""This method by which we do not separate author and work, but gather every possible piece of information on an author, collate their correspondence, question those that knew them." "This method overlooks something of importance that can lead us to a deeper knowledge of Self." ""A book is the product of another Self from that..." "we manifest in our experiences, society, and our faults." Marcel Proust" "LOG BOOKS" "A film by STELIOS HARALAMBOPOULOS" "Korydallos Jail, 1972" "Agras 20." "George Seferis' home." ""That's the Cape of Cats ahead" the captain said to... pointing through the mist to a low stretch of shore... the beach deserted, it was Christmas Day." ""That's the Cape of Cats ahead" the captain said to... pointing through the mist to a low stretch of shore... the beach deserted, it was Christmas Day." "There, to the West, is where Aphrodite rose from the waves." "They call the place "Greek's Rock"." "The Cypriot coast, Christmas 1952." "It was during the great drought 40 years without rain... the whole island devastated." "People died and snakes were born." "This cape had millions of snakes, full of poison." "Estien de Louzinian, among the many travelers to visit Cyprus." "His "Description de toute l'ile de Cypre"." "And he gave the whole cape to the monastery... on the condition they fed 100 cats a day to hunt the snakes." "Wildly obstinate always wounded they annihilated the snakes... but in the end disappeared." "They couldn't take it." "Fighting like that day and night... drinking the poisonous blood of those snakes." "Generations of poison - centuries of poison." "Wednesday, February 5, 1969." "I don't read poetry." "Rather, I've never read much." "We were young leftist democrats back then, and for us... anyone officially involved with the Cyprus Issue was a traitor." "Then came the junta." "I read the "Cats of St. Nicholas"..." "I think that's what the poem was called." "I was overwhelmed." "The question wasn't always as significant as it is today." "Because Seferis isn't only the only Greek Nobel prize winner.." "The great poet who sang of Greekness..." "No, it was his voice that shattered the silence... inviting others to do the same." "His spring '69 declaration to all political prisoners... numbers him among those that fought for our people's freedom" " What does Seferis mean to you?" " Just the elegance of his work." "One of my favourite bits of poetry..." "Whether it gets dark or light, the jasmine stays always white." "We Cypriots consider him one of us, pure and simple." "He's done a lot for Cyprus." "He's talked a lot about Cyprus." "He's wonderful!" "He writes so beautifully..." "On the stones of patience we await the miracle." "I don't know." "What can I say?" "The wisdom of his words touches me." "I understand him better than I understand myself." "Something, but I can't remember what." "Thank you." "Nothing else...ha...ha." "He was an intellectual partisan." "People, faces." "Endless texts we struggle to decypher." "The junta happened." "The"Cats of St. Nicholas" overwhelmed me." "He died." "Our youth showed us how they felt about the poet..." "The funeral, the demonstration, was a triumph for democracy." "I was 14 when we left Smyrni in August 1914." "The knowledge of what it meant to be a slave burned inside me." "We hadn't been to our country house for two whole summers... to Skala in Vourla, which for me is the only place... even now, that I can call home in any deep sense of the word." "Vourla was the soil in which my childhood was rooted." "I got to Athens as the Great Divide was gathering steam." "I'm of that generation, but I'm not a fanatic." "I've always preferred dialogue to a clenched fist." "I've lived my life in a world which prefers to break heads... a dynamic world they like to call it." "But I don't admire it." "For me, strength lies elsewhere." "I went to study in Paris just as the Great War was ending." "The city fit to burst with people celebrating the truce." "I loved literature, art" "They convinced me that if I concerned myself with such... even a little, it would be my undoing." "And throughout my first year of studies in Paris..." "I felt as if there was a loaded pistol pointing at me... every time I let my mind stray away from the Law." "This battle with my will... should have destroyed whatever life I had within me." "I'm not a young man whose aim in life was to wear a monocle." "This afternoon, I'm going to the