Centre for Romanian Studies

Poetry in Translation (CCV): Giorgos SEFERIS (1900 – 1971),
GREECE, “Just a little more ”, “Un pic mai mult”

George Seferis

Just a little more
Giorgos SEFERIS (1900 – 1971)

Just a little more
And we shall see the almond trees in blossom
The marbles shining in the sun
The sea, the curling waves.
Just a little more
Let us rise just a little higher.

Seferis: Collected Poems

Un pic mai mult
Giorgos SEFERIS (1900 – 1971)

Un pic mai mult
Şi o să vedem pomii înfloriţi,
Marmura sclipind în soare,
Marea şi valurile spumegând.
Un pic mai mult
Lăsaţi-ne să ne ridicăm puţin mai sus.

(Rendered in Romanian by Constantin ROMAN, London,
© 2013 Copyright Constantin ROMAN)

Seferis in London

SHORT BIO:
Seferis’s wide travels provide the backdrop and colour for much of his writing, which is filled with the themes of alienation, wandering, and death. Seferis’s early poetry consists of Strophe (Turning Point), 1931, a group of rhymed Lyrics strongly influenced by the Symbolists, and E Sterna (The Cistern), 1932, conveying an image of man’s most deeply felt being which lies hidden from, and ignored by, the everyday world. His mature poetry, in which one senses an awareness of the presence of the past and particularly of Greece’s great past as related to her present, begins with Mythistorema (Mythistorema), 1935, a series of twenty-four short poems which translate the Odyssean myths into modern idiom. In addition to poetry, Seferis has published a book of essays, Dokimes (Essays), 1962, translations of works by T.S. Eliot, and a collection of translations from American, English, and French poets entitled Antigrafes (Copies), 1965. Seferis’s collected poems (1924-1955) have appeared both in a Greek edition (Athens, 1965) and in an American one with translations en face (Princeton, 1967).