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3) The Scotland I Never Knew: A Journey of Discovery (temporarily removed for editorial update)

6) "There is an island...Diplomacy and Poetry, Friendship and War" (On the 40th Anniversary of Seferis' Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature")

7) Contested Spaces/Competing Propagandas (Seferis, Durrell, Cardiff, Cyprus 1953-1956)

See also extract from "Czechoslovakia, Secret Journals of the Poets' Revolution" (Ars Interpres, September 2007)

Was it Ralph Vaughan Williams or The Yetties who first “turned me on” to the wonderful poetry of William Barnes ? It was certainly the words and the musical setting of his “Wiltshire” poem “Linden Lea” (“My Orcha’d in Linden Lea”) which sparked my interest.

I might have heeded the comments of his many admirers like Gerard Manley Hopkins , Thomas Hardy and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

I read English Literature at Wadham College Oxford, but in spite of the college’s West Country links, no professors or tutors lead me to the Dorset dialect poetry of Barnes, who for many years has been my favourite poet of all time. I was bound to discover him at some point, as I grew up hearing all around me the sound of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire accents. Barnes’ Dorset dialect poems present no problems to my eye or inner ear. I love his poetry so much that I have made it a tradition in the family to read his Christmas poems (“Christmas Invitation” and “Keepen Up O’ Chris’mas”) out loud every Christmas Eve, whether in Thessaloniki, Prague, Sydney or Stockholm.

If I had to choose one book to take with me to a desert island, it would be Barnes’ “Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect”.

As a member (albeit a long distance one) of the William Barnes Society, I was lucky enough in July 1992 to be able to visit , with other members of the society, the garden and grounds of Chantry House, Barnes’ former home and school in Mere, Wiltshire,- the very house which he later wrote about as “Linden Lea”.

Both Trevor Hearl (“William Barnes, The Schoolmaster”, Dorchester, 1966) and Alan Chedzoy (“William Barnes, A Life of the Dorset Poet”, Wimborne, 1985) write about the period he spent in Wiltshire, the most important and probably the happiest time of his long life (b. 1801- d. 1886), as it was there that he took his new bride, Julia. Their daughter, Lucy Baxter, in her biography “The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist”, Macmillan, London, 1887, devotes a chapter to Chantry House.

William Barnes first moved to Mere in 1823, where he devoted himself to the study of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German and Persian. He continued practising the arts of drawing and engraving, as well as music-making. But much of his spare time, Lucy Baxter writes, was “occupied in a sprightly correspondence with his future wife”.

For four years Barnes lived a lonely , solitary life in lodgings in Mere, “the school being held in a large public room” (the Old Cross Loft, in the Market House). Finally he decided to lease Chantry House (for 20 guineas per annum), which was situated near St Michael’s Church, and he asked her father for Julia’s hand in marriage. He wrote in his diary “In 1827 I took Chantry House at Mere, and on a happy day- happy as the first of a most happy wedded life- I brought into it my most loveworthy and ever-beloved-wife, Julia Miles, and then took boarders”.

“Chantry House was a roomy old Tudor building, with large oak wainscoted rooms, whose wide stone mullioned windows were entwined with greenery. It had a large garden and lawn, at the bottom of which ran a flowing stream, here widening into a pond overshadowed with trees. Here were trout and dace, and sometimes a flight of wild ducks or other water-birds would swim by. Near this pond was a favourite nook where William Barnes often came with his Petrarch in his pocket to pass a few happy leisure moments. The lawn was always mowed by his busy scythe, and he rose early in the spring and summer mornings to cultivate his garden……It was in the years 1833 and 1834 that William Barnes wrote his first poems in the Dorset dialect”.

Amongst the Dorset dialect poems and eclogues that Barnes wrote in Mere were, according to his daughter, “The Common a took in”, “The Lotments”, “The House Ridding”, “Father came Home”, “The Best Man in the Vield”, “Two Farms in Woone” and “A Bit of Sly Courting”. For more detailed and accurate information about the social and literary significance of the eclogues written in Mere, see “Forewords” to “The Poems of William Barnes” , edited by Bernard Jones, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962.

Barnes lived in Mere from 1823 to 1835. As Alan Chedzoy writes, concerning Barnes’ marriage and move to Chantry House: “There began an idyllic domestic life, which he was to celebrate years later in the best-known of all his poems, My Orcha’d in Linden Lea”.

As Alan Chedzoy points out, Barnes came to love the garden as much as the house:

“There was a lawn which ran down to a lake with a small waterfall, fish, fowl, a yew tree and, if “Linden Lea” is to be believed, an apple tree leaning low.”

Trevor Hearl writes that “Happiness was to be the keynote of the next eight years at Mere…indeed they were probably the happiest of his life, for 60 years later, Laura told her sister, Lucy: ‘His happiest years were spent at Mere’, meaning Chantry House”.

“My Orcha’d in Linden Lea” , first published in 1856, is one of the most beautiful poems (and songs) in the English language.

It has meant a great deal to me in the course of my peripatetic career in The British Council, particularly the last verse:

For Barnes, going abroad did not mean traveling overseas, it probably meant no more than taking a stroll along a village lane or as far as the next town or hamlet, but I identify most deeply with the sentiments of this verse.

In 1984 I wrote a poem about William Barnes, which was published in the William Barnes Society Newsletter (No 19, August 1990):

Like most readers, I tend to associate Barnes with Dorset and Dorchester, but thinking again about the happy years he spent in Mere, especially the years at Chantry House with his wife Julia, in their “Linden Lea”garden, which I was privileged to visit ten years ago, in 1992, I realize that one of my own recurrent dreams is to live in a house in Wiltshire, or the West Country more generally, and to sit beneath an apple tree reading, not Petrarch, but the poems of William Barnes.

Readers of Wiltshire Life probably know much more of George Herbert’s poetry than they realize, if only because they have sung the words of his poems in school assemblies or in church, set to music as much-loved hymns:

My daughter once painted these words for me on a clear circle of glass, which could be hung by a little chain against a window, like a simple stained-glass panel.

But Herbert was not always pure sweetness and light. He struggled and wrestled with his Christian vocation, and rebelled from time to time against the discipline of servitude which he sometimes saw as a kind of bondage. It is not surprising that he is considered a great metaphysical as well as a devotional poet, like John Donne. Another favourite verse, from his poem “The Collar”, reveals something of his spiritual conflict; it begins abruptly and dramatically as follows:

How many of us have thumped the table or office desk and cried out “Enough! I’m going abroad!”

George Herbert, with his aristocratic background, might well have gone abroad. Instead he chose to go to Bemerton in Wiltshire, to become a country parson. If he sometimes felt like rebelling, he always came back to the Church, and found strength in his love of God.

He wrote a guide-book for country parsons while at Bemerton, “A Priest to the Temple: or, The Country Parson”.

Only a mile away from Salisbury Cathedral, St Andrew’s Church, Bemerton (or Bemerton St. Andrew) dates from the fourteenth century. George Herbert was Rector there from 1630-1633. Although the Church has been restored on several occasions, it is not hard to feel the presence of George Herbert there. If you visit it, remind yourself that “the (oak) door through which you entered is almost certainly that which George Herbert used “, as P.C.Magee’s information leaflet informs us. P.C.Magee was Rector from 1975-1984.

In another little (undated) booklet once obtainable from Bemerton Rectory, containing a selection from “The Temple”, Frances Forrest (who acknowledges the constant help and interest of Canon Lindsay Bartlett, another former Rector of Bemerton) writes in the introduction:

“Once described as a miserable village on Salisbury Plain with but a few inhabitants, George Herbert’s Bemerton today occupies a large part of the City of Salisbury. Yet, even now, Bemerton may be approached by field and riverside paths which bring one to Herbert’s church and Rectory, and very near to Herbert himself.”

Below the Rectory window “a lawn slopes to the willowy edges of the Nadder.Beyond are water meadows, and in the distance the soft line of the Wiltshire hills. At a glance we are in Herbert’s world and Izaak Walton’s, beautiful, unchanged”.

Frances Forrest also writes that the Church was “by origin a wayside chapel (“a pitiful little chappell of ease to Foughelston” in Aubrey’s words)”.

Herbert was born on 3 April, 1593, in Montgomery, Wales. His aristocratic background and scholarly education did not suggest that he was destined to become a country parson in the parish of Fuggleston-cum-Bemerton. He was instituted in St Andrew’s Church by the Bishop of Salisbury on 26 April, 1630, according to P C Magee . Herbert was a deacon on his arrival at Bemerton and was ordained priest in the Cathedral on 19 September 1630.

He died of consumption on 1^st March, 1633, just before his 40th birthday. He is buried under the chancel floor His collection of poetry, “The Temple” was not published until after he died, in 1633. Herbert had dedicated or consecrated his poetic talent “to God’s glory”.

Reading “The Temple”, especially a lovely poem like “Vertue”, one cannot but think of Bemerton church, of Bemerton Rectory that George Herbert himself restored, and of the trees (perhaps the medlar tree near the river ?) and the flowers and herbs that he planted in the Rectory garden (Aubrey, quoted by Forrest, said that “Mr Herbert made a good garden and walkes” and was a “good botanic”). Here are two verses from “Vertue”:

George Herbert “chiefly lives” through the poems collected in “The Temple”, and, as Frances Forrest comments, “George Herbert lives still in ..our imaginations. The river Nadder remains and Salisbury spire remains, and ferns still grow in the ditches, and grasses and brambles narrow the path to Salisbury. Here, we may meet in fancy the Divine Poet.”

The Swedish Institute has just published a series of books about the relationships between Sweden and a number of other countries, including Greece and Cyprus. The book on Cyprus[1] mentions Viking inscriptions on runic stones which refer to expeditions to Byzantium and the Holy Land. In Sven Jansson’s book , “Runes in Sweden”[2], he writes:

“The foreign country whose name occurs most frequently is Greece, Grikkland, denoting the northeast Mediterranean lands of the eastern empire. It is clear that journeys there were especially common, and to judge by the inscriptions it was a destination found particularly enticing by men from the central Swedish provinces.”

Jansson says that most of the runic inscriptions were memorials to men who sailed away and never returned. “They met death among the Greeks”. Modern expeditions are more likely to be about recharging the life-force after a harsh Nordic winter !

The volume entitled “Sweden and Greece”[3], published in bilingual Swedish and Greek parallel-text format, contains an article by George Papandreou, “My Second Homeland”.

At the January 2001 Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance, Greece’s Foreign Minister spoke of the welcome his family had received in Greece at the time of the Junta, but also referred to the fact that, even in Sweden, he had been the subject of racial discrimination, and was called a “svartskalle” or “black-skull”. Amongst his own best friends at school in Sweden were a Pakistani and an Iraqi boy, he writes.

In his article, he recalls his second homeland, the homeland of his exile, from the Autumn of 1968, when he started attending the English Department of the international school at Viggbyholm. He spent a year there before his family moved to Canada.

One of his fellow pupils was a girl called Margarita (now Ann-Margaret Mellberg, Greece’s Cultural Attache in Sweden and distinguished translator of Strindberg and Ibsen) and one of his teachers was Theodore Kallifatides, now one of Sweden’s best known writers. Kallifatides writes in Swedish, even though he did not emigrate to Sweden until the age of 25 /26, in 1964. He was born in 1938 in Molai, southern Peloponnese. His first book, a slim volume of poems called “Minret I exil”[4] (“Memory in Exile”) was published in 1969. His most accessible book for readers of English is “Peasants and Masters”[5], translated by Thomas Teal,1990. An article :”Theodor Kallifatides: An Introduction” , by Paul Norden, appeared in the Swedish Book Review[6] in 1989. His work is also discussed in the section “Immigrant Literature and the Jewish Voice” in “A History of Swedish Literature”[7], edited by Lars G. Warme, 1996 : “An aspiring writer in his homeland, he (Kallifatides) determined that his literary language would henceforth be Swedish and systematically set about mastering it. He has described the transition from one language to another as the longest journey anyone can undertake, a journey that inevitably ends in a sort of limbo.”

One thinks of Conrad , Nabokov, Brodsky, Broumas and Tsaloumas, who made similar journeys with even greater international success, no doubt because their adopted language happened to be English. Prime Minister Göran Persson recently gave Theodor Kallifatides a great honour by asking him to speak at the launch of Sweden’s European Union Presidency (January-June 2001). In a book on racism in Europe, “Even in Sweden” (2000), Professor Allan Pred quotes Kallifatides, in translation, from an article in a Swedish daily newspaper[8] from September 1989:

“As a migrant you never get any real peace of mind anywhere. To be a migrant is to be split, and this state of being split is the modern immigrant’s problem in particular. Owing to rapid communications, emigration never becomes definitive. One can, on the contrary, continue to commute between one’s origin in and one’s new environment throughout life, constantly returning to childhood and memories and never taking root in the new country. It’s possible to decide in the morning and be in Athens in the same evening.”

Perhaps that is truer for Greek migrants in Europe than it is for those who emigrated to Australia or the USA, but even Dimitris Tsaloumas from Melbourne returns to Leros for a part of every year.

George Papandreou returned to Sweden as a student in 1971, not only because he wanted to study here, but also to have closer contact with the Social Democratic Party. His academic diploma was on the topic of Greek Immigrants to Stockholm.. He learnt Swedish and made many Swedish friends. Sweden won a special place in his heart, not least because of his respect for Olof Palme, but also because of the summers he spent on the islands of Stockholm’s archipelago, and riding his bicycle in the snow. The cold never bothered him.

The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seferis and Elytis also helped to cement the bonds between the two countries. The Swedish writer Sun Axelsson has always had close connections with Greece and the island of Leros. In the Swedish Institute publication “Sweden and Greece”[9], Ann-Margaret Mellberg and Jan Henrik Swahn claim that Greece is perhaps the only country in the world with which Sweden has had such close cultural relations. I was recently delighted to buy a book in a Stockholm antiquarian bookshop devoted to the subject of the influence of Greece on Swedish literature and art. Selected by Karl Asplund and published by Bonniers in 1941- and beautifully illustrated on a quality of paper that would have been unthinkable in wartime Britain, it is called “Hellas i svensk litteratur och konst[10].”

The new Swedish Institute book on Sweden and Greece presents a comprehensive account of the links and exchanges that have taken place in recent years. Among many others , Mellberg and Svann mention writers like Kostis Papakongos (born 1936, in Pindos, Greece, he came to Sweden as a political refugee in 1967 and who wrote a series of poems and novels about the Greek Civil War) and Pericles Korovessis, whose account of torture in the hands of the junta (“The Method”[11]) was published in England and Sweden in 1970. Korovessis also lived in Stockholm and was married to a Swede. He still maintains an apartment in Stockholm and visits every year. Other Greek writers listed on the Swedish Immigant-Institute web-site [12]include Jannis Ambatsis, Vasilios Gakis, Ioannis Greveniotis, Andreas Hadjoudes, Kostas Koukoulis and Leo Malaxos.