Comedie." "They will be reciting Baudelaire." "Be patient, Pain, and tranquillised, at best." "You wanted Evening back, and here it comes..." "Bringing anxiety to some, to others rest." "Walk hand in hand away with me at last." "ls there a single Paris corner I haven't marked with verse?" "This degree is awarded to Mr. George Seferiadis... born in Smyrni on February 29th, 1900." "Valery is one of very few poets whose work is direct." "He uses the flesh of words, not just their husks." "That sea...forever starting and restarting." "The sea, the sea, who will be able to drain it dry?" "I decided to return to Greece." "I realised that if I genuinely wanted to write..." "I could no longer live so far away from my language." "Monday February 16th, 1925." "The Pierre Loti berthed in Piraeus at 7 this morning." "June marked six uninterrupted years in a foreign land." "I don't want to be a lawyer, or a journalist, or a bohemian." "All I want to do is make poems." "The secrets of the sea are forgotten on the shores." "The yawning black of the depths is forgotten on the sun'..." "The yawning blackness..." "The darkness of the depths is forgotten on the sun'." "I finished "Erotikos Logos" today." "I sweat blood over it." "If I go on like this, writing 100 verses every 18 months... our libraries will be spared any shelf-space problems." "The secrets of the sea are forgotten on the shores." "Skiathos." "Summer 1931." "One of the greatest Greeks I ever met is a poor old man... my friend Sotiris, who played the violin and told us tales... and was still in love with life in his eighties." "He could talk with the fairies because he was Saturday-born." "Papadiamandis' house." "His old sister wept as she spoke of him." "The house is clean and freshly painted." "A big photograph of Papadiamandis on the wall." "I came back from Skiathos on Tuesday morning." "Work as usual." "An orderly life, without faith and without passion..." "I picked it up again and dusted it off where it had stopped." "What are our lives made of?" "Two or three colours or sounds mark us far more... than the endless to-ings and fro-ings of everyday life." "May 25, 1931." ""Strophe" came out today." "Three printing errors." "If I'd waited any longer, there might not even have been two!" "Our new poetry makes a rather sudden change of direction." "The poems in "Strophe" are cryptic." "They need a key." "There is an abstractness, a feigned amateurishness... along with his shapeless poses and shallow poetic drills." "Mr. Seferis' collection poses the problem of pure poetry... as presented and theoretically developed in Valery's work." "The scream of opposition finds perfect expression... in Mr. Seferis' poems." "The ideals of the ruling class..." "Aboard the steamer, Patris 2." "I set off yesterday afternoon from Piraeus for London." "Christmas Eve, 1931." "Looking for Christmas cards in a bookshop on Oxford Street... there among the multicoloured lithographs..." "I picked up a poem by Eliot for the very first time." "I read and thought of Eliot a lot last night." "What a lot of misunderstanding we can expect... from our Greek critics as to my latest literary influence!" "Kalvos and the men of the Renaissance... did not fear the foreigner, or build walls to shut him out." "They knew Greek history is all journeys and acquaintances... putting down roots, engaging in dialogues in distant places... all of which resulted in something bearing the stamp... so immediately recognizable as Hellenism." "I went to Igor's concerto yesterday." "The composer at the piano." "You should have heard the attack!" "A poke in the eye for all that sickly-sweet... emotive nonsense, and those soporific metres!" "Now that you are leaving." "Now that the day of payment dawns." "Now that no one knows whom he will kill and how he will die, take with you the boy who saw the light... under the leaves of the plane tree, and teach him to study the trees." "I lived six and a half full years in Paris." "I loved every moment, corner, and stone with all my soul." "In London I heard the best music in Europe... visited illustrious museums, read books wherever I wanted." "But I missed people, teasing, the freshness of human contact." "February 12, 1934." "I arrived in Athens." "The new, unknown house..." "Kydathinaion 9, Plaka." "On Pelion among the chestnut trees the Centaur's shirt... slipped though the leaves to fold round my body." "Low-key hours, seconds breathed