Homer's Reader: A reading of George Seferis

Abstract

The reader I have in mind is a poet. My immediate interest is the example he provides of a writer's relationship with her or his reading. My aim is double: to suggest both that Homer illuminates the work of the later poet and that the later poetry can function as an interpretation of Homer which offers even to a scholar valuable ways of reading the epics, especially the Odyssey. Accordingly, I shall usually offer translations both of the modern and of the ancient Greek, since not all classicists know modern Greek intimately and those who study modern Greek do not always know the ancient language well.Let us begin by reading one of Seferis' best-known poems. He wrote it in the Thirties and many contemporary poetic influences, both French and English, are at work in it. But I want to read it now from a special perspective, which I shall argue was crucial to Seferis through all his work. I shall read it as a search for a significant but bearable relationship in his own poetry with Homer and, through Homer, with the whole ancient poetic tradition.