Mikis Theodorakis has always been hugely popular in Sweden. A few weeks ago I attended a concert of his songs by the Swedish-Greek group “Taximi”. It was almost as if I was reliving a concert from 1970, the songs and melodies still carried the same emotional force. The dancing that followed was a little less authentic, if a lot of fun for those who joined in. The Swedes have enormous enthusiasm for Greek dancing, even if the hassapiko and zeibekiko are occasionally confused and even if the kalamatianos circle-dance is the universal solution to any almost regional folk-song or tune.

This unbridled enthusiasm for Greek culture and for Greece itself can be seen in a different light, or as a mixed blessing, as it was by Nikolas Kokkalis, in a poem called “The Tourist”[13], translated by Martin Allwood:

Nikos Kokkalis was born in 1918, in Crete, and came to Sweden in 1952. He died in Stockholm in 1997. The translator, Martin Allwood, a bilingual British poet living in the USA, also wrote poetry in Swedish. He edited the volume “Modern Scandinavian Poetry”,1982, from which this translation is taken.

By now, of course, Greek houses , Greek food, music and literature have become more familiar to foreign tourists than ever before, be they Swedish, British or American.

But it is thanks to people like Margarita Mellberg, the Greek Cultural Attache in Stockholm, that deeper understanding is achieved between nations. Her wide knowledge of both Swedish and Greek literary history and recent developments, her exceptional bilingual skills and her stimulating lectures on topics such as Strindberg’s influence on Greek letters has made her a role model for many of us engaged in cultural relations work in Sweden and elsewhere.

[1] Sverige och Cypern, The Swedish Institute, Stockholm, 2001

[2] Runes in Sweden,Sven B.F.Jansson,tr. Peter Foote,Gidlunds,1997

[3] Sverige och Grekland, The Swedish Institute,Stockholm,2001

[4] Minnet I exil, Dikter av Theodor Kallifatides, Bonniers, Stockholm, 1969

[5] Peasants & Masters, Theodor Kallifatides, translated by Thomas Teal,Fjord Press, Seattle, 1990

[6] SBR 2 , Lampeter, Wales, 1989, pp 20-24

[7] Ed. Lars G. Warme, University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp 451-452

[8] Dagens Nyheter, September 3, 1989, quoted in “Even in Sweden”, Allan Pred,Univesrity of California Press,2000.

[9] Ibid, pp 29-40

[10] Hellas i svensk litteratur och konst, Bonniers, Stockholm, 1941

[11] The Method: A personal account of the tortures in Greece, Pericles Korovessis, translated by Les Nightingale and Catherine Patrakis, Allison & Busby, London, 1970.First Greek language edition in series Tema, Raben & Sjogren, Lund, Sweden,1970.

[12] www.immi.se/kultur/authors/balkan

[13] Modern Scandinavian Poetry, ed. Martin Allwood, The Anglo-American Center, Mullsjö, Sweden, 1982

“Swedish Reflections, Beowulf to Bergman”

Introduction by Jim Potts

The British Council opened in Sweden on 17 December 1941, although British Council programmes had been organised in the country as early as 1939 (essay competitions in schools, with the prize being a visit to the UK, following a visit by the Secretary of the Council´s Students`Committee in January-February 1939), there had also been influential English Language Teaching Summer Schools held in Sigtuna. During the War the British Council organised a lecture tour by T.S Eliot (in 1942) which was judged a great success. He gave talks on “Poetry, Speech and Music” and on “Poetry in the Theatre”, which received exceptional publicity and detailed coverage in the Swedish Press.

This anthology marks the 60^th Anniversary of T.S.Eliot’s British Council tour of Sweden, and was conceived to celebrate the 60^th Anniversary of British Council projects and full operational activity in Sweden.

In September 1941 the Chairman of the Council’s Executive Committee reported in the minutes that “H.M. Legation at Stockholm had urged the Council to appoint a representative in Sweden to organise Council activities there. The Foreign Office were strongly in favour of expanding the Council’s work in Sweden”. Modest expenditure was approved by the Treasury which would “allow it to be taken from savings in the Balkans and Finland” (following the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe after 1989/1990, funding priorities in the region shifted in favour of the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.)

An influential exhibition of Modern British Watercolours (“Nutida Engelsk Akvarellkunst”) at the Swedish National Museum in 1943 and other centres like Gothenburg (total attendance was 12,600) was probably as close as the Council ever came to “cultural propaganda” . The opening at Stockholm was attended by T.R.H the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden and Prince Eugen.

Political propaganda during the War was the responsibility of the Ministry of Information. The Council did organise window displays on the social services, hostels for factory workers, community centres, modern developments in British schools, British provincial towns, the historical development of the English book, the English theatre and other subjects.

Other activities in the forties included lecture tours by Sir Howard Florey, Sir Lawrence Bragg (whose “unusual ability to interpret science to laymen made him a most popular visiting lecturer”), Dr Malcolm Sargent (who also conducted concerts), Sir Kenneth Clark, Erik Linklater, J.B. Priestley as well as T.S.Eliot.

The Council was almost the only means of cultural contact between Britain and Sweden during the war and “difficulties of transport from September 1943 onwards did not prevent its work from increasing rapidly, for Swedes now know better what the Council can do for them, partly by reason of the publicity its activities have received in the Press, and partly on account of the distribution of 16,000 copies of a brochure in Swedish describing the work of the Council in Sweden. Expansion has been noteworthy in the Anglophil Societies, in English teaching, in the publication of English books in Sweden, and in the distribution of periodicals….If the increase in the Anglophil Societies is a symptom of Swedish sentiment, the expansion of English teaching is not less so. A Gallup poll taken during the year showed that 17 per cent of the Swedish public can read English, while only 16 per cent can read German, and the figure for English is far greater among those under forty.” (BC Annual Report 1943/44).

Courses in English literature, music, history, geography and language were given at the Council’s offices in Stockholm, as well as popular English language circles for young people. A monthly periodical called “Things English” was produced by the Council for secondary schools and for younger students of English. Six thousand copies were sent out (and 2,500 annual subscriptions were quickly taken out ; by 1944/45 there were initially 7,374 annual subscribers, with 54,700 copies sold during the year). Council staff contributed to School Radio English programmes and “Mr Snodin did film teaching, using Pygmalion and Good-bye Mr Chips, in the Stockholm, Uppsala, Gothenburg and Skåne areas, and had about 10,000 attendances.”

It is interesting to speculate that the tours by T.S.Eliot and Sir Howard Florey may have helped to reinforce their claims to their respective Nobel Prizes. Eliot was back in Stockholm in 1948 to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry”.

Whatever the impact of these tours by distinguished visitors, the English language teaching contribution by resident lecturers like F.A.L Charlesworth, Albert Read and M.R.Snodin clearly had a major impact on the development of English Language teaching in Sweden after the war, both at the elementary and secondary school level, as well as in adult education (WEA/ABF), Folkuniversitet and University level, and through the formation of Anglophile societies all over the country. The Sigtuna Summer Schools seem to have made a huge impact (there were 8 courses in 1944 alone, and they were visited by the Swedish Foreign Minister on the closing days). Swedish firms donated a number of scholarships to be awarded. In 1944 there were 638 applicants for places, participants were taught by a British and Swedish staff of 69 !

The British Council’s first office was at Birger Jarlsgatan 15. The first Director, or Representative (1941-1944), was the poet Ronald Bottrall (much praised by F. R.Leavis and T.S. Eliot) . He was followed by Professor Michael Roberts, a History Professor, and then by Brigadier H.C. Travell Stronge, CBE,DSO,MC.

Early Assistant Representatives included Dr Arthur King, D.J. Gillan and R. Washbourn.

More recent Directors have included Dr Patrick Spaven, Dr Sean Lewis, John Day and Raymond Adlam.

The Council’s focus has changed over the course of 60 years. English Language Teacher-Training and Joint Research programmes have virtually disappeared, as links are now largely self-sustaining. The Arts and Cultural Relations projects remain an important area of activity; the focus has moved at times towards areas like cultural and public diplomacy and collaboration with The Embassy and other partners in the Creative Industries (eg The British Design Season in 2001, Scotland in Sweden in 2002), to reaching a wider, younger public and aspiring young professionals, and to the development of projects in partnership with Swedish groups and organisations, in a spirit of “mutuality”.

Creating a dialogue between the countries, and the creation of wider European networks is a priority, as well as the sharing of best practice eg in public and social policy, combating intolerance, science and technology.

In 1986 the Council was involved in a significant 3 day seminar on “Multiculturalism in Britain and Sweden” in partnership with the Swedish Academy (UK writers included Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguru and Grace Nichols. ) . Cultural diversity remains a significant focus, one example being the 2002 Intercult project called “Trans//Fusion”.

Information work has changed in line with developments in electronic communication. With trends towards increased use of the Internet, towards Study Abroad (between 3,600 and 4,250 young Swedes study in UK Higher Education and Further Education institutions) and greater ease of travel (not least by means of the Channel Tunnel and the Öresund Bridge and tunnel), the Council is well-placed to develop new models of cultural relations to reflect these changes in society and diverse groups’ instant information needs.

Whatever projects we undertake in future, whatever the thematic or regional focus, such as Scotland in Sweden , or a focus on the Öresund or Gotheburg/Västra Götaland regions, we shall be concerned with the better measurement of impact. Not that it was lacking in the past. In 1945, for instance, articles in the Swedish press based on Council material amounted to 3,568 column inches (circulation 3,394,142) and references to the Council’s activities to 12,243 column inches (circulation 11,211,914). Press space connected with the Council totalled 15,927 column inches (circulation 15,559,740).

Whilst our impact was being measured even in the early days, it is a pity that we cannot now go back and measure the effectiveness of all past events, like the impact of T.S.Eliot’s 1942 lecture tour on the development of Modernism in Swedish Literature, or the impact of the Sigtuna Summer Schools on the successful spread of the English language schools and business ,or the full impact of Council lecturers on the teaching of English in adult education.

As the current British Council Director, I look forward to continuing this conversation, this mutually-rewarding tradition of dialogue and exchange, and I am confident that we will be able to demonstrate and measure the impact of our future projects and partnerships. I have faith that the Council did play an important role in spreading the teaching of English in Sweden after World War II, even if we can’t take credit for the astonishing levels of fluency achieved by Swedes today !

I once calculated that , in just over 100 years of the Nobel Prize in Literature, around 25% of Literature Nobel Prize Winners had written their main works in the English Language. Those winners that we tend to consider as representing “English Literature” (however defined, but including belles lettres and works of literary value) -regardless of nationality or personal sense of identity- are Kipling (1907), Yeats (1923), Shaw (1926), Galsworthy (1932), Eliot (1948), Russell (1950), Churchill (1953), Canetti (1981; emigrated to England 1938; British citizen from 1952), Golding (1983), Naipaul (2001), and we might lay some claim to Heaney (1995) and White (1973), since they were born and educated in the UK. If we wish to stretch the point, we may also wish to express our pride in other winners born in the former British Empire: Walcott (1992), Soyinka (1986; educated at University of Leeds), Tagore (1913), and Gordimer (1991).

Personally, I would take even more delight in my own personal favourites among the prize-winners: Camus (1957), Seferis (1963), Elytis (1979), and Seifert (1984), but that may be because I have lived and work in Greece and in Prague, and because I deeply respect the view and criterion of Alfred Nobel, that “No consideration whatever shall be given to nationality”.

British translators like Rex Warner, Philip Sherrard and Ewald Osers played an important part in the Academy’s deliberations, one can assume, just as translators such as Joan Tate, Paul Britten Austin, Robin Fulton, Robin Young, Michael Meyer and Sarah Death played such an important part in bringing Swedish literature to the English-speaking world.

Issues of national identity and the sense of belonging are not always easy. It seems the Swedish Academy does not always find it so easy to decide on the prize-winners either.

Over the years, there has been surprise in some quarters that figures like Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Henry James, Graham Greene, W.H.Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and other deserving English language authors, were not awarded this high (the highest) distinction. Kjell Espmark and Sture Allen admit, in “The Nobel Prize in Literature, An Introduction”, Swedish Academy, 2001, that the Academy was criticised for ignoring Graham Greene, “a frequently praised candidate until around 1970”. At least he is one of the few foreign writers who has a “Literary Stockholm” plaque, with a quotation from “England Made Me”, near Stockholm’s North Bridge. There has always been gossip and speculation about the reasons why specific writers are overlooked, and members of the Academy have occasionally spoken out or even “resigned”, eg when Kerstin Ekman and two other members of the committee “resigned” (or rather, there are three empty chairs since, once elected, they are members for life and cannot resign) over the Academy’s stand in 1989 about the fatwa imposed on Salman Rushdie; on another occasion, Lars Gyllensten revealed information about the voting and how he had intended to vote (eg concerning the occasion when William Golding was awarded the prize).

It has been suggested (by Humphrey Carpenter, in “W.H.Auden, A Biography”, Allen and Unwin, 1981) that the reason that W.H.Auden was not awarded the prize was the way in which he had described Dag Hammarskjöld’s character and ego in the introduction to the Auden/Sjöberg translation of Hammarskjöld’s “Markings”, which he suggests Leif Belfrage found unacceptable. Most of the published accounts are based on pure speculation, I have been assured by Kjell Espmark, the distinguished poet and Chairman of the Nobel Selection Committee. One respects the secrecy of the Academy’s proceedings.

This anthology is not just about writers who have been supported in some way by the British Council. That may have been the starting point. It soon began to develop as an anthology representing the best of British creative writing about Sweden, and including some outstanding examples of Swedish writing about the UK , as well as translations of Swedish writers by leading British literary figures.

The final stage in its evolution was to include some important examples in English written by non-British writers, like Paul Durcan’s wonderful poem about Stockholm, and Longfellow’s translations of Tegner. They are simply too important to leave out. Both Durcan and Heaney are published by UK publishers. It is worth pointing out that the Nordic Region (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) is the second largest market for British book exports after the USA (DTI UK statistics for Exports of Books).

At the end of the day, it is the reader who comes first. I am grateful to all my Swedish friends and colleagues who have suggested writers and passages for inclusion, and I also wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by the British Council’s Literature Department (especially with contact addresses).

I would like to thank all the generous Swedish hosts, who, over the years, have invited British writers to come as writers-in-residence (eg Jamie McKendrick, Barry Unsworth, Marion Lomax/Robyn Bolam, Caryl Phillips, Raman Mundair, Clive Sinclair, Kevin MacNeil ) to the Universities of Lund, Uppsala, Stockholm, Gotheburg and Malmö; to the English Society at Uppsala, the International Poetry Days in Malmö, the Gothenburg International Book Fair, the Stockholm Poetry Festival, the International Writers’ Stage at Kulturhuset, the Swedish Institute, the Swedish Academy, publishing houses like Bonniers and Norstedts.

