιγά βουλιάζει
και την τέχνη μας τη στολίσαμε τόσο πολύ που φαγώθηκε
από τα μαλάματα το πρόσωπό της
κι είναι καιρός να πούμε τα λιγοστά μας λόγια γιατί η
ψυχή μας αύριο κάνει πανιά.

Οκ, ο Σεφέρης δεν είναι ο αγαπημένος μου. ΑΛΛΑ: η ποίησή του αναδεικνύει την ελληνική γλώσσα, την ιστορία και τον πολιτισμό μας. Πραγματικά, πόσο όμορφα είναι τα ποιήματά του και πόσο χάνουν στη μετάφραση! Βέβαια, για να είμαι ειλικρινής ήταν πάρα πολλά τα ποιήματα που δεν κατάλαβα το νόημά τους, κάπου χάθηκα. Είμαι φαν της απλής γραφής και ποίησης, ωστόσο αναγνωρίζω την αξία του Σεφέρη. Δεν είναι τυχαίο άλλωστε ότι τιμήθηκε με το Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας.

[Paige]

AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL

[Amina at Book Nomad Podcast]

I can’t rate this book because I honestly understood no more than 20% of what he was saying. Unfortunately, I did understand the racist comment on central Africans that was slipped in at the end.

[ninon]

c est pas lui que j ai lu mais je le mets pour les stats

[Timothy Muller]

This review really pertains to Rex Warner’s translations. But apparently that book has been out of print for some time and there is no ISBN. So this is, of necessity, a commentary on Seferis rather than the translations.

I cannot read Seferis in the original so I can’t compare it with the translations, but I think that Warner’s translations of George Seferis’ poetry is some of the finest poetry in English of the 20th century. It is amazing to find a translation that feels like original poetry in English.

Seferis’ approach is distinctly modernist; his typical approach is a-logical, non-narrative. His long Greek tradition impinges continually on the present, and both provide him with a rich store of imagery and range of emotional content. His poems juxtapose a variety of images and emotional tones moving the reader one beautiful image to another, one emotion to another, linking emotion to image to emotion and back again, creating a rich and textured tapestry which the reader may not “understand,” but can feel and feel intensely.

This is a short, all to short, sample from "Mythistorema."

“Here end the works of the sea, the works of love.
Those who one day shall live here where we end,
If ever the dark blood should rise to overflow the memory,
Let them not forget us, the strengthless souls among the asphodels.
Let them turn towards Erebus the heads of the victims.
We who had nothing shall teach them peace.”

[Sage]

Please note: the rating does not reflect on Seferis (who is awesome); the rating reflects on his translators.

I had a class where the prof compared the 1972 original with the 1995 revision. Keeley and Sherrard redid their translations in the later edition and totally mangled the beauty of the previous version. The prof was so disgusted, she took the book off the syllabus.

I would really love to see what Aliki Barnstone would do with George Seferis' work. I have no knowledge of Greek, but her translations of Cavafy are the best I've seen.

[Heather Cole]

We have the first paperback edition of 1971. Seferis is always close by. This month, specifically, because we are listening to a retrospective of the songs of Vasili Tsitsanis, and the two of them just go together. Many of Seferis' poems became anthems of the resistance to the Greek Junta, and I remember Tsitsanis that way.

[Truls Ljungström]

Läsning 2: Denna diktsamling håller för omläsning, igen och igen.

Läsning 1: En strålande samling, som tyvärr är lite ojämn. Min bild är att de tidiga och sena dikterna är hjärtskärande vackra, medan en hel del av mittpartiet är otillräckligt. Det som står ut, är Seferis förmåga till slående bildspråk. Jag rekommenderar varmt.

[Marko Matolić]

Seferis kao pjesnik mi se ne sviđa al knjiga ima predobre komentare i pogovor.

[Lemar]

Banishment is as old as Greek history. Seferis suffered this fate in the 20th century and wrote poetry that finds workds for the deepest of feelings.

[Duygu Kaya]

4.

