George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-1955. Bilingual Edition - Bilingual Edition
574
George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-1955. Bilingual Edition - Bilingual Edition
574Paperback(Bilingual Edition)
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Overview
Originally published in 1982.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691614328 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2014 |
| Series: | The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation , #592 |
| Edition description: | Bilingual Edition |
| Pages: | 574 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
Read an Excerpt
George Seferis
Collected Poems
By Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1967 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06471-0
CHAPTER 1
MYTHISTOREMA
Si j'ai du goût, ce n'est guères Que pour la terre et les pierres.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
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 ancient 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, stiangers
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.
2
Still another well inside a cave.
It used to be easy for us to draw up idols and ornaments
to please those friends who still remained loyal to us.
The ropes have broken; only the grooves on the well's lip
remind us of our past happiness:
the fingers on the rim, as the poet put it.
The fingers feel the coolness of the stone a little,
then the body's fever prevails over it
and the cave stakes its soul and loses it
every moment, full of silence, without a drop of water.
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, 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, 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
deep down it was hope 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 forever.
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 the 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.
6
M. R
The garden with its fountains in the rain
you will see only from behind the clouded glass
of the low window. Your room
will be lit only by the flames from the fireplace
and sometimes the distant lightning will reveal
the wrinkles on your forehead, my old Friend.
The garden with the fountains that in your hands
was a rhythm of the other life, beyond the broken
statues and the tragic columns
and a dance among the oleanders
beside new quarries —
misty glass will have cut it off from your days.
You won't breathe; earth and the sap of the trees
will spring from your memory to strike
this window struck by rain
from the outside world.
7
South Wind
Westward the sea merges with a mountain range.
From our left the south wind blows and drives us mad,
the kind of wind that strips bones of their flesh.
Our house among pines and carobs.
Large windows. Large tables
for writing you the letters we've been writing
so many months now, dropping them
into the gap of our separation to fill it up.
Star of dawn, when you lowered your eyes
our hours were sweeter than oil
on a wound, more joyful than cold water
to the palate, more peaceful than a swan's wings.
You held our life in the palm of your hand.
After the bitter bread of exile,
at night if we remain in front of the white wall,
your voice approaches us like the hope of fire;
and again this wind hones
a razor against our nerves.
Each of us writes you the same thing
and each falls silent in the other's presence,
watching, each of us, the same world separately
the light and darkness on the mountain range
and you.
Who will lift this sorrow from our hearts?
Yesterday evening a heavy rain and again today
the covered sky burdens us. Our thoughts —
like the pine needles of yesterday's downpour
bunched up and useless in front of our doorway —
would build a collapsing tower.
Among these decimated villages
on this promontory, open to the south wind
with the mountain range in front of us hiding you,
who will calculate for us the cost of our decision to forget?
Who will accept our offering, at this close of autumn?
8
What are they after, our souls, traveling
on the decks of decayed ships
crowded in with sallow women and crying babies
unable to forget themselves either with the flying fish
or with the stars that the masts point out at their tips?
Grated by gramophone records
committed to non-existent pilgrimages unwillingly,
they murmur broken thoughts from foreign languages.
What are they after, our souls, traveling
on rotten brine-soaked timbers
from harbor to harbor?
Shifting broken stones, breathing in
the pine's coolness with greater difficulty each day,
swimming in the waters of this sea
and of that sea,
without the sense of touch
without men
in a country that is no longer ours
nor yours.
We knew that the islands were beautiful
somewhere round about here where we are groping
a little lower or a little higher,
the slightest distance.
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 Symplegades
close it in. When we go down
to the harbors on Sunday to breathe
we see, lit in the sunset,
the broken planks from voyages that never ended,
bodies that no longer know how to love.
11
Sometimes your blood froze like the moon
in the limitless night your blood
spread its white wings over
the black rocks, the shapes of trees and houses,
with a little light from our childhood years.
