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 (1900-1971) 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.