In the two years that I have been in Sweden, visiting writers supported by the British Council have included Tony Harrison, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Dannie Abse, Adrian Mitchell, Jamie McKendrick, Katherine Pierpoint, Sophie Hannah, Ruth Fainlight, Stephen Knight, Diran Adebayo, Tony Parsons, Alan Sillitoe, Raman Mundair, and a wonderful line-up of Scottish writers came in 2002: Janice Galloway, Ian Rankin, Jackie Kay, Alan Warner, Kevin MacNeil, Kate Clanchy, Roddy Lumsden, David Greig and Gregory Burke. This is to thank the writers for giving up their time and for giving their audiences so much pleasure.

Most of all I wish to thank Dr Judith Black, my co-editor, who has done an absolutely outstanding job and assumed the lion’s share of the work for editing this anthology.

Gary Pulsover, of Arcadia Books, expressed his enthusiasm for the project at an early stage, and I feel sure that the readers will be fascinated by and delighted with the results.

Ever since the first English poem, Widsith ( the oldest in English, probably the earliest of any Germanic people), British poets have been consistently conscious of Sweden and the Swedes:

Sometimes I think that the life of a British Council staff-member resembles that of Widsith, the wandering minstrel, travelling in foreign lands, far from his/her folk, friends and kin.

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A British Tribute to George Seferis to mark the fortieth anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature

The audience listens, while taking their seats, to Seferis’ recorded reading of “In the Kyrenia District”.

“Your Excellencies, Members of the Swedish Academy, Director and Staff of the Mediterranean Museum, Friends of Greece, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen”: The title of this lecture indicates that I intend to talk about the themes of diplomacy, friendship and war in the poetry and prose of Seferis, but also to explore some of the problems faced by a diplomat who happens to be a poet or writer. In particular, as this is a British tribute, I intend to survey Seferis’ relationship with Britain, the British Council, the BBC, and his British friends, as they changed over time and in the light of political events, and some of his preoccupations during his own diplomatic postings to Britain.

This year marks the 40^th Anniversary of his Nobel Prize for Literature. Some of you may ask why I was asked or agreed to give this talk as I am not an academic. Firstly because I have a personal interest in Greek literature and poetry and I have been researching – and more importantly, enjoying it- for many years. I also have a keen interest in cultural diplomacy in both its national and European dimensions. I’m delighted to be able to make a small contribution to the cultural programme of the Greek Presidency.

I happen to believe that Seferis’ poetry has retained its relevance for Europe and the world, and I hope I shall be able to demonstrate why this is so. But the lecture is more of a partial survey than a thesis. There is no single argument. Seferis’ poetry is complex, but I shall illustrate my survey with some short extracts I will read myself, and some longer poems and extracts will be read in Swedish by the distinguished poet, Member of the Swedish Academy and Professor Emeritus Kjell Espmark.

We shall also have the pleasure of hearing three poems set to music and sung. That is the only roadmap I can offer you at this stage, except to give you a clue as to why the phrase “There is an island” appears in the title. This comes from Seferis’ poem “Salamis in Cyprus” and from the messenger’s speech in Aeschylus’ play “The Persians.” The reason for including it will I hope become more clear very soon..

I ‘d like to set the stage for this British Tribute to George Seferis by briefly mentioning some of Seferis’ many British friends, but before I do, let’s listen to a satirical poem about British expatriates in Cyprus in the 1950s, called In the Kyrenia District. Seferis places two quotations, from John Betjeman and W H Auden, at the top of the poem.

++“In the Kyrenia District” to be read in full by Kjell Espmark in Swedish :

So who were Seferis’ British friends ? Lawrence Durrell (initially with Henry Miller, later in Athens again, in Kalamata, Cairo, Cyprus)

Rex Warner (Athens, then much later in the USA). Seferis’ diary 25 January 1947:

“There is something solid about this man; I feel a steadily growing friendship for him”. I’ll quote from his poem “Letter to Rex Warner” in a moment. Rex Warner wrote of Seferis (intro. to “King of Asine” 1948: “One knows him first as a poet and a diplomat, but cannot know him long without knowing him as a friend.” Rex Warner was a classicist, translator, poet and novelist.

Other friends included Steven Runciman (Athens, Scotland); Maurice Bowra ; Bernard Spencer (Cairo); Patrick Leigh-Fermor (Cairo); Osbert Lancaster (44-45 Press attaché): Robert Liddell (Cairo); Olivia Manning and Reg Smith (Cairo); Peter Levi; Philip Sherrard (Keeley, p 114); Maurice Cardiff; C. M. (Monty) Woodhouse; C Day-Lewis; T.S.Eliot ; E.M.Forster ; W. H. Auden.

++ Read from Letter to Rex Warner (Rex Warner was the Director of the British Council Institute in Athens at the time they first met).

Seferis’s American friends included Henry Miller and Edmund Keeley. There were occasionally professional tensions between Seferis and his translators, as is clear from his correspondence with Keeley. Seferis felt closer, personally, to Rex Warner, but most of the English translations I shall quote come from Keeley’s and Sherrard’s “Complete Poems of George Seferis”.

We should also acknowledge the roles of Katsimbalis, Savidis, Valaoritis, Stephanides in assisting the British translators,& the self-evident importance of the translations in establishing his reputation internationally, and in connection with the Nobel Prize.

Seferis saw himself, like other members of his generation, and because of the fate of the refugee Greeks of Asia Minor & his own homelessness- his lost homeland- as a kind of modern Odysseus. As Anders Österling said in his Nobel Prize Presentation Speech: “He often expresses his grief and bitterness through the medium of a central narrative figure, a kind of Odysseus with features borrowed from the old seamen in the lost Smyrna of the poet’s youth.”

Yannis Kiourtsakis comments: “The question of the lost homeland becomes an expression of the impossible return, not only of the Greek, but of contemporary man – a symbol of his universal exile” (Ithaca Magazine, no 5, Sept-Oct 2000).

Seferis was awarded the’ Nobel Prize “for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture”….”it has rightly been said that he, better than anyone else, has interpreted the mystery of the stones, of the dead fragments of marble, and of the silent, smiling statues”. The Presentation speech by Anders Österling also mentions the connection between Asini and Sweden because of Swedish archaeologists’ successful excavation of this site.

Let’s listen to the King of Asini at this point,to celebrate the link with Sweden.

In his Nobel Banquet Speech, Seferis said “I belong to a small country. A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun.” In the same speech ( p 159-160 Dokimes) Seferis talks of the need for poetry in difficult times: “I believe this modern world we live in, tyrannized by fear and anxiety , needs poetry”.

In Edmund Keeley’s “A Conversation with George Seferis”, which took place in December 1968, at the end of a 3 month fellowship at Princeton University, Seferis described the Nobel Prize as an “accident, not an appointment “ ie not an appointment carrying the burden of personal responsibility for making public statements

It’s 50 Years since Seferis visited Cyprus (Summer 53),& met up again with Lawrence Durrell, then teaching there; Seferis wrote “Salamis in Cyprus”, in November.

Kjell Espmark will read Salamis in Cyprus in Swedish (first it’s worth pointing out that the Greek island of Salamis-(or rather the narrow straits between the island and the coast of Attica- features in Aeschylus’ play, The Persians, as the location of the great sea- battle of 480 BC, and serves as a symbol of victory for the Greeks; it’s where the Persians suffered unexpected defeat and the nemesis that followed the hubris of Xerxes’ fatal misjudgement. “There is an island…Nysos tis esti”: Seferis appropriates these associations with respect of the other Salamis in Cyprus. He was much concerned with War and Justice, with Hubris: presumptious, overweening pride towards the gods, leading to nemesis, inevitable retribution and downfall).

I will also read part of this poem in English, but first I want to mention the view of some critics that the reference to “Friends from the other war” is to the British friends Seferis mixed with in Cairo during the Second World War, such as Durrell and Spencer, when they were “on the same side” , before the Cyprus conflict poisoned the atmosphere and the climate for trust and friendship. Seferis also cites the wartime prayer of Commander Lord Hugh Beresford, RN, who died in the Battle of Crete: “O God our loving Father…Help us to keep in mind the real causes of war: dishonesty, greed, selfishness, and lack of love, and to drive them out of this ship, so that she may be a pattern of the new world for which we are fighting….” Seferis had read this prayer in a South African newspaper in September 1941.

On the subject of unnecessary wars waged on the basis of empty illusions; on the themes of pointless slaughter & bloodshed, suffering & loss of life, and the idiocies of men, the poem “Helen”, ostensibly about the Trojan War and Helen of Troy, is one of Seferis’ great poems . I must first explain that the line “The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres” seems to refer to the location of Colonial Governor’s lodge in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. I chose this poem to show just how relevant Seferis remains today, and at a time when the Cyprus issue is still not resolved.

++Kjell Espmark reads, in Swedish, some extracts from Helen (Swedish only, not in English)

The only comment I feel I can make is this: the nightingales still won’t let us sleep.

The critic, Vangelis Calotychos, comments that “Though his highly influential early collections employ symbolist techniques and blank verse, Seferis does not want to be wholly associated with foreign, avant-gardish poetic trends. He sought to temper his devotion to European modernism with a certain brand of traditional ‘Greekness’.”

Seferis finds this traditional Greekness in poets like Solomos and Kalvos, as well as in the “humble art” of the naïve, ‘primitivist, fustanella-clad’ (or white kilt-wearing) artist Theophilos, the simple prose memoirs of General Makriyannis, in the traditional shadow-theatre of Karaghiozis

”By courting this more unrefined or Romeic strain of Greek culture, Seferis is seen to be incorporating the populist as well as the more solemn and lofty Hellenic model of the culture into his canon.” (CalÓtychos).

But the Mediterranean Museum is the right place for this lecture, as Seferis was also a poet much obsessed by the past, by archaeological sites, by statues and marble relics; by Cyprus as well as the fate and history of Greece and Greek peoples around the Mediterranean.

Rex Warner, in his introduction to the 1948 volume, “The King of Asine and Other Poems”, writes: “There is no land and sea so haunted with gods and heroes as the land and sea of Greece. Indeed there is something disturbing and oppressive as well as inspiring in the thought of such a weight and variety of history…To be conscious of such a past may well mean to be overwhelmed by it, and there are certainly many Greeks who, perhaps because the weight of it all is too heavy for them, seem to try to free themselves from one or more of their great traditions…To feel the whole of the past is a task which is certainly beyond the power of most people, and for a Greek poet the task is extraordinarily difficult.”

Professor Roderick Beaton , whose biography of Seferis will be published this autumn, interprets the poem as follows:

“The Greeks were liberated as a modern nation only to find themselves burdened with an incomprehensible weight- the statues, the relics that is, of the ancient past.” Beaton elaborates further on the meaning of the poem in the London George Seferis Centenary Celebrations (May 2000) booklet: “The ancient marble, the statue, has been irrevocably mutilated by the years that separate the living craftsman, who once made it, from the poet, the craftsman of today. As a result, the marble head is silent, it can teach him nothing. But the modern craftsman cannot escape this destiny that has been thrust into his hands at the very moment of waking: the unbearable weight of the past drags him down. The modern craftsman is impotent after that. The hands that should have turned his own creative impulses into works of art are amputated by his unwilling clinging to the past, in the form of the statue.”

Against this interpretation one might argue that Seferis is repeatedly stressing the living and enriching continuity of Greek language and culture from Ancient to Modern Greek times. Professor Beaton (Intro to MGL p 205-206) has commented on Seferis’s “synthesis of the different epochs of Greek culture” and how “a wealth of ancient allusions adds historical depth and literary complexity to his poems.”.

And, as Calotychos writes: “For Seferis, Hellenism did not die with the decline of the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. His own concept of ‘true Hellenism’ had survived up to the present, often having lain dormant or mute but never totally destroyed.”

In his Nobel Banquet Speech Seferis stressed that “The Greek language has never ceased to be spoken. It has undergone the changes that all living things experience, but there has never been a gap.”

Statues, real or symbolic, play a ghost-like role in this dialogue from the poem “Thrush”

Perhaps, after all, we shouldn’t be presenting contemporary Greek cultural events in the context of a museum devoted to the past? We too may feel haunted, burdened by the presence of lifeless marble and statues.

An alternative argument has sometimes been put forward that by turning his poems into popular songs, by setting them to music, Theodorakis and other contemporary composers like Moutsis have restricted and limited the meanings and associations of the poem-on-the- page. They may also have altered the meaning completely- if indeed we can ever hope, or should ever try, to fix the meaning of a poem in concrete. In the poem, “An Old Man on the River Bank” (June 1942) seems to anticipate the possibility that composers might complicate, distort or work against the poet’s ideas:

Clearly the poetry-reading public found his poetry like Thrush less than simple. Too decorated with symbol and myth, perhaps.

There are several relevant and more critical recent articles, in Ithaca Magazine no 5, Sept-Oct 2000. Thanassis Valtinos comments on Seferis’ “affectation” and “abundance of craft…Even though he noted that we have overloaded art with trimmings, he didn’t avoid the same mistake himself.”

The young poet, Stratis Pascalis, writes: “As I grow older, what bothers me about him is the lack of verve. He often became verbose…One sometimes has the impression that he writes from a position of security and that he is not at all concerned about life or art from the point of view of their risk, excitement, vitality. His expression becomes conservative in the end and his plainness takes on the character of a sagely transformed cerebral affectation….He was an embodiment of the poet-savant.”

There is a good 1971 lecture or essay by the poet Takis Sinopoulos entitled “The Open and Closed Poem in George Seferis” which discusses both the cryptic, difficult symbolist poems, as well as the more open and easily- accessible poems. I have to declare that I prefer the “open” poems, more than the dense symbolist ones. I have less patience than I used to have as a student for either guess-work or post-structuralist approaches. But I love individual lines and sections, and the overall sound and music of the difficult poems. Dimitris Dimiroulis, quoting the verse I have just read, argues that we should not take this stanza as a “straightforward statement about his artistic intentions… The speaking subject is not necessarily the poet …the stanza does not necessarily constitute a more reliable statement for Seferis’s poetics than any other of his poems”.

It would be Theodorakis who, by composing musical settings, made the songs communicate to the mass of the Greek people, even if he may sometimes have misinterpreted lines or punctuation marks when setting them. One cannot blame him for that. They are often difficult to understand, even after many close readings. Beaton argues that Seferis was “not best pleased” with Theodorakis’ settings of his poems. Theodorakis claims that Seferis and his wife sincerely liked the settings. The song “Sto periyiali to krifo”, based on a short Seferis poem, became so beloved in Greece that it was sung with great passion at Seferis’ funeral.

++KONSTANDINOS BIZOPOULOS SINGS “Sto periyiali to krifo”, with guitar accompaniment.