in and out, then gone." "A jug, a drop of water left in it, beside ancient columns." "I left Aegina with Maro." "Wednesday January 5, 1938." "Athens." "This place which hurts us, which makes fools of us." "If there were a reason for this land of ours to grow... it would not be to have more MPs, prefects and policemen." "It would be so Hellenism, that concept of human capacity... and freedom, could flourish in some corner of this world." "Travelling." "Athens to Koritsa." "Not a thought in my head." "I saw so many things in the market today." "And I took some photographs." "I spent hours walking among these villagers." "They're all so alike... lean, hunched over, with hollow cheeks, hooked noses, sly eyes." "I asked myself, "What am I, an islander... doing here among these mountain folk?"" "We'd once have said, "People go, places stay the same"... that's what I used to think every time I went to Marousi." "But the distortion in our behaviour of late... brings me face to face with a bitter truth - that I am naive." "Katsimbalis' place in Marousi." "Henry Miller and Laurence Durrell." "They were finishing off their tea around the table." "George had read them some translations of my poems." "When I went in, the atmosphere was one of moved sympathy." "We looked all morning around the citadel, starting from the shaded side, there where the sea is green and without luster..." " breast of a slain peacock - received us like time without an opening in it." "Veins of rock dropped down from high above, twisted vines, naked, many-branched... coming alive at the eater's touch." "Proof reading at the Tarousopoulos Brothers' Press." "I would have enjoyed being a printer if Fate had let me." "My work at the printers eats into my shod afternoon break." "It's very difficult to get a craftsman to change his ways." "Any little problem, and he wants to change the text." "Yesterday, "Can't we just take out the line that doesn't fit?"" "Today, when he saw my name wasn't quite centred..." ""If you used Seferiadis, your father's name, it'd be fine."" "It seems they think I'm a little cracked." "New Year, 1940." "With Maro on the Acropolis before the sun comes up." "I don't know if the light is of the moon or of the dawn." "I was moved by the transition, the break... devoid of all colour, all challenge." "Completely bare." "The most naked dawn I have ever seen." "Present arms!" "Events led the Greek people to one of its greatest moments." "All around me an unexpected, anonymous miracle... that peeked out and took root like a new blade of grass." "How did we happen to fall, my friend, into the pit of fear?" "It wasn't your fate, nor was it decreed for me." "We never sold or bought this kind of merchandise." "Who is he who commands and murders behind our backs?" "We went to see Chaplin's Great Dictator this afternoon." "Two sailors were sitting behind us." ""We'll show you, dictators!" says one to the other." "But the joke's at our expense." "If we'd taken the dictator's simplistic ideas seriously... we wouldn't be going through what we are now." "Charlie's an becomes so very dark at times!" "He's dancing with the globe, alone in his office... when it bursts, leaving just a few tatters on the floor." "Sunday May 16, 1943." "Alexandria." "I gave my talk on Makrigiannis at eight at the Rialto." ""Makrigiannis, a Greek."" "Since 1926 when Makrigiannis' memoires fell into my hands..." "I have taken them with me wherever I went." "They guided me and consoled me through times happy and bitter." "Now, as we strive to foretell the fate of Hellenism... once this storm is over, and a new future is upon us..." "When you enter Greece... it's as if you climb up steps... as if you cross a threshold." "It has been exactly three years since I left Piraeus." "It is the most beautiful, the lightest day in the world." "Leave this place, go East and West." "see how different are their customs." "See how they live when they're still young... and when death comes down upon them." "Since you have borne with me thus far ..." "I'd like to talk a little of the Erotokritos." "Once upon a time, as they say, a baker got a poor artist... to paint him as he was baking bread." "The painter set about his work." "A clever passer-by said, "Like that, your bread will fall."" "The artist replied, "That's what you think... only real bread falls." "Painted bread stays where it's put... a painting should show everything."" "The artist of