Voices of Modern Greece

Selected Poems by C. P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos

Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard, Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691013824, 9780691064734
• eBook ISBN: 9780691234243
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

This anthology is composed of recently revised translations selected from the five volumes of work by major poets of modern Greece offered by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard during the past two decades. The poems chosen are those that translate most successfully into English and that are also representative of the best work of the original poets.

C. P. Cavafy and Angelos Sikelianos are major poets of the first half of the twentieth century. George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, who followed them, both won the Nobel Prize in literature. Nikos Gatsos was a very popular translator, lyricist, and critic.

GEORGE SEFERIS

From
MYTHISTORIMA ^*

1

The angel—

three years we waited intently for him

closely watching

the pines the shore and the stars.

One with the plough’s blade or the keel of the ship,

we were searching to rediscover the first seed

so that the primordial drama could begin again.

We returned to our homes broken,

limbs incapable, mouths cracked

by the taste of rust and brine.

When we woke we travelled towards the north, strangers

plunged into mists by the spotless wings of swans that wounded us.

On winter nights the strong wind from the east maddened us,

in the summers we were lost in the agony of days that couldn’t die.

We brought back

these carved reliefs of a humble art.

3

Remember the baths where

you were murdered^*

I woke with this marble head in my hands;

it exhausts my elbows and I don’t know where to put it down.

It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream

so our life became one and it will be very difficult for it to disunite again.

I look at the eyes: neither open nor closed

I speak to the mouth which keeps trying to speak

I hold the cheeks which have broken through the skin

I don’t have any more strength.

My hands disappear and come toward me

mutilated.

4

Argonauts

And if the soul

is to know itself

it must look

into a soul:^*

the stranger and enemy, we’ve seen him in the mirror.

They were fine men, my companions, they never complained

about the work or the thirst or the frost,

they had the bearing of trees and waves

that accept the wind and the rain

accept the night and the sun

without changing in the midst of change.

They were fine men, whole days

they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes

breathing in rhythm

and their blood reddened a submissive skin.

Sometimes they sang, with lowered eyes

as we were passing the dry island with the Barbary figs

to the west, beyond the cape

of the barking dogs.

If it is to know itself, they said

it must look into a soul, they said

and the oars struck the sea’s gold

in the sunset.

We went past many capes many islands the sea

leading to another sea, gulls and seals.

Sometimes unfortunate women wept

lamenting their lost children

and others raging sought Alexander the Great

and glories buried in the heart of Asia.

We moored on shores full of night-scents

with birds singing, waters that left on the hands

the memory of great happiness.

But the voyages did not end.

Their souls became one with the oars and the oarlocks

with the solemn face of the prow

with the rudder’s wake

with the water that shattered their image.

The companions died one by one,

with lowered eyes. Their oars

mark the place where they sleep on the shore.^*

No one remembers them. Justice.

5

We didn’t know them

it was the hope deep down that said

we’d known them since early childhood.

We saw them perhaps twice and then they took to the ships:

cargoes of coal, cargoes of grain, and our friends

lost beyond the ocean for ever.

Dawn finds us beside the tired lamp

drawing on paper, awkwardly, with effort,

ships mermaids or sea-shells;

at dusk we go down to the river

because it shows us the way to the sea;

and we spend our nights in cellars that smell of tar.

Our friends have left us

perhaps we never saw them, perhaps

we met them when sleep

still brought us close to the breathing wave

perhaps we search for them because we search for the other life

beyond the statues.

9

The harbor is old, I can’t wait any longer

for the friend who left for the island of pine trees

or the friend who left for the island of plane trees

or the friend who left for the open sea.

I stroke the rusted cannons, I stroke the oars

so that my body may revive and decide.

The sails give off only the smell

of salt from the other storm.

If I chose to remain alone, what I longed for

was solitude, not this kind of waiting,

my soul shattered on the horizon,

these lines, these colors, this silence.

The night’s stars take me back to the anticipation

of Odysseus waiting for the dead among the asphodels. ^*

When we moored here among the asphodels we hoped to find

the gorge that saw Adonis wounded.

10

Our country is closed in, all mountains

that day and night have the low sky as their roof.

We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs,

only a few cisterns—and these empty—that echo, and that we worship.

A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness

the same as our love, the same as our bodies.

We find it strange that once we were able to build

our houses, huts, and sheepfolds.

And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers,^*

become enigmas inexplicable to our soul.

How were our children born, how did they grow strong?

Our country is closed in. The two black Symplegade...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Constantine P. Cavafy. 1863-1933
• Angelos Sikelianos. 1884-1951
• George Seferis. 1900-1971
• Odysseus Elytis. b. 1911
• Nikos Gatsos. b. 1914
• Notes and Index
• Notes to Poems
• Biographical Notes
• Index of First Lines