'The Painful Memory of Woe': Greek tragedy and the Greek Civil War in the work of George Seferis

This article deals with some of the poems by George Seferis (1900–71) that deploy the ethos and/or language of Greek (especially Aeschylean) tragedy to mythologize the events of the Greek Civil War (1944–49). This mythologizing process both triggers and conditions the reader’s reaction: s/he is invited to interpret contemporary history through patterns of meaning that derive from the most monumental classical myths and tragic texts. At the same time, by invoking Greek antiquity, the poems zoom out to provide a wide view, thereby detaching current events from their immediate context and re-inscribing them in the much larger framework of human history, thought, and culture. The poems examined include ‘Blind’ (December 1945), ‘Oedipal, ‘48’ (October 1948), and ‘Thrush’ (October 1946). It is shown how contemporary history is invested, in these poems, with the archetypal qualities of tragic myth. By the paradigmatic use of Greek (especially Aeschylean) tragedy Seferis helps define the interpretive framework of his poetry by providing insights into the worldview informing his stance towards the Greek Civil War and towards Greek tradition in general.