the story is Theophilos Chatzimichail." "I won't argue that Cavafis and Eliot had influences in common." "There's almost a whole generation separating them." "Cavafis was born in 1863, Eiot in 1888." "Tuesday June 4, 1946." "Noon at the Archaeological Museum." "The statues are coming up again some in crates, some naked... buried to their waist in earth, planted haphazardly." "It was a dance of resurrection, for those rising up again... a Second Coming which filled you with a wild joy!" "Sunday June 8,1945." "I went to Saint Merkourios' this morning." "The first day like this since I came back to Athens... the wind on the mountain, the scent of pine... the Curtain formed by the mountains of Euvoia." "As pine trees hold the Wind's imprint..." "As pine trees on a hillside... hold the Wind's imprint... and keep it when the wind has died away... after the wind has gone." "As pine trees on a hillside hold the Wind's imprint... after the wind has gone, is no longer there... the imprint is from the wind." "So man's thirst... is imprinted in his words." "Poros - the Villa "Galini"." "I heard the voice as I was gazing at the sea... trying to make out a ship they'd sunk three years ago." "It was called "Thrush", a small wreck." "The masts broken, swayed at odd angles deep underwater... like tentacles... or the memory of dreams." "Marking the hull, a vague mouth of some huge dead sea-monster... extinguished in the water." "Calm spread all around." "Here in the villa "Galini"... everything gives off an odour of faded romanticism." "A boite a musique, purchased in Geneva in 1876." "Nice wood, inlaid." "The cylinder brass." "Hooks, little bells... and the coat of arms of the Kings of Great Britain." "Inside this box, time has stood still... its seven or eight tunes playing for 70 years now." "This light, this place, these days..." "I've started to find them all so threatening." "I close the shutters so I can work." "I need to be protected from so much beauty." "You can feel your mind emptying, growing lighter." "It's the long day drinking from it." "Today I understood why Homer was blind." "If he'd seen, he would have written nothing." "And those who abandoned the stadium to take up arms... struck the obstinate marathon runner... and he saw the track sail in blood, the world empty like the moon, the gardens of victory wither." "You see them in the sun, behind the sun." "Memory hurts wherever you touch it." "I feel a crisis on its way, but cannot guess at consequences." "Perhaps I have somehow provoked the dead." "Although I knew there's not a single stone still standing..." "I went back to the place which is in theory my home." "Nothing." "On the eighth we set off for Vourla." "I was surprised to see the old well still there, still used." "A microscopic donkey was turning it... in the shade of the same mulberry tree." "The windows on the ground floor were broken... the iron door horribly rusted." "I still have the key in Athens." "The houses I had they took away from me." "The times happened to be unpropitious... war, destruction, exile." "Sometimes the hunter hits the migratory birds... sometimes he doesn't hit them." "The hunting was good in my time, many felt the pellet." "The rest circle aimlessly, or go mad in the shelters." "This is the perfect hotel for Constantinople... the ramshackle remnants of luxuries past." "Our window faces Ceratio, where the sun has just set." "Friday November 6, 1953." "Nicosia." "The LIDRA PALACE hotel." "It is my first visit to Cyprus." "I shall note down my impressions as they come to me." "No faking, no trembling as the finger points." "I'll weigh it all up at the end." "First impressions: here is a more spacious, broader Greece." "The feeling there is a world that speaks Greek and is Greek." "Then the monk appeared and set to work decorating the gourd." "He began at the neck, and added the cheating farmer, the cheating merchant, the cheating miller, the thief... the slanderer, the userer, the cheat, the defrocked nun." "The chapel of the Apostles, Father Konstantinos." "But the wooden well-wheel - the alakatin... asleep in the shade of the walnut tree... half in the earth and half in the water." "Why did you try to wake it?" "You saw how it moaned." "And that cry, brought forth from the Wood's ancient nerves, why did you call it the voice of our country?" "Three Mules." "Neophytos speaks." "Agianapa I." "In the Goddess' Name I Summon You." "I've always