Giorgos Seferis

200px|thumb|Seferis (1921) right|thumb|George Seferis in 1963 Giorgos or George Seferis (s ə ˈ f ɛr ɪ s), the pen name of Georgios Seferiades (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης; 1900 February 29 – September 20, 1971), was a Greek poet and diplomat. He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate. He was a career diplomat in the Greek Foreign Service, culminating in his appointment as Ambassador to the UK, a post which he held from 1957 to 1962. Quotes I want no more than to speak simply to be granted that grace.Because we've loaded our songs with so much music that they're slowly sinkingand we've decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by goldand it's time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail....I think so much these days about the great river,that symbol which moves forward among herbs and greeneryand beasts that graze and drink, and men who sow and harvest,great tombs even and small habitations of the dead.That current which goes its way and which is not so different from the blood of men... "An Old Man on the River Bank" (1942) Logbooks I, George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-1955 (1967) Tr. Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard. Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. "Greek poet's odyssey", 17 Jan 1964, LIFE Magazine, ‎Vol. 56, No. 3, Page 75. I awoke with this marble head in my hands which exhausts my elbows and I do not know where to set it down. Part of the Mythistorema, used in Theo Angelopoulos' movie Megalexandros and in the opening of Olympic Games in Athens 2004. Andrew Horton 1999 1997 The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey 0-691-01005-6 154632603 10 Quotes about Giorgos Seferis A Levantine Nobel Prize laureate, Georgis Seferis, a Greek who lived for many years in Egypt, wrote: "And things that came later had the self-same/calmness which you see here,/they had this calmness because no soul/was left to us to think about,/none except the strength to carve some signs in stones/that touched now more deeply, beneath remembrance." Thus wrote Georgis Seferis, a true Levantine. Shulamith Hareven "On Being a Levantine" in The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995) The focal point of Greek-American cultural interest has definitely shifted in recent decades. Where formerly there was a somewhat affected and strained focus on classical Hellas, the contemporary awareness is much more in tune with the literature of modern Greece. This shift has almost been entirely due to the increasing availability of English translations of modern Greek writings, for not many American-born Greeks comfortably read novels or poetry in the original Greek. The beginnings of the new mood can be traced to the translations of the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis in the 1950s. These also stimulated interest in other Greek writers, notably the poets Constantine P. Cavafy, a product of the Greek diaspora in Alexandria, Egypt, and George Seferis, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1963. Peter C. Moskos, Greek Americans: Struggle and Success (2013) External links Category:Poets from Greece Category:Ambassadors Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:1900 births Category:1971 deaths