In the poem, The Last Stop ( October 1944), Seferis writes, about war and modes of communication:

Capri-Karka believes that Poem 3 from Mythistorima refers to Orestes waking up “with the marble head in his hands”- “the heavy task to kill his mother in order to avenge his father’s death.” Mythistorima is so rich in allusions to ancient drama, to Homer, and to the Asia Minor catastrophe, that it works on a number of levels. Seferis works with many tones and associations, some conscious, some unconscious. I go along with Beaton, some of the way. For me the poem evokes a feeling or a psychological complex that is common to many writers in English, that they work under the heavy burden and shadow of Shakespeare, that everything they attempt to do is bound to be second-rate or derivative because Shakespeare said it all, better than any other writer before or since. Harold Bloom has written extensively on “The Anxiety of Influence”.

Seferis’ poetry is full of references to broken and mutilated statues. Professor Roderick Beaton talks of Seferis’ rejection of the “piling up of cultural debris to infinity”.

Henry Miller writes enthusiastically of Seferis (Colossus of Maroussi, 1941, p 39 and 109): “The man who has caught this spirit of eternality which is everywhere in Greece and who has embedded it in his poems is George Seferiades….” (Seferiades was his real name). But as Professor Beaton says, Seferis is only committed to the kind of immortality that can still be felt in the vital myths and language of Ancient Greece. But he associates statues with attempts to “keep alive ‘the letter’ of ancient Greece and to deny freedom of expression to the Greeks of today.”

Seferis was haunted by the more recent past as much as by the statues and myths of ancient Greece. In his Nobel Prize Lecture of December 11, 1963, “Some Notes on Modern Greek Tradition”, Seferis also seeks to demonstrate the continuity and immortality of modern Greek poets, like Andreas Kalvos and Dionysios Solomos, the two “national poets” of Modern Greece, both from the Ionian Islands. Kalvos was “one of the most isolated figures in Greek literature” he says. Seferis was in fact obsessed by Kalvos’ fate.

Seferis arranged for Andreas Kalvos´ remains (and for the remains of his second English wife) to be repatriated, brought back to Greece from England .(Dokimes vol 2 “Kalvos, 1960”). Seferis was clearly haunted by the idea of this “faceless man, clad in black, striking his lyre on an isolated promontory”, this isolated Ionian Islander living and dying in Lincolnshire, England, but he gave no real thought to the possibility that Kalvos and his wife may not have actually wanted to have their skeletons exhumed and removed !

Kalvos was, after all, buried with Anglican church rites. Seferis is sometimes rather rude about draughty rooms in England,, and about the puritan Anglo-Saxon way of life, the typical smell of bacon and eggs frying in the pan, in the damp and foggy country. He finds it hard to imagine Kalvos, the Ionian Islander, living “in exile” for eighteen years without speaking a word of Greek, even dreaming in a foreign language. But perhaps Kalvos was happy in England (he married two British women remember, in the course of his life) and wanted to be buried there, in spite of his first , most famous patriotic ode about Zante, which ends: “May Fate not give me a foreign grave, for death is sweet only to him who sleeps in his homeland.” In Sherrard’s translation:

Seferis may have identified with that sentiment, but let us not forget that the poem was published in 1824, 45 years before Kalvos’ death. Perhaps Kalvos had grown to like the English way of life, even the draughty rooms and damp, foggy atmosphere and the smell of fried eggs and bacon ! Seferis imagines Kalvos’ wife as an old woman, but in fact she was twenty years younger than Kalvos. The smell of bacon in the mornings, and the cold, had upset Seferis personally when he lived in Hampstead in October 1931. In the end I think Seferis was right, and that Kalvos’ soul rests at peace in Zakynthos. I just hope his beloved wife feels the same way.

The British may be reluctant to return certain items to Greece, but we did not prevent Seferis from arranging to have the remains of Mr and Mrs Kalvos disturbed, dug up and packed off to Greece courtesy of Olympic Airlines on March 19^th 1960- after lying perfectly happily for about 90 years in English soil (in the case of Mr Kalvos).. Such are the priorities of poetically-minded diplomats, perhaps ?

The British did cede the Ionian Islands to Greece. When the historian C M Woodhouse stayed with Seferis in Beirut in late Summer 1953, Cyprus was much on their minds. Woodhouse writes: “By coincidence, the earthquakes in the Ionian Islands that year had been followed by tremors in Cyprus. Clearly there was a geological connection, George mused. But what did it signify ? That Cyprus, like the Ionian Islands, should be joined to Greece ? Or that the Ionian Islands, like Cyprus, should rejoin the British Empire ? There was always a strain of melancholy underlying his humour.” Once Seferis presented him with a book which “illustrated his delight in demotic Greek. It was Memoirs by Makriyannis, the hero of the war of independence who had taught himself to read and write in his thirties so that he could record them On the fly-leaf George wrote: ‘For my learned friend Monty, this illiterate my master in Greek’. Thus was formed the style which later won for him the first Nobel prize ever awarded to a Greek.”

Seferis, in his Nobel Prize Banquet Speech said: “One of my masters exclaimed at the beginning of the last century, “We are lost because we have been unjust.” He was an unlettered man, who did not learn to write until the age of thirty-five.” “I compare him to one of those old olive trees in our country which were shaped by the elements and which can, I believe, teach a man wisdom….No other man has taught me more how to write prose.”

If Makriyannis had always been especially dear to him and was a big influence, so of course was Homer; as were the French symbolists and T S Eliot, whose work (the poem Marina) George Seferis first discovered by chance in an Oxford Street bookshop in December 1931. Seferis gave a lecture comparing Kavafy and Eliot at the British Council in Athens on December 17 1946. He also translated into Greek a number of Eliot’s works. His version of The Waste Land ,which he began in 1933,was published in 1936.

Seferis also gave a lecture at the British Council on the wonderful, naive painter, Theophilos, on May 2, 1947. The first exhibition of his paintings was held at the British Council Athens in that year.

This was at a time when Rex Warner and Stephen Runciman were in charge of the British Council and Institute, but Seferis gave another lecture on Dante at the Council in 1966.

We should not neglect to mention Seferis’s BBC broadcasts in the 50s and 60s : on Nikander Noukios, a Corfiot traveler who visited England in 1545, BBC 29.4.52; on the Death of Sikelianos, broadcast 7 July ´51; he read his poetry on the BBC Third Programme in1959; and, most famously, he broke his silence in his statement against the Junta on 28 March 1969; he recorded it and had it broadcast in Greek and English (BBC 9pm).The complete statement was published in Encounter in July 1969.

Almost as if predicting that he would one day need to speak out about the state of Greece, he wrote the next poem, “When will you speak again” from Three Secret Poems.

++Kjell Espmark reads “When will you speak again” in Swedish from On Stage, Three Secret Poems.

Peter Levi , in his book The Hill of Kronos (1980) gives an account of the lecture he planned to give on Seferis at the British Council in Athens in 1970/71 but which was cancelled, or at least postponed, against his wishes. A former British Council colleague, who I consulted this March, and who had arrived in Athens in the wake of this event, believes that Billy (William) Ball, the British Council Director who initially cancelled the lecture, was treated dishonourably and badly by senior British officials, who failed to support him and who asked for him to be withdrawn from his post (followed by his early retirement). “Ball was trying to defend the Council’s non-political standing,” said my colleague. Peter Levi had walked in announcing that he intended to give the lecture but then refused to show Ball his speech or notes; it seemed clear to Ball he had a political agenda, and the Council could not promote political activities: but everything was political in those days after the publication of “Eighteen Texts” (July 1970), which opened with Seferis’ “The Cats of Saint Nicholas”, and after his March 1969 public statement and broadcast against the Colonels. Levi apparently “ hit the roof” (he had “a fiery temper”) when, in 1970, Ball asked to see the manuscript of the text; Levi called in the Ambassador. Ball had taken the view that this was likely to be an inappropriate political lecture, hard for the Council to condone,, even if it was presented (“disguised”) as something literary.

Keeley wrote that “The effect (of Eighteen Texts) was to put Seferis at the centre of opposition to the regime’s control over the intellectual life of the country, to make him gradually the unchallenged leader of dispossessed students and the silent voice of those with no public outlet for their own brooding sense of injustice.” (Keeley MGP p 113).

Many countries, apart from the Scandinavian countries and Holland, were indecisive- at least on the official front- about the Junta at the time.

The lecture eventually went ahead at the British Council, with George Seferis apparently chuckling with glee and quoting an old British war-time song to the effect that Mr Ball had only one ball, or no balls at all !

Levi had reported the case to The Daily Telegraph who took up his cause and criticised the Council. In retrospect it is possible to imagine that both the Embassy and the British Council Director thought, even if they were misguided in this respect, that they were trying to protect George Seferis himself from further trouble, as the regime had tried since 1969 to portray and discredit him as a senile communist-sympathiser “adding his own yelp to that of organized anti-Hellenic hysteria cultivated in all communist states, and some Western countries” (Labrys).

Levi’s lecture, as it appeared in essay-form in 1972, stresses the power of context, and lets long quotations from the “magnificent and angry” poem “The Cats of St Nicholas” speak for themselves.(“The Cats” was first published in Eighteen Texts, Athens, July 1970) (++ DISTRIBUTE TEXT OF POEM) . He describes Seferis’ “voice of black lamentation” in this “poem of despair and the acceptance of despair that was written in 1969”, a poem “about real events and what they mean”.

Levi seems almost to be implying that this allusive poem is an overt and transparent allegory or fable about the cats’ (read “ poets’ and intellectuals”) unceasing fight “against a plague of snakes” (read the Colonels and their network), although Seferis himself seems to have had in mind a longer period of Greek history- forty years of drought, “generations of poison, centuries of poison”. The poem was written on 5 February 1969, but in fact an earlier draft had been written, according to Keeley, for the 1955 Cyprus volume (p 112). On its publication in Eighteen Texts it was “taken to be a fable that pointed to the possibility of heroic resistance to the oppression of the Colonels. And the poet did nothing to inhibit this widely accepted reading”.

Eighteen Texts was published in English in 1972.In the foreword, Cedric Whitman writes: “These texts are a warning, not because any of the authors poses a conspiratorial threat, but because all are committed to a Greece that is free”.

“In Greece, the cat is a fierce animal. Seldom domesticated, it is a fighter, and it is no wonder that the legend arose that legions of them slew poisonous snakes on a famous promontory of Cyprus. They suffered from the poison; many died, but the others, well fed by the good monks of Saint Nicholas, destroyed the snakes who had taken the place of the human population. There are some legitimately dangerous snakes in Greece; but when they displace humanity, and take on externally human form…. one hears the ringing of the bell of Saint Nicholas summoning the cats to food in the evening, and in the morning to battle, with snakes. Hideous as that fight may be, it is better than becoming a Plaster Cast.”

In a letter of 24 December 1969 to Senator McCarthy he enclosed a copy of “The Cats” and wrote: “Since our new regime I don’t publish in Greece anymore. This situation which lasts almost three years is now becoming burdensome to me and I am trying to find an outlet. It is not quite so easy…..In writing the poem I had in mind the evil unconsciously absorbed, if I may put it so.”

Capri-Carka p 199 also points to a link with the Civil War, citing his journals. Seferis wrote on St Nicholas’ day (Dec 6) of 1944: “A black day. The mutual slaughter started since dawn”. The cycle of hatred is “self-destructive” and poisons everyone. The poem can be read specifically or more universally, or it can be taken to refer to the Civil War as well as the Cyprus conflict and the Military Dictatorship.

In 1967 he had written about his isolation from the world of Greek party politics (quoted by Philip Sherrard in “The Wound of Greece)”: “And now, after passing a whole life rocked by military movements, dictatorships, political changes, uprisings, destructions and disappointments- after living through all this, in the flesh, as I might put it, as a civil servant, I find it sad and burdensome to conclude that over all these years we have not made the slightest step forward in these matters. And when a country does not show any change for the better in forty years, this means that it is falling head-long”.

Kevin Andrews, writing in September 1971 about the death and funeral of Seferis, refers to his public statement broadcast by the BBC in March 1969: “The only difficulty for the military regime was that he had denounced it. Only once, and briefly, but in such words that their echo has not yet died out….Enough to frighten once even the British Council in Athens into canceling, for a long period, a lecture on his poetry by Peter Levi”.

These are some of the dilemmas faced by diplomats and cultural diplomats. Seferis knew only too well about the compromises that sometimes had to be made as a result of a diplomatic career. He served in various official posts, with varying duties, in the UK – and finally as Ambassador.

From 1931-1934 he served at the Greek Consulate in London. From 1951-52 he was Counsellor at the Greek Embassy in London. He was Ambassador from 1957-1962. Professor Beaton points out (Intro to MGL p 337) that Seferiadis the diplomat was obliged to write in katharevousa (artificial Purist Greek) throughout his career; Seferis (his pen-name) the poet “wrote the poetry and essays in demotic…with no trace of the language of Seferis the diplomat.”

But service overseas also brought its rewards and inspirations. Seferis discovered and was influenced by the poetry of Yeats and Eliot: he made translations of Eliot and wrote an introduction to his work. At his second meeting with Eliot, 15 October 1951,Eliot asked him: “Do you have any time left for your own work?” “At the moment, not a single minute”, replied Seferis. ”The good thing is that at least you don’t have any official duties in the field of Literature. I remember that on the other occasion, when somebody asked you if you were the Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy, you replied with a note of great relief, “No, thank God””. On another occasion (7 February 1952), Eliot asked Seferis how he was managing to balance the transitions between his private and public work. It was a problem that taxed them both, although they both recognized that a poet should have another occupation apart from the creation of poetry. In the course of his December 1968 Princeton conversation with Edmund Keeley, Seferis was asked whether his professional career as a diplomat had affected the imagery or themes of his poetry. Seferis thought not, (apart from some lines from “Last Stop”- “Souls shriveled up by public sins,/ Each one his rank and position, like a bird in its cage”) but it was important for him to have a job which was not related to his creative work. He did complain about suffering from the lack of time, but recalled Eliot’s view that “it is better not to have time because it is the subconscious which is doing the poetical work”.( Keeley, A Conversation , p 56-58).

His literary “relationship” with Eliot, incidentally, went back to 1931, when he discovered Eliot’s poem “Marina”, in that Oxford Street bookshop. The lines that particularly impressed him were:. “What seas what shores what gray rocks and what islands/ What water lapping the bow/ And scent of pine…”

In his essay on “Seferis’ ‘Political’ Voice” ( MGP p 95) Keeley writes that “As a diplomat sometimes at the center of political action, he inevitably felt a degree of tension between his public responsibilities and his more private obligation to the muse.” When Keeley asked him if, as a poet, he ever found his life in the diplomatic service a burden, Seferis answered, “Only when my public life begins to enter my dreams.”

Alongside the fresh images and renewed inspiration generated by foreign travel, his diplomatic postings often caused Seferis great loneliness and homesickness; he felt cut off and isolated in Albania and South Africa. Here are some lines from the poem, The Return of the Exile (1938):

But Seferis always had a good sense of humour, sometimes bawdy. He wasn’t always sombre and serious.

