Ancient Αναμνησία , National Μνήμη in the Poetry of Giorgos Seferis

Abstract

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to explore memory in Seferis's poetry as a manifestation of variant modes of historical consciousness and in relation to various schemata that exemplify both European modernity and nationalist ideology. Building upon recent approaches to social and collective memory, the following reading bases itself on how memory operates within the text as an agon: between ancient and modern modes of anamnesis and mneme , between private remembrance and public recollection, between elements of memory that stem from cognition and those that derive from experience, particularly from nationalist ideological premises. Distinguishing, even further, the difference among empirical elements that surface in Seferis's poetry as modes of "lived history," to use Agnes Heller's formulation, highlights the residual function of the literary text in simulating a dominant form of historical experiencing. As such, it illustrates how literature in the case of Greece remained a popular medium through which memory continued to be preserved. Placing memory at the forefront, an alternative to previous discussions of Seferis's use of the classics, provides an interpretive model that extends beyond a mere "intertextual" reading, which, in Seferis's case, has often culminated in a conventional study of sources. Rather, the approach presented here views the relationship between ancient and modern texts as a dialogical one and offers the reader a number of interpretive paths that include similarities and differences between antiquity and modernity in terms of mnemonic concepts, modes of historical consciousness, and the function of the text in representing values privileged in collective consciousness.