Comments on: Seferis (more Greek Anthology…)

By: Nicola Benbow

Nicola Benbow — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:42:46 +0000

Are you able to tell me which Theodarakis CD has ‘Denial’ on it please? Many thanks.

By: Jeffrey Carson

Jeffrey Carson — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:20:16 +0000

Greeks, who don’t read much poetry, remember Seferis’ haunting lyric, “On the Secret Seashore”, because of Theodorakis’ haunting melody. Seferis thought that the caesura in the penultimate line was crucial to the meaning, and so disliked the music, which ignores it.
The great poem by Seferis that has not yet found adequate translation is “The Cistern”, with its innovative (for Greek) formal richness. I guess some things are untranslatable, like Victor Hugo or Angelos Sikelianos.

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:09:39 +0000

If you are really interested in Seferis’ life, I would highly recomment Beaton’s biography “Waiting for the Angel”. It’s pretty dense and hard going in spots, and is as much a history of Greece at that period as anything, since Seferis was so caught up in the politics, but it is fascinating and certainly opens windows onto the poems.
I think 5 winds is an Eastern designation–whether that is a deliberate exoticism here or a surprising surreal gesture I don’t know–there is no note on it in the Savidis Greek collected. (Aristotle, I believe, designated 12 winds.)
Tetrarch is also a fascinating word–a “tetrarchy” was the (Greek) name given by Romans to “the division of a country, as to Palestine”–it is a title that also immediately brings to mind Herod, who was tetrarch. I’m glad Keeley & Sherrard did not attempt to “translate” it. “Actors” in the title is also an interesting choice. In Greek, it is “theatrinoi”–which does mean actors, but comes to mean “insincere people”–histrionics. Beaton chooses to translate it as “mountebanks”–a choice that gets across those two senses. But the Keeley/Sherrard simplicity of “Actors” makes us think not only of dramatic but of political actors on the scene, which I think serves the piece very well.
OK–off to write that review!

By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:40:25 +0000

Steve, generally, there were just four in Greek mythology, the ones you’ve named. Oddly, Euros wasn’t mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony, if I recall correctly.

By: Steve Mackin

Steve Mackin — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:42:35 +0000

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! That is huge. I think I could place that poem, Actors, Middle East, next to any human event, from the grandest global madness to the most intimate and personal of toils, and it would ring profoundly true. I love the parenthetical pairings, and the thematic oppositions, acting (veiling) and exposure, the dry and the sponge, and the final image, pairing the ruler and the thief. Damn! I like that.
Have been reading online material about Seferis’ life (he has an okay Wiki), and I’m struck, on a superificial level of course, not being aware of all the details, of the similiarities between his life and Neruda’s, how they were both politically active and had distinguished diplomatic careers, representing their governments to the world, how they both just missed seeing very dark times in their respective countries, and how their poetry became songs of freedom during the times of the generals and Pinochet’s dictatorships.
Anyway, I have a question: What is the fifth wind? I know of the Amenoi – Boreas, Notos, Euros, and Zephyros – but that’s only four. He speaks of five winds.

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:50:33 +0000

I’m so glad to have interested you in Seferis, Steve. Some poems that provide good entrances to his work are “In the Manner of G.S.” and “The King of Asine”, as well as Mythistorima.
Auden I believe makes the differentiation between minor/major and Great/non-great–you can be a major poet but not great, or a minor poet who is also great–sort of a Fox and Hedgehog distinction about scope I think.
I’ve been rereading (or in some cases reading) the poems in preperation for this review. How topical this one suddenly seems:
Actors, Middle East
We put up theatres and tear them down
wherever we happen to find ourselves
we put up theatres and set the stage
but our fate always triumphs in the end
and sweeps them away as it sweeps us too
actors and actors’ manager
prompter and musicians all disappear
scattered to the five hungry winds.
Bodies, mats, wood, make-up
rhymes, feelings, veils, jewellery
masks, sunsets, wails and howls
exclamations and suns rising
cast off helter-skelter along with us
(where are we going? where are you going?)
nerves naked upon our skin
like the stripes of an onager or zebra
exposed and naked, dry and burning
(when were we born? when buried/)
and taut like the strings of a lyre
incessantly humming. Look also
at our heart: a sponge
ambling through the street and market-place
soaking up the blood and bile
of both the tetrarch and the thief.
(transl. Keeley & Sherrard)

By: Steve Mackin

Steve Mackin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:35:24 +0000

Alicia,
Thank you for this. I don’t know Seferis’ work, other than the few translations that have appeared on Poetry Daily, and what you present here. Those three stanzas are intriguing, and I love the song. Am looking around cyberspace for his presence and have ordered the Keeley/Sherrard translations from Amazon. I’m going to make the journey to George Seferis.
As to what makes a poet great, isn’t it that thing that is caught which takes them beyond their tradition? I think there is something in those three little stanzas of “Denial”, the invocation and then denial of the muse, that touches my San Francisco psyche (I’m as parochial as a person can get). It translates, and I can sense the possibility of greatness in that. One of the ten thousand amazing things that makes Shakespeare Shakespeare is that he caught the thing so unerringly that he can find expression be he translated into English or Italian or Japanese (Once saw a German TV production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream where each character spoke a different language – it worked for me). This seems obvious to me (seems – it is ever seems and never is).
The designation of “major” to a poet seems to me to be tied to tradition, to the poet’s influence upon other poets and traditions. The two are not necessarily joined or exclusive. I can think of major poets who are not necessarily great: Pound comes immediately to mind (everywhere these days, because of the Moody bio); manifestly influential, an instigator of traditions, but not great.
Anyway, thanks for hipping me to George. I’ll let you know what I think I find.