12
Bottle in the Sea
Three rocks, a few burnt pines, a solitary chapel
and farther above
the same landscape repeated starts again:
three rocks in the shape of a gate-way, rusted,
a few burnt pines, black and yellow,
and a square hut buried in whitewash;
and still farther above, many times over,
the same landscape recurs level after level
to the horizon, to the twilight sky.
Here we moored the ship to splice the broken oars,
to drink water and to sleep.
The sea that embittered us is deep and unexplored
and unfolds a boundless calm.
Here among the pebbles we found a coin
and threw dice for it.
The youngest won it and disappeared.
We set out again with our broken oars.
13
Hydra
Dolphins banners and the sound of cannons.
The sea once so bitter to your soul
bore the many-colored and glittering ships
it swayed, rolled and tossed them, all blue with white wings,
once so bitter to your soul
now full of colors in the sun.
White sails and sunlight and wet oars
struck with a rhythm of drums on stilled waves.
Your eyes, watching, would be beautiful,
your eyes, reaching out, would glow,
your lips would come alive, as they used to,
at such a miracle;
you were searching for it
what were you looking for in front of ashes
or in the rain in the fog in the wind
even when the lights were growing dim
and the city was sinking and on the stone pavement
the Nazarene showed you his heart,
what were you looking for? why don't you come? what
were you looking for?
14
Three red pigeons in the light
inscribing our fate in the light
with colors and gestures of people
we have loved.
15
Quid [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] opacissimus?
Sleep wrapped you in green leaves like a tree
you breathed like a tree in the quiet light
in the limpid spring I looked at your face:
eyelids closed, eyelashes brushing the water.
In the soft grass my fingers found your fingers
I held your pulse a moment
and felt your heart's pain in another place.
Under the plane tree, near the water, among laurel
sleep moved you and scattered you
around me, near me, without my being able to touch the
whole of you —
one as you were with your silence;
seeing your shadow grow and diminish,
lose itself in the other shadows, in the other
world that let you go yet held you back.
The life that they gave us to live, we lived.
Pity those who wait with such patience
lost in the black laurel under the heavy plane trees
and those, alone, who speak to cisterns and wells
and drown in the voice's circles.
Pity the companion who shared our privation and our sweat
and plunged into the sun like a crow beyond the ruins,
without hope of enjoying our reward.
Give us, outside sleep, serenity.
16
The name is Orestes
On the track, on the track again, on the track,
how many times around, how many blood-stained laps, how
many black
rows; the people who watch me,
who watched me when, in the chariot,
I raised my hand glorious, and they roared triumphantly.
The froth of the horses strikes me, when will the horses tire?
The axle creaks, the axle burns, when will the axle burst
into flame?
When will the reins break, when will the hooves
tread flush on the ground
on the soft grass, among the poppies
where, in the spring, you picked a daisy.
They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn't know where
to look
nor did I know where to look, I, without a country,
I who go on struggling here, how many times around?
and I feel my knees give way over the axle
over the wheels, over the wild track
knees buckle easily when the gods so will it,
no one can escape, there's no point in being strong, you can't
escape the sea that cradled you and that you search for
at this time of trial, with the horses panting,
with the reeds that used to sing in autumn to the Lydian
mode
the sea you cannot find no matter how you run
no matter how you circle past the black, bored Eumenides,
unforgiven.
[Greek Text Not Reproducible in ASCII].
(Continues...)
Excerpted from George Seferis by Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard. Copyright © 1967 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- Preface to the Third Edition, pg. v
- Foreword, pg. vii
- Acknowledgments, pg. xviii
- Contents, pg. xix
- Mythistorema, pg. 1
- Gymnopaidia, pg. 61
- Book of Exercises, pg. 71
- Logbook I, pg. 203
- Logbook II, pg. 273
- "Thrush", pg. 317
- Logbook III, pg. 341
- Three Secret Poems, pg. 397
- From Books of Exercises II, pg. 431
- Turning Point, pg. 449
- The Cistern, pg. 491
- Bibliographical Note, pg. 531
- Notes, pg. 537
- Biographical Data, pg. 549