He sent that to Lawrence Durrell in November 1941, when he was at the Greek Legation in Pretoria. In his letter Seferis wrote: “I think that limerick writing is a good exercise for lonely men, and suppose that genre has been created in England because all of you are lonely like islands.” In 1948, Rex Warner writes that Seferis’ melancholy “is always giving place to his own individual and charming humour. He has written limericks in Greek.”

He was still at it thirty years later, in 1971. On the same day that he would write his last great poem, “On Gorse”, over lunch he spoke of limericks to his friends, including Peter Levi ”George confessed to having written one in English. ‘If I can remember it, my dear, it was like this:

Then he noticed that all the tables around had fallen silent. They were listening with baited breath. He refused to go on. I shall never know how it ended, and not for the lack of many guesses.”

Perhaps it’s fortunate that Eliot was a greater influence than Edward Lear. I suspect he would not have won the Nobel Prize on the basis of his limerick-writing skills. But he clearly enjoyed writing bawdy verse.

Friendship, as well as issues of betrayal, loyalty, injustice ( “Friends from the other war….There is an island”) is an important theme in the poetry and personal life of Seferis, touched on in this poem from Mythistorima, set to music by Moutsis.

++Maria Zottele sings Moutsis’ setting of “Einai palio to limani” (Mythistorima 9)

One aspect of diplomatic work, especially during wartime or international tensions or hostilities is Propaganda (whatever it is called), and the practice of propaganda can put a strain on the oldest of friendships, loyalties and alliances. Seferis served in a Press and Information role in Cairo, Lawrence Durrell accepted a similar position in Cyprus. Durrell( to Miller letter, May 44 ,p.193): “George Seferis…is feeling happier and happier now that he has dropped propaganda”.

Interestingly, Sinopoulos points out that Seferis,, as Director Press Services to the Greek Government in Cairo, himself “helped to organize a successful exhibition of photographs and documents from occupied Greece under the title ‘Two Years of Slavery-Two Years of Struggle’. Sinopoulos quotes Seferis’ words in the catalogue: “Real experience changes man.”

Concerning Durrell and Cyprus, Seferis wrote a letter to George Theotokas in December 1954: “I have considerable and bitter doubts whether Durrell, who has been put in charge of propaganda on the island, would have the same moral strength. I am very much afraid that he who asked me in the forties whether I was a pacifist has now set his cap at a Lieutenant-Kiplingship……What I beg you to consider is the fact that it is I who write this, I who love England more than any other foreign place and most of whose real friends are there. My acquaintance with Cyprus has cost me, because I saw from close-up what felicities the monkeyshines of the colonials can lead to….” (Labrys, 1983, trans. John Stathatos).

In his book “Legacy of strife, Cyprus from rebellion to civil war” (1964) Charles Foley gives a good brief pen-portrait of Durrell, who had just taken over the post of Government Information Officer and had to give out the “official point of view”, but who was “as free from humbug as any Cyprus official could be”.( p. 17). John Stathatos notes (Lambrys 1983) “Though it cooled for a while as a result of the Cyprus conflict, it is only fair to point out that the friendship between Seferis and Durrell survived the indignation which had provoked this particular passage.”

I like to recall that it was British Council staff who first helped to translate the poetry of Seferis: Bernard Spencer, Lawrence Durrell, Rex Warner.

The Rex Warner translation was almost certainly used the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee. He acknowledged the help and collaboration of George Savidis and George Katsimbalis. Lawrence Durrell admitted in an interview with the Aegean Review (Fall/Winter 1987), when asked which of the poems he translated for the 1948 volume, The King of Asine and Other Poems: “We all worked on them, as our Greek was- I mean, except for Nanos (Valaoritis) - defective. As we knew the subject, we knew our creator, and Seferis was a friend, we wanted to lend as much as we could of our particular power. Nanos would verify that the right electric contact was made and that we’d got as near in appositeness to the original as possible. So we rather hung back from taking responsibility in the matter. We acted more as consultants, if you like.”

There is another interesting, if uncomfortable, anecdote concerning Seferis’ relations with British Council staff, apart from the episode relating to the canceling of the Peter Levi lecture:

This one concerns Maurice Cardiff in Cyprus (Seferis’ Letter to Theotokas, 28.12.54): “Before my friend Maurice Cardiff, who runs the local British Council, I Seferis felt like a quisling and told him so when I explained in all sincerity why I had no intention of setting foot in his institute”—nine months later on the night of 12 Sept 1955 the British Institute and library in Cyprus was burnt down (nb a quisling is a person who betrays his own country by helping the occupying enemy force; Quisling was a pro Nazi Norwegian leader). In Bitter Lemons, Durrell writes, p. 110: “Another old friend, Maurice Cardiff, has returned to the island where he represents the British Council- surely an inspired choice, for he was part-editor and founder of the old Anglo-Hellenic review. He promises to find me some teaching to do…he is a most welcome addition to the ranks of exiles; but more important, he has established firm links with the few Greek intellectuals on the island and is much beloved.” Seferis says of his old friend Cardiff, when he told him (nine months earlier) that he would not set foot in the British Council Institute: “It is to his credit, and I salute him for it, that he understood my position and was able to show me how ashamed he felt about this monstrous culmination of the logic of our times.” As we have seen, Seferis was much less sure if Durrell would show the same moral strength, having been put in charge of propaganda and PR for the British colonial government, possibly on the recommendation of Cardiff himself.

Seferis, one feels, found any form of official propaganda or “spin-doctoring” distasteful, even if he had on occasion, in certain postings, to become professionally involved with the art himself. At the end of his Nobel Prize Lecture nearly 40 years ago, Seferis said: “A great worker for our liberty, Righas Pheraios, has taught us: ‘Free thoughts are good thoughts’. But I should like our youth to think at the same time of the saying engraved on the lintel above the gate of your university at Uppsala: “Free thoughts are good; just thoughts are better”.

Just thoughts, Justice: key themes in Seferis’ poetry. War, justice, hubris and nemesis, the avenging Furies (themes that run through poems like Helen, Salamis in Cyprus,& On Gorse).In his letter on The Thrush to Katsimbalis 27 December 1949, he talks about Hubris and the Furies, the Erini-es, the handmaids of Justice, making unjust people pay for their sins. And in his Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, Seferis said “In the tightly organised classical tragedies the man who exceeds his measure is punished by the Eriny-es. And this norm of justice holds even in the realm of nature. “Helios will not overstep his measure”, says Heraclitus, “otherwise the Eriny-es, the ministers of Justice, will find him out.” A modern scientist might profit by pondering this aphorism of the Ionian philosopher.”

His wonderful and powerful last poem, On Gorse (or On Aspalathoi) was written on 31 March 1971 and almost predicts the fate of Colonel Papadopoulos.

Edmund Keeley comments on its relevance to the dictatorship (MGP p 112): “in this instance suggesting what Seferis’s statement had already prophesied; that doom lay in store for tyrants who ruthlessly imposed their arrogant will on others”. Peter Levi was with Seferis on that day-trip to Sounion. “The gorse was in full flower…I asked him the Greek word for gorse…..George Seferis was sure it was an ancient word, aspalathos, that had survived. That night he had found his word in Plato. Soon afterwards he wrote…his last, terrible poem. The phrase ‘again in the spring season’, which occurs in it comes from a famous song of the war of independence. The rest is clear enough.” Levi p 174-5.

I looked up the reference in Plato’s Republic, Book 10, myself: “Where is Ardiaeus the Great ? Now this Ardiaeus had been tyrant in a certain city of Pamphylia just a thousand years before this time and had put to death his old father and his elder brother and had done many unholy deeds”. He was punished as Seferis describes, quoting the passage from Plato.

I find it quite instructive to compare this poem with Ritsos’ “After the Defeat” of 1968. Both poets are concerned with the oppressive actions and deeds of tyrants. Ritsos is the more optimistic of the two (and talks of the country’s honour, of people’s fear, of exile, of the loss of freedom of expression), although it can be argued that he suffered more during the dictatorship. Seferis is more concerned with justice, hubris, retribution.

Although totally committed to the Greek language, Seferis also commented on the English language (eg Letter to a Foreign Friend, On the Greek Style, p 165): “I remember the time- it now seems so long ago- when I was making my first faltering discovery of London, which I thought of as a gigantic seaport, and of the English language, whose music sounded so much more fluid than that of my own tongue”. His first published poem, Fog, was written in London at Christmas 1924. He may have liked the English Language, but not the English Light, or lack of it.

Language and Light: two distinctive differences between Britain and Greece. Is it Greek light that makes the real difference? Many writers have remarked on the quality of the Greek light, but few as eloquently as Seferis, in his Letter to a Foreign Friend:

“None of our traditions, Christian or pre-Christian, have really died out. Often when I attend the ritual procession on Good Friday, it is difficult for me to decide whether the god that is being buried is Christ or Adonis. Is it the climate? Is it the race? I can’t tell. I believe it’s really the light. There must surely be something about the light that makes us what we are. In Greece one is more friendly, more at one with the universe. I find this difficult to express. An idea becomes an object with surprising ease. It seems to become all but physically incarnated in the web of the sun.”

Friendship, sunshine, light. George Seferis brought all these elements into the lives of others, both Greeks and British. In a letter to Katsimbalis he writes “However it may be, it is my belief that in the Greek light there is a kind of process of humanization.”

I’m not sure I really know what he means. I’m not sure that Greeks really know what the apparently simple poem-song “Denial (“The Secret Seashore”) is actually supposed to mean (as opposed to what it came to mean), let alone a poem like The Thrush. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The words and phrases sound beautiful, harmonic, and significant. They, we, make the lines and the poem mean what we want it to mean. That is one of the joys of interpretation. As Seferis wrote to Katsimbalis on 27 December 1949: “My dear George, any explanation of a poem is, I think, absurd. Everyone who has the slightest idea of how an artist works knows this.” He talks about the artist’s “sure instinct that knows, above all, how to bring to light or to sink in the twilight of his consciousness the things (or, as I should prefer to say, the tones) that are necessary, that are necessary or that are just sufficient for the creation of this something, the poem.”

If you have time, I would like to suggest that some of you might like to listen to Seferis speaking in English on the BBC (his 1969 statement and his 1959 poetry reading on the Third Programme). From web site www.bbc.co.uk/greek/seferis.shtml

But before that we will listen to Theodorakis setting of the optimistic and uplifting song Ligo akoma , sung by Maria Zottele and Konstandinos Bizopoulos. Perhaps we can also listen to the original BBC recording and first broadcast of “the song “(A Little further”)

++Maria Zottele and Konstandinos Bizopoulos sing “Ligo akoma” .Thank Kjell Espmark, Maria Zottele and Konstandinos Bizopoulos, Margarita Mellberg,, the Greek Embassy , the Mediterranean Museum, the audience for their patience.

END. If time: Sto periyiali to krifo, again.

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It is almost exactly 50 years since George Seferis first visited Cyprus, in November 1953, and 40 years since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is also fifty years since Lawrence Durrell went to settle for some years in Cyprus, earlier in 1953. This paper is an elaboration of a small section of the lecture that the Greek Embassy in Sweden and the EU Presidency invited me to give at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm on May 6, 2003, which I called There is an island….Diplomacy and Poetry, Friendship and War.

I want to explore some poetry, and some short prose extracts, within a comparative context of fiercely competing propagandas, an armed struggle and (increasingly) violently contested colonial space.

The poetry (and prose) may not in itself be overtly propagandistic- may be reluctantly or unwittingly so-, may be written by well-meaning poets, officials, civil servants or diplomats, but , in this case, is situated in and reflects the competing space where two individual poets/writers, formerly close friends, cannot be innocent of – or indifferent to- the policies of their respective national governments, or indeed of two mutually hostile broadcasting stations, such as Radio Athens and the Cyprus Broadcasting Service (CBS) were during the period I shall be discussing .

This is the period from 1953-1956, when the Cypriot struggle for Enosis, Union or Unification with Greece, the Greek Cypriot “Armed National Liberation Struggle” and its “Heroic Freedom Fighters” were seen as “Terrorists” in a guerilla war, an increasingly violent “Emergency”, “Rebellion”, “Uprising”, “Insurrection” in the eyes (and words) of the British colonial administration.

While radio signals can be (and were) jammed, and the press could be gagged, poetry cannot so easily be blocked (it gains resonance as well as new readers over time). If poets can’t be gagged or blocked, nor can feelings.

During the last days of World War II (the European War) , Laurie Lee and Ralph Keene went to Cyprus to make a documentary film, which was to show some of the benefits “which Colonial Government bestows” (We Made a Film in Cyprus, by Laurie Lee and Ralph Keene, Longmans Green and Co, London, 1947). Laurie Lee’s journals set the stage for us. He describes a village teacher, who has been teaching the children about Greek mythology: “When he spoke of modern Greece his eyelashes glittered with tears.”

As the war ended and people everywhere were celebrating , Laurie Lee talked to an “outspoken” young man who knew some English , who “shouted us all down”: “We were his friends, yes. He could tell us something, yes. Cyprus did not belong to Britain, no; it was an old ship boarded by pirates, plundered, and anchored in poverty. One day, he said, we will throw these pirates into the sea, we will cut the cables of our island and sail it home to Greece.” (p.55) This was very much the mood which was intensifying in the years before the arrival of Durrell and Seferis. The results of the unofficial Greek-Cypriot plebiscite of 1950 demonstrated the strong pro-Union feelings among the Greek-Cypriot majority. In 1954, Seferis’ photograph of graffiti on the wall of a village house in Alona, says much more than that documentary film would have been allowed to say, in spite of frequent British reminders that Union with Greece would result in a lower standard of living for Cypriots: “We want Greece, even if we have to eat stones.”

George Seferis records, apparently verbatim- over four pages of his diary for 13 May 1956, an interesting conversation - more a political sparring match - with his old friend Maurice Cardiff, the Director of the British Council in Cyprus, who had flown from Nicosia (Lefkosia) to Beirut especially to see him. Seferis had spent a lot of time in his company during his first visit to Cyprus in 1953, and had already known him for 8 years.

Cardiff: “Greece made a mistake. Without Radio Athens there would have been no terrorism. Why did Greece embrace terrorism ?”

Seferis: “Because the Greek people is moved by those who struggle. I don’t know what Radio Athens says, because I can’t listen to it on account of your jamming….”

Cardiff: “ But why did Greece turn to terrorism…why did it not prefer the constitutional route ?”

Seferis: “ Why did you not leave us any other way out ? We always asked you for friendly negotiations and you slammed the door in our faces….if you continue to pursue your counter-terrorism policies, you won’t lose only Cyprus but the whole of Greece too…”

Neither of them was innocent of the arts of point-scoring and propagandistic persuasion.

