GIORGOS SEFERIS
Giorgos Seferis was born in Smyrna in 1900, and attended
primary school in Smyrna, and finished his studies in a gymnasium in Athens.
When his family moved to Paris in 1918, Seferis studied law
at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He returned to Athens in 1925 and was
admitted to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs the following year. This was the beginning of a long and
successful diplomatic career, during which he held posts in England and
Albania.
During the 2nd World War, Seferis accompanied the
Free Greek government in exile to Egypt and South Africa and returned to
liberated Athens in 1944. He continued
to serve on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had diplomatic posts in Ankara
and London. He was appointed Minister to
Lebanon, Syria, Jordon, and Iraq, and was Greek Ambassador to the UK from 1957
to 1961, his last post before returning to Athens.
Seferis received many honours and prizes from the
universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Salonika, and Princeton.
Seferis early poetry
consists of “Strophe”, the Turning Point 1931, in a group of rhymed lyrics
strongly influenced by Symbolists and “H Sterna”, The Cistern, 1932, conveying
the image of a man who was ignored by the world.
His mature poetry in which one senses the awareness of
Greece’s great past as related to its present begins with “Mythistorema” 1935 a
series of 24 short poems. Seferis is preoccupied with the theme developed
in “Mythistorema”, using Homer’s Odyssey
as his symbolic source.
However, in “King Asine”, considered by most critics as his finest poem, the
source is a single reference to this forgotten King. His recent book of poetry “Tria Krypta
Poiemata”, Three Secret Poems, 1961, consists of 28 short lyric poems verging
on the surrealistic.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 and
died on the 20th of September 1971.
ODYSSEAS ELYTIS
Odysseas Elytis, pen name of Odysseas Alepoudellis
(Novenber1911-March 1996) was a Greek Poet, essayist, and translator, regarded
as a major exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world.
He is one of the most praised poets of the 2nd
half of 20th century with his “Axion Esti” considered as a monument
of contemporary poetry. In 1975 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Descendent of the Alepoudelis, an olive oil industrial
family from Lesbos, Elytis was born in Heraklion on the island of Crete on the
2nd November 1911. His family
moved to Athens, where the poet graduated from high school and later attended
courses as an auditor of the law school of the University of Athens.
In 1935, Elytis published his first poem in the journal “Nea
Grammata” (New Letters) at the prompting of such friends as George Seferis. His entry with a distinctively earthy and
original form assisted to inaugurate a new era in Greek poetry and its
subsequent reform after the 2nd World War.
From 1969 to 1972, under the Greek Military Junta
(1967-1974) Elytis exiled himself in Paris.
He was romantically involved to the lyricist and musicologist Marianna Kriesi. Elytis was intensively private and vehemently solitary in pursuing his ideals
of poetic truth and impression.
In 1937 he served his military requirements. As an army cadet, he joined the National
Military School of Corfu. He assisted Frederica of Hanover off the train on
Greek soil, personally, when she arrived from Germany to marry Prince Paul of
Greece.
During the
war, he was appointed 2nd lieutenant, placed initially at the
1st Army Corps Headquarters, and was then transferred to the 24th
Regiment on the battlefields.
Elytis published poetry after his initial foray into the
literary world. He was a member of the
Association of Greek Critics and International Associate of Art Critics.
He was twice Programme Director of the Greek National Radio,
member of the Greek National Theatre’s Administrative Council, President of the
Administrative Council of the Greek Radio and Television also a member of the
Consolatory Committee of the Greek National Tourist Organization of the Athens
Festival.
In 1960, he was awarded the First State Poetry Prize, in
1965 the Member of the Phoenix and in 1975 he was awarded the Poetry Prize for
the faculty of the University of Thessaloniki.
In 1949-1952 and 1962-1971, he lived in Paris. There he
audited philology and literature at the Sorbonne and was highly regarded and a
respected friend of the avant-garde Terriad.
In 1939, Elytis’s first book of poetry was published,
“Orientations”. In 1942 he was the
Representative of Greece in Geneva.
Elytis poetry was marked with success in an active presence
of 40 years, a broad spectrum of subject matter, and stylistic touch with an
emphasis on the expression of passion.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979 and died in Athens,
on the 18th of March 1996, aged 84.
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