needed to get inside a landscape to feel it." "And you see the light of the sun as the ancients used to say" "And yet I thought I was seeing all these years... magnum human-ulna... meeting by chance men in perfect armour." "Strange, I didn't notice that I saw their voices only." "Under the aging sycamore madly the wind was playing... with the birds and the branches but it never spoke to us." "Under the aging sycamore the wind returned dry... reeking of florins everywhere, and battered us for gold." "The three most senior classes assembled with their masters... to hear Mr. Seferis talk about Greek traditions in education, and creativity in the field of modern Greek literature." "And those bodies formed of a clay they know not... have souls." "They gather tools to change them." "They won't succeed, they'll only unmake them... if souls can be unmade." "Wheat doesn't take long to ripen." "It doesn't take long for the yeast of bitterness to rise." "I am glad... that it has been allotted to me to represent my country... in this historic hour... and to sign this instrument granting Cyprus independence... on behalf of the Greek-Cypriot people." "With the archbishop." "Nicosia?" "Athens?" "Louizos, Mastros and Maro under the sycamore at Agianapa." "Saint Ioannis Lambadistis." "My second trip." "Kalopanagiotis in Marathasa." "Maro and Diamantis at the Pancypriot in Nicosia." "Maro in Agia Mavra..." "Rizokarpaso." "Saint Epiphanios..." "Salamina." "Maro and Mastros at Othello's Gate, Ammochostos." "Nicosia." "The LIDRA PALACE hotel." "First impressions." "Here is a more spacious, broader Greece." "I don't feel hatred." "No, I am governed by the very opposite of hatred." "As I try to get my mind around the mechanism of catastrophe." "Beirut." "Tuesday January 19, 1954." "For ten days now, torrents of words from my pen." "A starry-eyed visionary, I am beyond everything's reach." "This collection came to me in the autumn of '53... during my first visit to Cyprus." "It was the discovery of a whole new world... and the experience of a human drama which... whatever drives us in our everyday lives... is the measure and the test of our humanity." "It's a strange thing to say in this day and age... but Cyprus is somewhere where miracles still happen." "Records were selling like hot cakes this morning at "Icarus"." "Patsifas says its what keeps them above water." ""No one's got the slightest interest in books."" "Elytis sold all of 200 copies." "And "Cyprus" has yet to sell a single one." ""Cyprus", he says, "never really had a chance"." "Something, sometime, might spark their interest again... but I'd say they soon won't be able to say "Hello" properly!" "Tongues, newspapers and voices all sound like the radio... our gestures taken from the cinema - touristy and flat." "We'll have to hurry to see what's left of Greece." "Everything will soon look like a picture postcard." "I dread to think what will happen when TV arrives!" "It was the same when I went to say my farewells to Iraq." "Look what happens to ancient peoples... when you stuff them full of Coca Cola for a few years." "We returned to Greece after nine years abroad." "Athens seemed so full of life." "The nickel on the oars shone in the intense sunlight." "A bicycle whizzed past pulling an ice-cream trolley behind it." "The Acropolis looked brand new." "Athens seemed so clean and pressed." "I don't know why." "London." "The Ambassador's Residence." "I'm looking for the place I haven't seen since I was 14." "A place which haunts me ever more and more... my melancholy." "London." "Sunday December 4, 1960." "The Festival Hall, Bach." "Visited Henry Moore with Peter Norton and Christian Zervos." "He lives near London, just off the main road to Cambridge." ""Statues benefit a lot from being outside."" ""Of course", says Zervos,"since thus the air is carved, too."" "The sculptor has just been honoured with an award." ""He's still young", said Zervos." ""Sculptors mature a lot later than painters."" "Moore agrees with him. "And they seem slower", he adds." "They explain that that's due to the unyielding material." "I think of our unyielding tongue and say..." ""Maybe that's why it's hard to find good young poets."" "I saw citizen Kane in the cinema this afternoon." "February 29, 1960." "The first day of Lent." "Maybe having a birthday every four years leaves its mark." "Yesterday was my sixtieth birthday." "I spent the day reflecting on