About
Giorgos Seferis, born Georgios Seferiades in Smyrna in 1900, was a Greek poet and diplomat. He studied law in Paris and joined the Greek foreign ministry in 1926, serving as ambassador to the UK. His poetry, marked by exile and memory, renewed Greek verse. He was the first Greek to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963. In 1969, he publicly denounced the military junta.
* 1900-03-13 — † 1971-09-20
Major works
- Strophē (1931)poetry collection
- Mythistórima (1935)poetry collection
- Imerológio Katastrómatos I–III (1940-1955)poetry collection
- Kíkhli (1947)poetry collection
- Tría Kryfá Poiémata (1966)poetry collection
Key milestones
- 1963Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Greek to receive it.
- 1969Denounces the military junta in a BBC statement.
- 1971Dies in Athens; his funeral becomes an anti-junta demonstration.
Themes
ExileMemoryGreek identityModernismResistance
Sources: nobelprize.org · britannica.com · poetryfoundation.org