Britain did lose many of its Greek friends, admirers and allies over Cyprus. The Corfu Literary Magazine Prospero (subsidized by the British Council Athens from 1949) ceased publication in 1954. It was not banned, but closed down by the Corfiot editors for reasons of national conscience, in protest at British action in Cyprus. ”The British Council hosted a major post-war effort to keep the intellectual standards to a level, if not raise them, considering always the dire circumstances,” wrote Charles Climis. “Marie Aspiotis, Michael Desyllas, Irene Dendrinos and other literati met there and gave lectures twice a month….. This effort was abruptly curtailed in 1954, with the Anglo-Cypriot crisis.” ( Charles C. Climis: The Illustrated History of Corfu, 1994.).

Much the same fate befell the Anglo-Hellenic Review which was edited by George Savvidis (and before that George Katsimbalis) in Athens, and also published with the support of the British Council. Publication was suspended by decision of Savvidis (with the agreement of Seferis, who had refused to contribute to the magazine as a result of developments in Cyprus), the last issue being that of Spring 1955. There was felt to be no point in producing it in a sourly deteriorating climate of Anglo-Greek relations.

This is referred to in an excellent book, an outstanding doctoral thesis by Savvas Pavlou which I only managed to obtain after writing most of this paper. It provides a comprehensive account in Greek, from the Cypriot point of view, of Seferis’ relationships with Cyprus and with the British -see the sections Seferis between Cyprus and England (pp 287- 310 in Seferis kai Kypros, Savvas Pavlou, Lefkosia, 2000) and the chapter The Friends of the Other War (ibid pp 311- 317). There are also a significant number of references to Durrell and Cardiff.

Seferis refers to “Friends from the other war” in his poem Salamis in Cyprus (written November 1953) and this is often taken to refer to the British friends he mixed with in Cairo during the Second World War, such as Lawrence Durrell and Bernard Spencer, when they were “on the same side” and Britain and Greece were fighting side by side, before the Cyprus conflict poisoned the atmosphere and the climate for trust and friendship.

Savvas Pavlou suggests ( p 314) that the moderate voice of Maurice Cardiff can be identified as a participant in this “inner dialogue”. The poem ends with the implied threat that Britain will meet the same fate and unexpected defeat that the Persians did in the great sea-battle of 480 BC, inevitable retribution and downfall, because of their overweening pride and hubris.

At the end of the day, whatever the political passions of the time, great poetry and prose lives on, is always re-read and remembered, whilst the more crude, overt propaganda and ephemeral ,inflammatory broadcasts are forgotten.

In an interview with Edmund Keeley in December 1968, George Seferis talks about the example of Yeats, whose essay The Bounty of Sweden, he had been reading a few months before his own Nobel Prize trip to Sweden in 1963. “I felt a sort of relation with him as a human being- not as a poet, but as a human being; because Yeats belonged to a small country with a great folklore tradition, a country which, after all, had political turmoil. By the way, there’s another example of a public poet who doesn’t write propaganda. He writes, for example, a poet about an Irish airman which isn’t at all propaganda. “Those I fight I do not hate-“ etc. Or he writes The Second Coming. That too is not propaganda: “The centre cannot hold,” etc, which after all starts somewhere in Irish political life; but it goes deeper, and that’s the whole point, I think.”

George Seferis, like two of his British friends, Lawrence Durrell and Maurice Cardiff, had jobs which involved propaganda at one time or another, although they all tried to distance themselves from it.

Towards the end of World War II, Cardiff , for instance, was “put in charge of propaganda services for the Eastern Aegean” by his organization, presumably the Political Warfare Executive in Cairo. ”It was not the kind of work for which I could feel any enthusiasm” (Achilles and the Tortoise, by “John Lincoln” (pseudonym), Heinemann, 1958, p.210)

Before that he had been awarded “the high-sounding title of Director of the Subversion of Enemy Troops in the Eastern Aegean” (ibid, p.110).

Gordon Bowker, in his biography of Lawrence Durrell, Through the Dark Labyrinth , A Biography of Lawrence Durrell (Pimlico, 1998), writes that when Durrell accepted the job of Director of Information Services on Cyprus:

“Part of his inheritance as information service director was a monthly magazine, Cyprus Review; a glossy public-relations effort promoting a benevolent image of the colonial administration….Durrell was determined to make it into a worthwhile literary magazine, and at the same time promote Cyprus and British culture. He brought in George Wilkinson as editor, but retained editorial control himself…..As press interest in the Cyprus situation increased, and journalists queued up for copy….Durrell…rather than helping to expose what he thought of as a false line in propaganda…was in danger of becoming a propagandist himself. However, he believed that only one side of the story had so far been put, and there needed to be a respectable outlet to express the British viewpoint. (p.219).

Savvas Pavlou cites a number of letters between Seferis and his Greek friends, expressing negative perceptions of Durrell’s appointment and responsibilities for the Colonial Government’s “media for the transmission of propaganda”. (Note 2, p. 297)

The March 1955 edition of the Cyprus Review, according to Gordon Bowker, mentioned a new director for Cyprus Radio, “which was also under Durrell’s control – a radio which would put the British line over the air.”(p..221) He was Director of the Office of Information, Press and Radio. Durrell comments on Radio Athens’ broadcast output in Bitter Lemons:

“Radio Athens blared and rasped out its parrot-like imprecations” (p.172) Later: “The moral pressure exercised by Athens radio, which went into raptures at every evidence of what it described as an open insurrection, was backed up the local clergy whose public utterances reached new heights of bloodcurdling ferocity” (p.185).”…. ‘Freedom is acquired only by blood’”, shrilled Athens radio.”….”In July the Detention Laws were promulgated…..This touched off a series of attacks by Athens radio, which accused us of ‘Fascism’ and even ‘Genocide’” (p.198) .

According to his biographer, Gordon Bowker, “The Greek radio began vitriolic attacks on Britain and its lackeys, such as Durrell, who were described as enemies of the Cypriot people” (p.224)

Whatever he expressed in his poems and in Bitter Lemons, whatever reservations he had, Durrell could not avoid becoming involved in the propaganda war. The practice of propaganda can put a strain on the oldest of friendships, loyalties and alliances. Seferis himself served in a Press and Information role in Cairo. Durrell wrote to Henry Miller in May 1944: “George Seferis…is feeling happier and happier now that he has dropped propaganda”. Sinopoulos points out that Seferis, as Director Press Services to the Greek Government in Cairo, himself “helped to organize a successful exhibition of photographs and documents from occupied Greece under the title Two Years of Slavery – Two Years of Struggle. Sinopoulos quotes Seferis’ words in the catalogue: “Real experience changes man.” “ (Seferis’ catalogue essay can be found in the third volume of Dokimes, pp 78-79, Athens, 2000).

So we have three characters, three writers, three old friends, Seferis, Durrell and Cardiff, all of whom have some hands-on experience of political or nationalistic propaganda.

What does Seferis have to say about Durrell and Cardiff ? Concerning Durrell, Seferis wrote a letter to George Theotokas in December 1954:

“I have considerable and bitter doubts whether Durrell, who has been put in charge of propaganda on the island, would have the same moral strength (as Cardiff). I am very much afraid that he who asked me in the forties whether I was a pacifist has now set his cap at a Lieutenant-Kiplingship…What I beg you to consider is the fact that it is I who write this, I who love England more than any other foreign place and most of whose real friends are there. My acquaintance with Cyprus has cost me, because I saw from close-up what felicities the monkeyshines of colonials can lead to…” (quoted and translated by John Stathatos, in A Selection of Letters to Friends and Family, Labrys, 1983).

Seferis also writes of Durrell in a similar way in his diary entry of October 1^st, 1954 (Meres, 1951-1956, p.147), quoting Maurice Cardiff as saying that Durrell had become very nationalistic since his time in Yugoslavia., someone who obediently followed the official political line. Seferis remembers how Durrell used to make insulting gestures to the English generals , and used to have a go at England when he was in Cairo, during the period that he was a pacifist.

Pavlou identifies the “Poet” in Seferis’ satirical poem In the Kyrenia District (translated Keeley and Sherrard) as Durrell:

But once Durrell accepted his official government appointment, Seferis became guarded, circumspect and much colder towards him , and clearly disliked the way that Durrell was deliberately targeting and cultivating the Cypriot intelligentsia and arts community and trying to use or exploit his old friends in Greece to make connections in Cyprus (Savvas, p.295, referring to a letter from Seferis to Savvidis).

In his book, Legacy of Strife, Cyprus from rebellion to civil war (Penguin,1964), Charles Foley gives a good brief pen-portrait of Durrell, who had just taken over the post of Government Information Oficer and had to give out “the official point of view”, but who was “as free from humbug as any Cyprus official could be”.

John Stathatos notes (ibid, Labrys, 1983): “Though it cooled for a while as a result of the Cyprus conflict, it is only fair to point out that the friendship between Seferis and Durrell survived the indignation which had provoked this particular passage.”

In the same letter to George Theotokas of 28.12.1954, Seferis writes of Maurice Cardiff:

“Before my friend Maurice Cardiff, who runs the local British Council, I Seferis felt like a quisling and told him so when I explained in all sincerity why I had no intention of setting foot in his institute”.

Apparently (according to Savvas, p.296), Cardiff had invited him to make an appearance at the British Council in Nicosia, but Seferis refused as he did not want to be seen to be supporting the notion (the British aim ? ) that all was well in the field of Greek-British cultural and intellectual relations.

Nine months later on the night of 12 September 1955 the British Institute and library in Cyprus was burnt down . (NB a quisling is a person who betrays his own country by helping the occupying force; Quisling was a pro Nazi Norwegian leader).

Maurice Cardiff was the Representative of the British Council in Cyprus from 1953-1955. His book of memoirs (of Durrell and others), Friends Abroad, was published in 1997.

“Across the road, on the periphery of the battle-field, the British Institute remained obstinately open, its director quietly watching from a balcony.”

Earlier in Bitter Lemons, Durrell writes, p 110, “Another old friend, Maurice Cardiff, has returned to the island where he represents the British Council – surely an inspired choice, for he was part-editor and founder of the old Anglo-Hellenic review. He promises to find me some teaching to do…he is a most welcome addition to the ranks of exiles; but more important, he has established firm links with the few Greek intellectuals on the island and is much beloved.”

Seferis says of his old friend Cardiff, when he told him that he would not set foot in the British Council Institute: “It is to his credit, and I salute him for it, that he understood my position and was able to show me how ashamed he felt about this monstrous culmination of the logic of our times.” Seferis, one feels, found any form of official propaganda or “spin-doctoring” distasteful, even if he had on occasion, in certain postings, to become professionally involved with the art himself.

But let’s look at the poetry. In his conversation with Keeley, on the topic of propaganda, Seferis also said:

“I don’t consider that Aeschylus was making a propaganda play, by putting the suffering Persians on stage, or desperate Xerxes, or the ghost of Darius, and so forth. On the contrary, there was human compassion in it. For his enemies. Not that he’s not of course glad that the Greeks won the battle of Salamis. But even then he showed that Xerxes’ defeat was a sort of divine retribution: a punishment for the hubris that Xerxes committed in flagellating the sea. Since his hubris was to flagellate the sea, he was punished exactly by the sea in the battle of Salamis.”

Had it been preying on his mind, or had someone suggested perhaps that his Cyprus poems like Salamis in Cyprus, could be construed as literate propaganda ? In writing about the hubris of Xerxes and the Persians, he was also writing about the hubris of the British colonial powers, and he awaited the nemesis, the inevitable retribution and downfall. The Battle of Salamis, the Greek Sea Battle of Salamis of 480 BC, and by extension Cypriot Salamis, serves as a symbol of victory for the Greeks.

I would like to open up a discussion , and to consider whether Durrell’s Cyprus book Bitter Lemons, and Seferis’ Cyprus poems can be considered as learned, literary , propaganda, in any respect ? Gentle, rueful, often sad, regretful, melancholic, ironical, satirical, sometimes disguised, veiled, indirect, equivocal propaganda, but there can be little doubt about some of the underlying messages and entrenched positions.

Having said that, it is clear from Savvas Pavlou’s book that many Cypriot and Greek commentatators were disappointed by Seferis’ volume of poems about Cyprus, when it was first published. To many it seemed far too low-key , understated and indirect, not explicit and passionate enough, not in the rhetorical tradition of Greece’s national poets. It did not sell well, so in that sense its propaganda value at the time was almost nil. Many felt that his commitment to Cyprus was compromised by his friendship for Britain and English people. Later his diplomatic role in the Zurich and London negotiations and agreements about Cyprus was seen as a form of betrayal.

From a perspective nearly fifty years later, and reading the poems as an Englishman, not as a Cypriot or a Greek, the poems still carry a significant political message and impact.

“Homer’s world, not ours” (W H Auden, quoted at the beginning of Salamis in Cyprus).

Lawrence Durrell always felt that Homer’s world was his world too. Perhaps Cyprus changed his mind. In the Preface to Bitter Lemons, he writes “This is not a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus doing the troubled years 1953-1956”.

Savvas Pavlou cites Rodis Roufos and others as saying the book should have been called “Sour Grapes” rather than Bitter Lemons (Note 1, p. 299).

Both Seferis and Durrell, Cardiff too, are implicitly defending their national positions, however much they sympathise with and even identify with the other side. “Philhellenism dies hard”, wrote Durrell at a low moment (Bitter Lemons, p. n198). But it is , after all, a book written by a Director of Information Services, and he records the official lines he took at various points in the escalating conflict. He was, if only indirectly, in charge of Cyprus Radio and the Press, someone who had to leave his homes twice, first his house in the village of Bellapaix (initially because he needed to live nearer the Information Office and be within reach of a telephone, but later the muktar told him he felt uneasy about Durrell going up to the village; later still, in an interview with Marc Alyn (The Big Supposer, Interviews with Lawrence Durrell, Grove Press, New York, 1973, p. 76), he admitted : “There came a point when the people in the village made it clear that it would be better for me if I left. Otherwise they might have been forced, in the nicest possible way, to cut my throat…”

In Durrell’s Spirit of Place, Letters and Essays on Travel (Faber and Faber, London 1969), the editor Alan Thomas comments (p.117): “Friendships were strained to breaking point and beyond, fellow villagers were afraid to speak to him and it became dangerous to live in his house at Bellapaix.”

Did Durrell think back, like Seferis, to his “friends from the last war” in Cairo, when, in 1941, he could write, in the poem Letter to Seferis the Greek:

Instead of admiring a Greek girl’s throat, he now knew the fear of having his own throat cut.

He wasn’t thinking of that threat at the time he wrote the poem “The Tree of Idleness” which begins:

According to G.S.Frazer, Lawrence Durrell, A Study ( Faber and Faber, London, 1968), in the early days “He did not take Enosis very seriously; obviously, the Cypriot Greek liked to talk about it, but Durrell felt that the traditional Greek love for England, for an England represented to them by Byron and Churchill and the brave young Englishmen who had fought with the Cretan resistance, would be much stronger than a mere pan-Hellenic sentiment….He took the common view of mainland Greeks that the Cypriots were an indolent and patient people who would go on submitting, as they had under the Lusignans, the Venetians, and the Turks, and for nearly eighty years under the English, to being governed by a minority of foreigners more energetic and determined than themselves.” (pp 70-71).