whether things were better now." "It's certainly a new line of enquiry for me." "God willing, the daily grind may soon be at an end." "I'll work differently." "I'll be able to concentrate." "I can aspire to nothing more." "God will soon demand his share." "My present goal is to have left this place once and for all... before Christmas." "Perhaps, even before November." "These clothes no longer fit me." "They are see-through with wear." "Agras 20." "Seferis' home." "I'm here with Pound." "Eliot on the Underground." "From the concert in New York in 1957." "At Theotoka..." "All of us." "With Pentzikis in Naoussa." "Pentzikis and Ignatis Trellos." "You're old, uncle Bill." "Your hair's gone all white." "George Seferis has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... the greatest honour that can be bestowed." "I would like to express solidarity with my people." "I need that solidarity... because if I cannot understand my own people... with their virtues and their vices... how can I hope to understand all the other people... in this big world of ours." "You're old, uncle Bill." "Your hair's gone all white." "You're all round like a ball." "With Annoula last night." "We talked for an hour or so." "Little Marjory came, too, the tender little bud." "Agathangelos, my child..." "What's wrong, Melpomeni?" "I was just nodding off." "The continuation is, ladies and gentlemen, indescribable." "Frightened, her puzzlement written on her face..." "Seferis with little Marjory - the daughter of Anna Loutou... his step-daughter." "Recorded by the poet himself in 19?" "." "Don't laugh!" "Be serious, Georgos!" " The end!" " The end!" "I'm sorry for having let a wide river pass through my fingers." "without drinking a single drop." "Now I'm sinking into the stone." "Wandering around among broken stones... three or six thousand years." "The boat to Delos is packed full of every son of person." "But you feel Delos in your head, Phoivos, and so do I." "Iniochos caught my eye in the museum this afternoon." "That motionless motion takes your breath away." "The reins still wrapped round his right hand... though the horses have plunged into the ravine of time." "I cannot separate the temple of Apollo at Delphi... from the Phaidriades or the peaks of Mount Kirfis." "Thankfully, ours earth is hard." "She doesn't smother us in greenery." "She is rocks, mountains, and seas... and light like no other!" "Sounion was lovely that spring day... the Feast of the Annunciation." "In the distance, the ancient columns... strings of a harp still vibrating." "Peace." "Sounion was lovely that spring day... the Feast of the Annunciation." "Sparse green leaves around rust-coloured stones... red earth and aspalathoi." "What could have made me think of Aridiaios?" "Possibly a word in Plato... buried in the mind's furrows." "That evening I found the passage..." ""They bound him hand and foot", it says..." ""They dragged him along... gashing his flesh on thorny aspalathoi." "and they went and threw him into Tatarus, torn to shreds."" "In this way, Aridiaios, the terrible Pamphylian tyrant... paid for his crimes in the nether world." "March 31,1971." "One year after the death of Giorgos Seferis... our beloved poet, who loved this land of ours so much... and suffered so during her hours of difficulty..." "I first heard of Seferis the poet in Yura in 1949." "He's difficult." "But I found new things every time I read him." "The difficult years arrived, and his voice was full of anger" "The most important things for me were his language... his artistic sensitivity, and his love of values." "Seferis was not someone I knew, either as a man or as a poet." "I heard he's died, and that the people of Athens..." "Our words are the children of many people." "They are sown, are born like infants... take root, are nourished with blood."" "I loved literature, art" "They convinced me that if I concerned myself with them... even a little, it would be my undoing." "I had to destroy my strongest instincts." ""I must not live now if I am to win my life."" "Giorgos Skaliotis," "Stratis Thalassinos," "Mamba Paskalis," "Lamb's Papavasilis," "Giorgos Seferis," "Ignatis Trellos," "Georgos Seferiadis." "As pine trees hold the Wind's imprint... after the wind is gone, is no longer there... so words retain a man's imprint..." "After the man has gone, is no longer there." "Text translated by Michael Eleftheriou" "Poems translated by Edmund Keeley"