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George Seferis
George Seferis (the pen name of Georgios
Seferiades) was born in 1900 inUrla, near Smyrna,
in Asia Minor. His father, Stelios Seferiadis, was
a lawyer and later a professor at the University
of Athens. In 1914 the family moved to Athens,
where Seferis completed his secondary school
education. He then moved to Paris to study Law
at the Sorbonne, from 1918 to 1925. While Seferis
was studying in Paris, Smyrna was taken by the
Turkish Army, in September 1922, after a two-
year Greek military campaign on Anatolian soil.
Many Greeks, including Seferis’s family, fledAsia
Minor. Seferis would not visit Smyrna again until
1950, and his sense of exile ultimately informed
much of his poetry and his particular interest in
The Odyssey
.
Seferis returned to Athens in 1925. He was
admitted to the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in 1926, the beginning of a long and
successful diplomatic career, and married Maria
Zannou (‘Maro’) on 10 April 1941, the eve of the
German invasion of Greece. During the Second
World War, Seferis accompanied the Free Greek
Government in exile to Crete, Egypt, SouthAfrica,
and Italy, finally returning to liberated Athens in
1944. He continued to serve in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs after the war, and held diplomatic
posts in Ankara and London. He was appointed
ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq,
and was Royal Greek Ambassador to the United
Kingdom from 1957 to 1961. He retired inAthens
after returning from London.
Seferis first visited Cyprus in November 1953.
He immediately fell in love with the island,