The poem Episode, originally published as Nicosia, is about the other Cypriot residence he left:

According to his biographer , Gordon Bowker (p.225): “The Nicosia house was a place not just for bachelor carousing, but also for dispensing information and booze to the world’s press. Durrell was careful to meet at the airport and house himself journalists who he thought might be hostile to the British line so that he could contaminate their minds more effectively. He estimated seeing 600 journalists in six months, and a river of gin flowed through the house.”

Durrell himself, in a 1954 letter to Freya Stark (Spirit of Place, p.126), writes:

“I have been working like a black- they have made me a pasha and I am grappling with the moribund Information Services of the island, trying to make our case against the united howls of Enotists, British pressmen and fact-finding MP.s. It has been no joke….”

On the day of the deportation to the Seychelles of Archbishop Makarios (9 March 1956), “The appointment of Durrell as government press censor was announced. Taking on the role of censor again must have been anathema to a literary anarchist like Durrell…” (Bowker, p. 230)

At the end of his stay, when he felt he’d achieved nothing and decided to cut short his contract by a few months, he had to leave that second home. There is an underlying nostalgia, but both the poem and the book called Bitter Lemons carries a political implication in the title itself. In the poem he writes:

A reluctant propagandist, certainly on the private, personal level. The book is only political in places , but he admits that in his public duties he, or all the British on Cyprus “were contending with Athens for the compliance (not even loyalty) of the Cypriot peasant and the maintenance of order” (p. 158). Contested spaces. Neither he nor Seferis were extremists, in any respect. Conservatives, perhaps, and both officially representing their own nations. G.S Fraser writes (Lawrence Durrell, A Study, p.71): “The violence when it came sickened him, and he felt in the end that there was no answer to it, for the moment, but counter-violence…”

By the time that Karaolis was arrested and charged with a terrorist murder, (subsequently hanged), the situation was such that Durrell felt that he no longer had “any further effective place in the scheme of things” (p.212).”It was time to leave Cyprus, I knew, for most of the swallows had gone, and the new times with their harsher climates were not ours to endure” (p. 214). Durrell found that “if were not fighting Greece itself we were certainly fighting the spirit of Greece” (p.216) and he found this hard to stomach. Everyone had become bitter.

Although he insists at the outset that the book is not political, consider this passage (p.217):

“Terrorism itself began to spread rather than to diminish – an ominous clue to the temper of things; and to the nauseating foulness of the street-murder of soldiers and policeman was added the disgusting, and typically Balkan, murder of civilians suspected of being traitors. Apart from this of course there was many an old score settled in the name of Enosis. The black mask was protection enough. ‘When you give a chap a mask and a pistol’, said Wren thoughtfully, showing that by now he was fully abreast of the Mediterranean temperament,’ the first thing he does is bump someone he owes money to before getting on with more ethnic business’. He had become – we had all become- bitter.”

“Typically Balkan”, “the Mediterranean temperament”. These phrases suggest that Durrell has reverted to the conservative colonial mentality. When discussing the sentencing of Karaolis, Durrell writes (p.228):

“I could not help remarking how absent was any conception of abstract guilt- abstract justice. Who could discern in the thought-processes of a modern Greek the exercise of a logic which was Socratic ? They thought like Persian women, capriciously, waywardly, moving from impulse to impulse, completely under the domination of mood.”

“We had all known, and knew that this must happen; never for a moment was the objective logic and the justice of the fact in any doubt” (p.241).

“This is the end of something…We shall not be able to speak naturally, look each other in the eye, for a long time to come….It is not Karaolis only who will be hanged; the deep bond between us will have been broken finally.”

“What he meant, I reflected, was that the image – the mythopoeic mage of the Englishman which every Greek carried in his heart, and which was composed of so many fused and overlapping pictures- the poet, the lord, the quixotic and fearless defender of right, the just and freedom-loving Englishman- the image was at last thrown down and dashed into a thousand pieces, never again to be reassembled. In a paradoxical sort of way they were mourning, not Karaolis, but England.” (pp 241-242).

It’s an extraordinary paragraph, made up of a mixture of self-delusion, wishful–thinking, projectionism, regret, a sense of failure, unresolved divided loyalties and betrayal. But the book is ultimately political, at times propagandistic, always trying to be relatively detached, objective and balanced. Savvas Pavlou (p. 299) writes that although Durrell’s arrival in Cyprus was originally welcomed in a warm and friendly manner in Cypriot intellectual circles, the analyses and positions Durrell expresses in Bitter Lemons were considered by Cypriots to be imbued , in many respects, with the spirit of the British Colonial Government (p.299).

G. S. Fraser writes (p. 72): “He was never again to wish to live in Greece permanently and he had discovered also that, lover of Greece though he was, he was fundamentally a British patriot.” But Durrell did in fact apply for a teaching job again, with the British Council in Athens, in the early 1980s. His application was not successful.

If we look at the notes accompanying Seferis’ Meres (April 1951-August 1956) for 1956 (pages 308-309), there is an account of the trial of Karaolis, which criticizes the trial, implies his innocence and suggests that another member of EOKA probably killed the policeman, Poulli.

More contested spaces. Durrell : “I found myself torn between my Greek friends and my compatriots.” ( Marc Alyn, The Big Supposer p. 76) “I could sympathise with the Greek point of view.”

George Seferis was in much the same position. He genuinely liked the British, had many British friends, but his satirical poem (his sketch for an idyll) on British colonials in Cyprus reveals what he thought about them and their bored, alien small-talk and cocktail-hour chit-chat. He had no sympathy for them, as he reveals in this dialogue between two two typical English colonial women who have “stayed on” with their pet dogs after their husbands have retired, to enjoy the sunshine and scenery, but who feel alienated , can’t communicate with the locals and do not belong in this Mediterranean Cypriot environment (I have included some points made by Savvas Pavlou):

Rex , of course, is a pet dog. Seferis places two quotations at the start of the poem, first John Betjeman’s lines:

There are lines in Seferis’ poetry that make an English reader uncomfortable, and wonder what he really meant. There is little room for doubt.

Neofitos Engleistos Speaks (translated by John Stathatos) seem to be “getting at” the British presence and wrongs done on the island, and the poem draws a parallel between Richard the Lionheart and the Crusaders, and the colonial British at the time of Seferis’ visit. Richard the Lionheart sold the island to the Latins. On both occasions the British betrayed their ideals (and their common Christian faith, shared –at least to some extent- with the Orthodox Byzantines) for their own narrow national interests, suggests Pavlou (p. 311). The last lines are particularly potent. Seferis wrote (Letter of 26.8.1954 to George Savvidis, quoted by Savvas Pavlou, p. 283) that he used to get irritated by the signs he saw around the island, which misquoted the line from Othello as: “Welcome to Cyprus, sir”. He always felt like completing the (mis)quotation, with the sarcastic curse “Goats and monkeys!”

In Salamis in Cyprus, we can’t help making the association with “bitter lemons” in the lines:

On the subject of unnecessary wars waged on the basis of empty illusions; on the themes of pointless slaughter and bloodshed, suffering and loss of life, and the idiocies of men, the poem Helen, ostensibly about the Trojan War and Helen of Troy, is one of Seferis’ great poems. The first line, “The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres”, has been interpreted as referring to the location of the British Colonial Governor’s lodge in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus.

Seferis remains relevant today, at a time when the Cyprus issue is still not resolved and more recent wars come to mind. The nightingales still won’t let us sleep.

An apparently much later poem, The Cats of Saint Nicholas (February 1969) which opened Eighteen Texts, ends like this, in Stathatos’ translation:

According to Keeley, an earlier draft of this poem had been written for the 1955 Cyprus volume. The poem can be read specifically or more universally, or it can be taken to refer to the Greek Civil War as well as the Cyprus conflict and the Military Dictatorship.

Perhaps the first draft of 1955 referred to the British and the contested space between the cats and the poisonous snakes, the British and EOKA. Which was which ? Seferis wrote to Senator McCarthy on 24 September 1969, “In writing the poem I had in mind the evil unconsciously absorbed, if I may put it so.”

The legend of how the cats of Saint Nicholas on Cyprus used to kill the poisonous snakes, but often suffered (and died) from the poison is also mentioned in Durrell’s Bitter Lemons (p.107):

“H.L. on a medieval monastery where a breed of giant cat was cultivated specially to attack the snakes which infested the promontory.”

Who were the cats, who the poisonous snakes ? It all depends on the teller of the story, on the point of view of the poet or propagandist, on where your deepest loyalties and sense of cultural identity lie.

But, as Seferis said of Yeats’ greatest poems like The Second Coming, “after all (it) starts somewhere in Irish political life; but it goes deeper, and that’s the whole point, I think.”

Savvas Pavlou discusses the poem at length (pp 336-353), and confirms that the first draft of the poem was written at Christmas 1952 and that he continued to struggle with it until 1956, when he put it aside until he began working on it again in 1968. He finished it on 5 February 1969. Pavlou believes that the poem is really a warning or premonition about the fate of Cyprus.

From a Greek-Cypriot point of view, Seferis’ Cyprus poems were not nearly political and propagandistic enough at the time , the time of the armed “ National Liberation Struggle” and the first two executions. Even if we make allowances for cultural differences - in terms of comparative levels of patriotism, overt passion and commitment, and of what is expected of “national” poets at a time of crisis- critics like Aris Diktaios, Timos Malanos and others expressed their disappointment with Seferis’ Cyprus volume; they expected much more, especially in that emotional climate, as Pavlou points out.

Some Cypriots felt his poetry and even his official diplomatic responsibilities were compromised by his many friendships with English people. Savvas Pavlou records the views and criticisms of some cynics that the award (or at least British support for his award) of the Nobel Prize for Literature forty years ago was in some way a reward for his help (for the pressure the Greek delegation exerted on Makarios in meetings at the Greek Embassy), in bringing the Cyprus problem “to a close”, through his involvement in the 1959 London Lancaster House negotiations and the signing of the agreement. Conspiracy theories never die.

A more overtly political poet like Ritsos treated Cypriot events and the Cyprus theme more directly , as in Farewell Greetings- the last hours of Grigoris Afxentiou inside the Burning Cave (Afxentiou died in March 1957). He was finally killed when the British soldiers attacked the cave with petrol bombs.

Perhaps Ritsos presented a different problem, as he was a Communist, and it is my understanding that Grivas and the EOKA movement was more to the right than the left of the political spectrum. Richard Clogg states on p.150 of A Concise History of Greece, CUP, 1992, that General Grivas “led an unsavoury anti-Communist organization (known as ‘Chi’) during the occupation and its aftermath”. That’s another contested space that I have neither the knowledge nor the time to deal with.

I would like to finish by quoting the first line of Ritsos’ poem, Apochairetismos:

Fifty years after Durrell and Seferis first went to Cyprus, I hope we can discuss these issues dispassionately, in spite of the tragic developments that followed.

Both writers became embittered and defensive about public perceptions and journalistic accusations/insinuations concerning their official roles in Cypriot political events (Durrell concerning his Government House position in Cyprus, Seferis concerning his role in the Greek Embassy and at Lancaster House in London concerning the Zurich-London negotiations).

Both of them may have felt that they had compromised themselves as artists in respect of their roles in Cypriot affairs. Edmund Keeley writes (Inventing Paradise, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1999, p. 236) that “One of his biographers reports that by 1957, after his book on Cyprus, Bitter Lemons , appeared, Durrell felt that he had compromised himself too much ever to return to the island or to Greece. No source is given for these sentiments.”

What is our own judgement to be ? Perhaps all we can do is to refer our findings to the Cyprus Reconciliation Commission or its research groups, once established, whose task it will be to promote a dispassionate dialogue regarding the past, by addressing, inter alia, historical perspectives, experiences and memories.

Thessaloniki, 1980-1985

By Jim Potts (translated into Greek by Sakis Serefas, for the winter issue of “Endefktirio” (January 2004), edited by George Cordomenidis; to accompany the two Thessaloniki-inspired poems “Na ta poume?” and “Gaida-Man”)

When I think of Thessaloniki now, I think of our house in Panorama rather than our apartment on the parallia, on Leoforos Vasileos Konstandinou, where we lived for a year, very close to the White Tower. The cafes may have been more fashionable down-town, but the parking and pollution was more problematic. In Panorama the baker made the most wonderful fresh bread; I can still smell it, warm, crisp, straight from the oven. We used to go for long walks down to a little stream in the pine-woods behind and below our house: it’s probably all built-up now, following so many unexplained forest-fires and tree-fellings. Once, when we still lived on the sea-front, we were invited to a black-tie event in Panorama. We set out in our car just as a sudden, heavy snow-storm started, and we had to stop half way up the hill, to try to put chains on the wheels; I was wearing nothing but a black dinner-jacket and dress-shirt , which was soon covered with mud. In spite of that kind of risk, we never regretted moving.

I think of Molho’s bookshop on Tsimiski, of Pinewood Schools, of the Fish Market at Stoa Karasou at Christmas, of the Olympos Naoussa Restaurant, I think of Sani, Ouranoupolis, Mount Athos, of amazing Byzantine mosaics, icons and frescoes as much as the gold wreaths from the Royal Tombs of Vergina. I think of Saint Dimitrios as well as of Alexander the Great. (“It’s a pity the fella from Pella/Didn’t listen to Aristotle/He would have conquered the rest of the world/ If he hadn’t kept hitting the bottle”). Later, when I was working in Prague, I could never forget that Cyril and Methodius had set out from Thessaloniki.

I was Regional Director for Northern Greece from 1980-1985, so I often visited other towns like Veroia, Kavala, Kastoria, Alexandroupolis, Xanthi, Vergina, Philippi, Drama, Naousa, Serres, Edessa, Kozani, Florina. I remember driving through another snow-storm on the way to Florina, with a small book exhibition and an instant cocktail party with plates of food and clinking bottles in the back of the car. I would have been alright if I’d got stuck in a snow-drift.

In those days the neighbouring countries were still Communist, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania. How the world changed only four or five years after we left Thessaloniki for Czechoslovakia.

I often think of academics like Professor Andronikos (who won a British Council scholarship for postgraduate study at Oxford), like Prof Vokotopoulos and his wonderful wife Julia Vokotopoulou, (who excavated ancient Vitsa, near Monodendri, Epirus, and near our own mountain hideaway). I often think of others like Professors Politi (whom I met again in a Delphi Symposium in September) and so many generous people with whom I had the good fortune to work or collaborate- or simply to know socially.

I think of seminars we helped to organize together, on topics as varied as The Causes and Effects of Pollution, or the Restoration of Traditional Buildings and Settlements.

I think of wonderful writers like Nikos Kokantzis, Klitos Kyrou, Zoe Karelli, of painters like Polycleitos Rengos.

