William Palmer
Our Man In London
George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel
By Roderick Beaton
Yale University Press 512pp £25 order from our bookshop
Evgeny Zamyatin that 'real literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries'. Discuss - as they say - with reference to the life of George Seferis, the Greek poet.
A hard question. For many, the image of the poet is still fixed - nostalgically, and in the face of present evidence - as that of a free spirit who spurns convention and risks all for poetry and life. In his kork Seferis could indeed be passionate, evoking Greek history,
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