Seferis, George (1900-1971), a Greek poet, won the 1963 Nobel Prize for literature. He was the first writer from Greece to receive the award. Seferis’s poems reflect his knowledge of Greek history and mythology. Several of his major poems predict major political events. Seferis introduced symbolism into modern Greek literature and translated many works into Greek, including the famous poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
Seferis gained immediate attention with his first book of poems, The Turning Point (1931). His other collections include George Seferis: Collected Poems 1924-1955 (published in 1967) and Three Secret Poems (1966). His literary diary A Poet’s Journal: Days of 1945-1951 was published in 1974, after his death.
Seferis was born in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). His real name was Georgios Stylianou Seferiades. His family settled in Athens in 1914. Seferis studied law in Paris from 1918 to 1924 and then joined the Greek diplomatic service. He wrote most of his works while serving as a diplomat in other countries. He served as Greece’s minister to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan from 1953 to 1956. He was Greece’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1956 to 1957 and ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1962.
