Four Greek Poets: C.P. Cavafy, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard (editors & translators). Middlesex. 1970. Penguin Books. Penguin Modern European Poets Series. Includes Work by - C. P. Cavafy, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, & Nikos Gatsos. Translated from the Greek & Edited by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard. 110 pages. 0140420916. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Cavafy, Elytis, Gatsos, Seferis - Of the four Greek authors represented in this volume, Cavafy and Seferis are poets with international reputations and Seferis has won a Nobel Prize. Elytis and Gatsos, who belong to a younger generation, are fully established in Greece and now winning recognition abroad.
The Penguin Modern European Poets offer a series of collections designed to present, in verse translations, the work of significant poets of the 20th century for readers unfamiliar with the original languages. The series includes: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Rainer Maria Rilke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jacques Prevert, Quasmodo, Greek poets -Cavafy, Elytis, Gatsos, and Seferis, Miroslav Holub, Zbigniew Herbert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Gunter Grass, Vasko Popa, Sandor Weores, Ferenc Juhasz, Johannes Bobrowski, Horst Bienek, Eugenio Montale, Vladimir Holan, Anna Akhmatova, Gunnar Ekelof, Paul Celan, Amichai, Kovner, Sachs, Cesare Pavese, the Czech poets, Nezval, Bartusek, and Hanzlik, Ungaretti, Fernando Pessoa, and even Joseph Brodsky.
CONSTANTINE PETROU CAVAFY, widely recognized as the greatest of modern Greek poets, was born in Alexandria in 1863 into a family originally from Constantinople. After some childhood years spent in England and a stay in Constantinople in the early 1880s, he lived his entire life in Alexandria. It was there that he would write and (for the most part) self-publish the poems for which he became known, working all the while as a clerk in the Irrigation Office of the Egyptian government. His poetry was first brought to the attention of the English-speaking public in 1919 by E. M. Forster, whom he had met during the First World War. Cavafy died in Alexandria on April 29, 1933, his seventieth birthday; the first commercially published collection of his work appeared posthumously, in Alexandria, in 1935.
GEORGE SEFERIS (the nom de plume of George Seferiades) was born in Smyrna in 1900, and moved to Athens with his family when he was fourteen. He studied in Paris at the end of the First World War and afterward joined the Greek diplomatic service. From 1957 to 1962 he lived in London as Ambassador of Greece to the Court of St. James's. His first collection of poetry, TURNING POINT, was published in 1931. Since then he has published several other collections of both poetry and essays, which have been translated into many languages, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He holds honorary degrees from Cambridge (1960), Thessalonika (1964) and Oxford (1964).
ODYSSEUS ELYTIS was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1911. He studied law at the University of Athens. His poems began to appear in periodicals in 1935; since the publication of his first book of poems in 1940, ten further volumes of his poetry have appeared. He has also published three collections of essays, and translations from a wide range of modern writers including Rimbaud, Genet, Mayakovsky, Lorca, Ungaretti and Brecht. In 1940-1 he took part in the campaign against the Italian fascists in Albania. During the Nazi occupation he was one of the most prominent poets of the Greek resistance. He lived in Paris from 1948-52; since then his home has been in Athens. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him 'for his poetry which against the background of Greek tradition depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness.'
NIKOS GATSOS (8 December 1911 - 12 May 1992) was a Greek poet, translator and lyricist. Nikos Gatsos was born in 1911 in Asea in Arcadia, a district of the Peloponnese, where he finished primary school (dimotiko). He attended high school (gymnasio) in Tripoli, where he became acquainted with literature and foreign languages. Afterwards, he moved to Athens, where he studied literature, philosophy, and history at the University of Athens for two years only. His knowledge of English and French was quite good and he was already familiar with Kostis Palamas, Dionysios Solomos, Greek folk songs, and recent trends in European poetry. In Athens, he came in contact with the literary circles of the day becoming one of the lifelong friends of fellow poet Odysseus Elytis and published his poems, small in extent and in a classic style, in the magazines Nea Estia (1931–32) and Rythmos (1933). During that period he also published criticism. In 1935 he lived in France, in Paris and the South of France. In 1936 he met Odysseus Elytis, his ‘brother' in poetry. In 1943, Aetos published his long poem Amorgos, a major contribution to contemporary Greek poetry notable especially for its combination of surrealism with traditional Greek folk poetry motifs. He subsequently published three more poems: ‘Elegeio' (1946) in Filologika Chronika, ‘The Knight and Death' (1947), and ‘Song of Old Times' (1963), dedicated to Yorgos Seferis, in Tachydromos magazine. After World War II, he worked with the Greek-British Review as a translator and with Ellinikí Radiofonía as a radio director. During that period he also began writing lyrics for the music of Manos Hadjidakis, opening a brilliant career in modern Greek songwriting. In due course he also collaborated with Mikis Theodorakis and other notable composers. His work as a whole combines universal poetic themes such as the problems of evil, injustice, sacrifice, and the pains of love, with more specifically Greek concerns such as the sorrows of exile. His capability to handle language with accuracy led the ‘Art Theatre', the ‘National Theatre' and the ‘Popular Theatre' of Greece to entrust him with translations of various plays -translations that became ‘legendary'- first and foremost being ‘Blood Wedding' by Federico Garcia Lorca. He had a special relationship with Manos Hadjidakis and Nana Mouskouri. His British friends were Philip Sherrard, Peter Levi and Peter Jay, and his Irish friend, Desmond O'Grady. He died in Athens on 12 May 1992. Nikos Gatsos devoted considerable time to translating plays from various languages in Greek, mainly for the Greek National Theatre, the Greek Theatre of Art, and the Greek Popular Theatre. In 1944, he translated (for Filologika Chronika) the poem ‘Night song' by Federico García Lorca. All of the plays he translated were staged at the Greek National Theatre and the Greek Theatre of Art. He also associated with the magazines Nea Estia, Tram,Makedonikes Imeres, Mikro Tetradio, Nea Grammata, Filologika Chronika, and Kallitechnika Nea. In addition, he directed plays during his association with Greek radio. Nikos Gatsos played a great role, as a poet, in Greek song. He wrote lyrics for major Greek composers, including Manos Hadjidakis, Mikis Theodorakis, Stavros Xarchakos, Demos Moutsis, Loukianos Kelaidonis, Christodoulos Chalaris and Eleni Karaindrou. He wrote lyrics for several films and for the Elia Kazan's ‘America-America'. His lyrics are known over the world because of Nana Mouskouri. His lyrics are collected in the book Ola ta tragoudia (Patakis, 1999).
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