Argonotlar

Ve ruh
tanıyacaksa kendini
bakması gerek
yine bir başka ruha:
Aynanın içinde gördük yabancıyı ve düşmanı.

Yiğit çocuklardı yoldaşlarımız, yakınmazlardı
ne işten, ne susuzluktan, ne de dondurucu soğuktan,
ağaçların ve dalgaların huyu vardı onlarda:
Rüzgârı ve yağmuru kabul eden,
güneşi ve geceyi kabul eden,
değişim içinde değişmeden.

Yiğit çocuklardı, gözlerini indirip
günlerce ter döktüler kürek çekerek,
soluyarak bir düzen içinde,
ve ala boyardı uysal tenlerini kanları.
Gün oldu şarkı söylediler, gözleri hep aşağıda,
o frenkincirli ıssız adayı geçerken
hani köpeklerin havladığı burundan sonra,
gün batarken.

Tanıyacaksan kendini, diyorlardı,
bir ruha bakmalı,
ve gün batarken
kürekler vuruyordu denizin altın sarısına.

[Sahiden35]

"Kanatlar gibi yıllar. Ne anımsar kımıltısız kuzgun?
Yelkene ve yıldızlara bakar gezenler
Yeli dinlerler, yelden öteyi dinlerler, öteki denizi"

"Yan yana yürüdük, bölüştük uykuyu ve ekmeği ve tattık ayrılık acısını
evlerimizi kurduk bulduğumuz taşlarla
gemilere bindik, gurbete gittik, geri döndük."

[Bill]

I was disappointed by the Princeton Legacy Library edition of these collected poems. The cover states that this is the bilingual edition. However the Greek language versions of the poems were not included. I was looking forward to reading the Greek. So that’s why I gave this edition a four-star rating.

[Tim]

Few are the moonlit nights that I've cared for...
Yet here last evening, in this our final port
...in this Etruscan village, behind the sea of Salerno
behind the harbours of our return, on the edge
of an autumn squall, the moon
outstripped the clouds, and houses
on the slope opposite became enamel

"The Last Stop"

[Michael Pennington]

Adorned these.

[Alex (TheDiscoKing)]

"I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life..."

[Katie]

a poet recommended to me by Ioanna’s sister when I met her over Christmas break :)

Beautiful writing, but I feel like I need a better grasp on history to fully understand most of these

[Ted]

I am not a poet, nor even a frequent reader of poetry. I do find some poetry extremely appealing, but I'm not sure what it is that attracts me to it. This collection of poems did not have that attraction. I would say Seferis' poetry is meant for people who love the classics from antiquity, or perhaps those who know or can appreciate the Greek lands. Perhaps I was hoping to pick up more on the influence of Christianity or Orthodoxy, but that was not obvious to me at all.

[Twila]

the simplicity of Seferis' lyrical movements are amazing and so touching; i fell in love with the ideas, moments, and people he wrote about, even the more critical ones. i feel as if i fell in love with the way he saw the world. he's an absolute pleasure to read and especially for a student of Greek, it was a great way to really immerse myself in the language

[Alexánder Obando]

Undoubtedly a master of his art

Seferis, simply put, is one of the great writers of the Twentieth Century. Regretfully, the translation of his poems has been quite poor, both in proofreading and the handling of the English language. No doubt the master deserves better.

On the up side though, one is grateful to the translator for making this grand poet available on kindle.

[George]

I can't imagine my life without the Collected Poems of George Seferis. If there is duende in the generation of the 1930's in Greece, and there certainly is, it can be found in large measure in and through Seferis.

[Catherine]

The blurb at the back of the book calls his work "at once truthful and magical". It's wonderful to be able to call so plainly all that's hidden and exciting. Seferis is wonderful, clear, and so good to read sl-o-o-owly.

[Peter King]

The rating of three stars is for the translations which, though considerably better than this pair's woefully pedestrian attempts at Kavafis, fail to convey the brilliance of the originals (which are worth five stars of anybody's money).