I think of events we organized, like an unforgettable recital of Greek songs by Aliki Kayaloglou, a concert by Magna Carta, a poetry reading by Yannis Ritsos at the Radio City Cinema on 23 October 1984, a dinner party with William Golding and Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis the week before Golding won his Nobel Prize, inspiring lectures by George Savvidis, Jina Politi, poetry-readings by Glyn Hughes- especially of his poem “Petralona Man” written at Petralona Cave after our visit there together-, D M Thomas, Dannie Abse, Tony Harrison, Alan Sillitoe, Ruth Fainlight, Willie Russell and Malcolm Bradbury.

I think of free jazz music played by Sakis Papadimitriou , Floros Floridis and innovative British musicians, of recitals by musicians as varied as Domna Evnouhidou and Sotiria Bellou. I think of fish tavernas, orchard-fresh apples, peaches and cherries, the bitterly cold Vardari wind, of the International Film Festival, of my office colleagues (and friends), like Tasoula, Roulis , Alkis, Dora , Dimitris, Anna, Liana, Luke and all the others , of other friends like Katy (now Professor and Vice-Chancellor) and Mercos Kambitoglou, Bill and Anne Lilley and their unforgettable daughter Catherine (my daughter’s best friend),of Roulis and Elizabeth Heliotis. I could make a long list, and I would like to do so if I had the space: it is the best way to remember good times, happy experiences, a great city.

I think of how different Thessaloniki seemed from the Greece we knew, Corfu in particular. A different atmosphere and temperament, very Macedonian, unAthenian , but this is an unfashionable generalization and form of stereotyping. The Rough Guide says that Thessaloniki ”has a very different feel to Athens: more Balkan-European and modern, less Middle Eastern” (Greece, p.305) ……

How does Thessaloniki compare with other cities in which I’ve lived and worked, London, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Prague, Sydney, Stockholm ?

It is certainly one of the cities I’ve always considered as an ideal place for retirement, although it’s far from being a retirement town, it’s far too full of young people and a vibrant sense of street-life, night-life, stimulating discussions and endless possibilities. I would like to retire (or rather start again) in Thessaloniki because of its rich cultural life and its proximity to the sea. It can boast an excellent university (I registered as a PhD candidate with the Aristoteleian University of Thessaloniki). I would have been happy to stay on in Thessaloniki, although I’m glad I did not miss Prague in the period leading up to the Velvet Revolution. It’s a great feeling to know that we’re all in the European Union, from Stockholm (where I live now), to London and Thessaloniki (and Prague in 2004). I am happy that the EU can contain and celebrate such cultural and linguistic diversity. Our favourite postings have been Thessaloniki, Sydney and Prague. The Czechs and the Greeks both take their poets seriously as important, respected, beloved national figures. That’s a sign of true civilization for me ! The fact that Greek cooking has always been my favourite (especially Corfiot and Thessaloniki cuisine; my wife is Greek, remember !), and that I have always loved Greek music (rebetika and Theodorakis) as much as the blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and Bob Dylan, means that I always feel close to paradise when I manage to find that perfect combination of sea, sun, poetry, music, good friends and good food. Thessaloniki offers all of that and more (a pity about the traffic, the pollution and the parking). Having Halkidiki almost on the doorstep is a huge advantage, although the road to Ouranoupolis was pretty rough when we used to go there a lot in the early eighties. Wind-surfing in Sani was a special pleasure.

It’s strange how literature and songs can influence and even modify some of one’s own memories, the essays of Georgos Ioannou, the poems of Manolis Anagnostakis and the beautiful songs that Theodorakis made of some of them:

”Dromoi palioi pou agapisa kai misisa ateleiota…”

The old Thessalonikis may have gone for good, but their memories and buried layers of associations break through and live on in our consciousness. The Romans, the Turks, the Jews.

But there is also the Thessaloniki with more violent associations , of war, refugees, occupation, reprisals (I think of Hortiatis), even terrorism. My office, then in Proxenou Koromila, endured a terrorist bomb explosion on 27 May, 1981, at 3.13 am, which had a huge impact on our cultural and educational operations. ELA claimed responsibility at the time, in a letter to the press, with the chilling threat “Death to All Bosses”.

We carried on regardless and reopened at the corner of Tsimiski and Ethnikis Aminis 9. The British Council boasted two Library Floors then, as well as a spacious Lecture/Recital Hall. Eight floors in all: I spent the whole of one long summer supervising the building project, and we completed the whole project exactly on budget, even though we had started with a concrete skeleton.. Our Legal Adviser Mercos Kambitoglou was a tremendous help. We were able to celebrate the Council’s fiftieth anniversary in style, in 1984. In 1985 I was transferred to Athens to be the Acting Director of The British Council, Greece, during the period when Athens was Cultural Capital of Europe.

Cultural relations is all about continuing dialogue, genuine curiosity, sincere interest, mutual respect. I hope my two poems reveal something of that spirit.

My biggest regret ? That I never did climb Mount Olympus. But on a clear day we had a splendid view across the Thermaic Gulf to the summit of the mountain, from our house in Panorama. That’s some consolation.

Vitsa is probably the most beautiful of the forty-five scattered stone-built Zagori villages in the Pindos mountains of Epirus. Not far north of Ioannina, the village (which consists of Upper and Lower Vitsa), in Central Zagori , situated at an altitude of around 1000 metres above sea level , is noted for its architectural integrity, its stunning topographical position above the dramatic Vikos Gorge , the wonderful quality of the light and air, and inspiring panoramic views over Mitsikeli’s wooded mountain ranges. The village is situated at the heart of a conservation area , the Vikos-Aoos National Park .

The stone-roofed houses, the cobbled paths (kalderimia) and elegant old stone bridges built by master-craftsmen, the Byzantine churches with their wonderful wall-paintings, the walks down to the gorge (or longer treks through the gorge), the wild flowers in Spring and vibrant colours in Autumn, the totality of the architecture and the wild, unspoilt natural landscape, as well as the excellent, reasonably-priced tavernas, make up for the sense of remoteness and lack of some amenities such as a village shop. The bustling city of Ioannina, with its airport , University and Teaching Hospital, is only 35 minutes away by car.

There is nowhere better to relax than under the huge old plane-tree in the village square. Many of Vitsa’s centuries old mansions and houses have been tastefully restored in recent years.

The traditional Sarakatsan pasture-grounds above Monodendri lead to some extraordinary vantage points like Oxya where the sheer vertical cliffs, deeply eroded limestone walls where the Voidomatis River has cut the deep gorge, can be seen to best advantage. The view from Saint Paraskevi Nunnery is equally spectacular, for those who do not suffer from vertigo. The earliest pastoral peoples in Homeric times pastured their herds in this region during the summer. The archaeological remains of the settlement of ancient Vitsa (9^th century to 4^th century BC), discovered in 1965, can still be seen above the present-day village. When walking down towards the gorge, the silence is only disturbed by the magical sounds of the goats’ bells. Looking back towards the village, it seems as if the houses and roofs have become one with the natural rock formations.

“Few parts of Greece are more surprising, or more beguiling, than Zagori…The beauty of its landscapes is unquestionable…..the last place that one would expect to find some of the most imposing architecture in Greece” (Greece, The Rough Guide, p 278).

“The region of Zagoria, north of Ioannina, offers some breathtaking vistas….With winding, cobbled and stepped streets, the villages could have leapt straight out of a Grimm fairy tale.” (Lonely Planet, Greece, p 335-336)

“Whenever their talk veered to their summer pastures in the Zagora, all their eyes lit up like those of the children of Israel at the thought of Canaan, and all spoke at once. What pigeons, what hares! You didn’t need wine there- the air made you drunk; and as for the shade, the grass, the trees and the water- why the water came gushing out of the living rock as cold as ice, you couldn’t drink it it was so cold, and you could drink it by the oka, and feel like a giant….Words failed them.” (Roumeli, Travels in Northern Greece, Patrick Leigh Fermor, p. 60).

“Europe’s most outstanding area of natural beauty. The wild flowers, including over 50 varieties of orchids, are an absolute joy.” www.travelux.co.uk

“Vikos Gorge is one of the most breathtaking natural sites in all of Greece and one of the largest and finest gorges in Europe.” http://www.epcon.gr/metsovo/10vicos/vicos.htm

It is not surprising that Paxos is “Cultural Village of Europe” for 2004. Paxos is one of eleven other European villages (like Aldeburgh and Wijk aan Zee) currently participating in this inspiring movement.

My wife’s mother , Penelope Bogdanou (Poppy, “of Barboula”) , came from Bogdanatika, a village not far from Gaios, the main port of Paxos (also called Paxoi, Paxi and Paxo!). Her relatives and ancestors are all buried in the lovely churchyard of Saint Paraskevi. My wife still has two small plots of land in the area, one an olive grove near the Ostrias escarpment, the other in the village of Bogdanatika itself. We've been talking about building a house for over thirty years. We can never make up our minds. Once we were put off because AGIP was planning to drill for oil and using the nearby football pitch for its base camp, another time because a neighbouring taverna had put powerful loudspeakers up in olive trees right next to our plot. There always seem to be border disputes on Paxos, which is why everyone is so anxious to keep their initials or symbols of ownership freshly-painted on every olive tree (and on any other type of tree, or rock, that might one day be in dispute, it seems).

Lawrence Durrell used to visit Paxos from neighbouring Corfu. Few will forget the opening words of his classic book, Prospero’s Cell, as he approached the Ionian Islands and became aware of islands "coming out of the darkness" to meet him:

“Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins.....You enter Greece as one might enter a dark crystal; the form of things becomes irregular, refracted. Mirages suddenly swallow islands, and wherever you look the trembling curtain of the atmosphere deceives….. Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder- the discovery of yourself.”

The late Arthur Foss described Paxos in his book, The Ionian Islands (Faber, London,1969) and suggested that it offered little but obscurity as a way of life:

“About six and a half miles long and up to a mile and a half wide, Paxos – remote, serene, content – lies ten miles south of Cape Asprokavos, Corfu’s most southerly point. The island is barely known to history. No famous cities or temples have been built on its rocky shores, no despots or philosophers have brought renown to its name. Vulnerable to pirates and slavers, the only protection for its few inhabitants – today probably no more than about three thousand altogether- has been its remoteness from the highway of events, its almost conscious acceptance of obscurity as a way of life.”

There is an interesting passage quoted by Martin Garrett in A Literary Companion to Greece (Garrett p. 93) from Viscountess Emily Anne Strangford’s, The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863, (London, 1864, p 57). The Viscountess claimed that here was "no earthly thing to see or do at Paxo":

“We spent the next wind-bound day in laborious idleness, as there is no earthly thing to see or do at Paxo, and it was too hot, till late in the evening, even to walk along the unaccountably numerous stone paths of the island. Paxo, in fact, may be briefly described as a construction of stone walls, stone paths, and olive trees; no other green thing is visible, and scarcely one single clod of earth.”

Things have certainly changed a lot since 1863 and very dramatically so since the late 1960's, when I first visited Paxos (1967) and when Arthur Foss published his account (1969). Paxos has offered a warm welcome to scores of poets, novelists, musicians, philosophers and culturally-inclined visitors and holiday-makers over the last thirty five years. There is a Paxos International Music Festival every September. The jazz musician and composer Graham Collier wrote a jazz suite about Paxos, called “Lakka, Logos and Gaios”.

It can be hard for the outsider to find old-time Paxiot culture, such as this local version of a wedding song (sung after the toasting rhyme, “Axios einai o gambros , kai angelos einai i nyphi” - "The Bridegroom is worthy, and the Bride's an angel")

For a comprehensive description of traditional nineteenth century Paxiot cultural life the book Paxos und Antipaxos by Archduke Salvator is the main source. The Archduke had this to say (p.82) about Paxiot music (in the period c 1884-1885) to accompany dancing :

“The Paxiots, like all Greeks, have a special love of music. The violin and the mandolin are the two chief musical instruments. More recently the bouzouki, the lute and some guitars known as tambouras”.

He explains they are mostly played at dances, panegyris, ecclesiastical festivals and weddings. The Paxiots dance various types of dances, in both the Corfiot and the most lively Albanian styles, he says, and he talks about the Kalamatianos dance.

Edward Lear, wrote about Paxo (sic) in his Views from the Seven Ionian Islands, 1863:

“Only five miles long and two wide, Paxo is the smallest of the Seven Islands. It is hilly, and its gray rocks are nearly everywhere covered with olive-woods. Many small so-called villages are scattered over its surface, but most of them, excepting Lacca and Longone, which are on the sea-shore, are little more than groups of a few cottages hidden among feathery olives. Indeed , from the center and the highest point of the Island nothing is seen but a dense covering of foliage; and even when, in following the rock-hewn paths which intersect these woods, you come upon the churches and stone-built dwellings, you only perceive them, as it were, through a veil of thin branches and leaves, the olive-trees of Paxo not being massy and dark like those of Corfu, but straggling and long-armed.

On the west and south the coast rises from the sea in cliffs rarely superseded in grandeur, their base containing many a dark, hollow cave, the resort of numerous seals.

We shouldn’t forget that Lear’s primary claim to fame was not only as an artist but also as a nonsense and limerick writer:

Constantine Trypanis, the scholar and poet who was Professor of Byzantine and Medieval Greek at Oxford and then Professor of Classics at Chicago, has a wonderful poem about Paxoi and the celebration of the Virgin Mary which is held , with a fiesta, on August 15th each year on the little Panaghia island just off Gaios:

I have also written some poems of my own about Paxos, directly or indirectly; several of them deal with environmental themes and the desecration of the cultural landscape as a result of insensitive development. My wife once wrote to Melina Mercouri, then Greek Minister of Culture, to plead for her intervention in the conservation of some of the island's most vulnerable ancient stone cisterns.

Kostis Palamas once wrote a poem called "Song of the Seven Islands", which was translated by Ian Scot-Kilvert and quoted by Arthur Foss at the beginning of The Ionian Islands. I've always liked it:

A wonderful poem, but too often writers and poets have dealt with the Ionian Islands as a group (although there are many more than seven islands). It is time that we focused our attention on the individual characteristics of Paxos as well as of the other islands. Perhaps that will be one positive outcome of Paxos being "Cultural Village of Europe" for 2004, the year of the Greek Olympic Games. Local Paxiot poets and writers like Spiros Bogdanos (cf his poetry collection Kantsones and two collections of short stories, among other works) keep the flame alive. Two other short stories about Paxos have always been amongst my favourities, “One Less Octopus at Paxos”, by Russell Hoban and “The American’s Christmas” , from “Kroustallenia”, by Antonis Travlantonis.

As far as Paxos is concerned, the great god Pan is not dead, whatever Plutarch reported ! If you listen very carefully, you can still hear the sound of his syrinx – the seven-caned shepherd’s pipe he is said to have invented- while you watch the nymphs and satyrs dance.

“Swedish Reflections, Beowulf to Bergman”

Introduction by Jim Potts

END. If time: Sto periyiali to krifo, again.

Thessaloniki, 1980-1985

”Dromoi palioi pou agapisa kai misisa ateleiota…”