1 P310, from the 1950 edition of his poems; for this edition see also ‘Appendix: The dateline of “The Last Day”‘.

2 P327; more specifically to Il. 6.457 and Thuc. 7.87.

3 For Seferis’ references to Thucydides, with the first implicit one in his poetry being traced in ‘Letter of Mathios Paskalis’, see Tambakaki, P., ‘Διαβάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη: о Σεφερης ως “ποιητής ιστορικός’”, Κ: Περιοδικό κριτικής , Àoyoteví’aç кои τεχνών 10 (2006) 84-7Google Scholar.

4 For the Homeric elements in Seferis’ poetry see Ricks, D., The Shade of Homer: A Study in Modern Greek Poetry (Cambridge 1989) 119-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Padel, R., ‘Homer’s reader: A reading of George Seferis’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, new series 31 (1985) 74–132 Google Scholar.

5 Longenbach, J., ‘“Mature poets steal”: Eliot’s allusive practice’, in Moody, A. D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (Cambridge 1994) 176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Beaton, R., George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel. A Biography (London 2003) 181 Google Scholar.

7 Two poems carry datelines after the invasion of Poland by the forces of the German Reich, on 1 September 1939: ‘Les anges sont blancs’ (‘Nov. ‘39’), and ‘The King of Asine’ (‘summer ‘38-Jan. ‘40); for the latter see also pp. 231-2 below.

8 Clogg, R., A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge 2002) 117 Google Scholar.

9 See Yatromanolakis, Y., ‘O βααιλιάς της Ασίνης’: η ανασκαφή ενός ποιήματος (Athens 1986) 19–21 Google Scholar, 27-8, and Beaton, George Seferis, 161. For the fact that the censorship department banned the poem rather than that Seferis himself decided not to include it in the collection see M4.347-8, and Kokolis, X. A., Σεφερικά (Athens 1980) 39–40 Google Scholar (also p. 229 below). For the question of the dateline of the poem see ‘Appendix’.

10 The question is inevitably of a comparative character: what made this poem more dangerous than, for example, ‘The Return of the Exile’ or ‘Spring AD’? The answer to this question is of course beyond the scope of this paper, but some hints will be given below (see especially n. 51 and ‘Appendix’).

11 Cf.Laoumtzi, S., ‘К. П. Καβάφης-Γ. Σεφερης και δημοτικό τραγούδι’, in Pieris, M. (ed.), Γιώργος Σεφέρης. To ζύγιασμα της καλοσυνης (Athens 2004) 284-5Google Scholar. This folk-song may have offered Seferis a sort of Theognidean σφραγίς regarding his identity (see Pratt, L., ‘The seal of Theognis, writing, and oral poetry’, American Journal of Philology 116.2 (1995) 171-84CrossRefGoogle Scholar), since in its full form (see G. P. Savvidis’ note, P327; cf. also M3.96) the word ‘σεφέρι’ (= expeditionary force, campaign; in other contexts, also journey) appears.

12 See Vitti, M., Φθορά кш λόγος: εισαγωγή στην ποίηση του Γιώργου Σεφερη (Athens 1989) 148 Google Scholar, with bibliography.

13 About Seferis’ notion of ‘emotional weight’ see Tambakaki, P., The ‘Musical Poetics’ of George Seferis: A Test Case in the Relationship of Modernist Poetry to Music (unpublished doctoral thesis, King’s College, University of London, 2007) 164-75Google Scholar.

14 See Kokolis, X. A., Πίνακας Αεξεων των Ποιημάτων του Γιώργου Σεφέρη (Athens 1975)Google Scholar, and “Αε’ξεις-άπαξ”: στοιχείο υφους. Θεωρητική εξέταση και καταγραφή στα Πονήματα τοο Γ. Σεφερη (Athens 1975).

15 Hornblower, S., Thucydides and Pindar (Oxford 2004) 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Instone, S. J. and Spawforth, A. J. S., ‘Agones’ in Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. (eds), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn (Oxford 1996)Google Scholar.

17 Although all traceable translations into Greek date from the post-war years, Mein Kampf was undoubtedly well known in the 1930s; cf. R. C. K. Ensor’s lecture given at Chatham House on 4 May 1939 and the characterization of the book as ‘the best best-seller in the world’ (‘“Mein Kampf” and Europe’, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939), 18.4 (1939) 478-96). I thank Philip Carabott for information on the issue. For the ‘heroic visions’ of the 1930s see also below. We must also keep in mind that the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were organized with the aim of showing the supremacy of the Aryan race.

18 For Mythistorema 16 see Maronitis, D. N., H ποίηση τον Γιώργου Σεφέρη: μελέτες кал μο.θήμανχ (Athens 1984) 65–85 Google Scholar; for Gymnopaidia see Tambakaki, P., “Γυμνοπαιδίες” Γιώργου Σεφερη-Ερίκ Σατί. Στιγμιότοποί μιας πνεοματικής επικοινωνίας (Athens 2002)Google Scholar.

19 See Savvidis, G. P., ‘To τραγικό όραμα του Γ.Σ.’, H λεξη 53 (1986) 280 Google Scholar.

20 D2.298, with D3.55; cf. also p. 232 below.

21 D3.29.

22 μή, φι’λθί φυχά, βίον άθάνατον / σπεΰδε, τάν ô’ εμπρακτον χντλει μαχανάν; trans. Race, W. H. (Pindar, Loeb edn, I (Cambridge, Mass., 1997))Google Scholar. Note the use by Seferis of lines 21-3 from the same Ode as epigraph to ‘Erotikos Logos’. For a connection between this part of Pindar’s Ode with Thucydides see Hornblower, Thucydides and Pindar, 73-4.

23 The title of this article points exactly to this aspect, with a further acknowledged debt to Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford 1980)Google Scholar.

24 Cf. Kokolis, Σεφερικά, 36.

25 See indicatively ‘Our Sun’ from the same collection Logbook I; also Mytbistorema 15 and ‘Summer Solstice’, 11.

26 See indicatively Mytbistorema 22: ‘θα μπορεσουμε να πεθάνουμε κανονικά;’ (15).

27 See Griffin, J., Homer: The Odyssey, 2nd edn (Cambridge 2004) 78 Google Scholar, and Hornblower, S., A Commentary on Thucydides, I (Oxford 1991) 241-2Google Scholar, with bibliography.

28 For a discussion on the term see Beaton, R., ‘The history man’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 10.1-2 (1983) 23–44 Google Scholar.

29 For Seferis as ‘ποιητής ιστορικός’ see Tambakaki, ‘Διοφάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη’, 83-4; also Lavagnini, R., ‘Σεφέρης: ποιητής ιστορικός;’, in Οι ποιητες του Г.П. Σαββίδη (Athens 1998) 107-22Google Scholar, and Mackridge, P., ‘O κοίβαφικός Σεφερης’, in Pieris, M. (ed.) Γιώργος Σεφέρης. Φιλολογικες кал ερμηνευτικές προσΕγγίσεις. Δοκίμια εις μνήμην Γ.Π. Σαββίδη (Athens 1997) 107-22Google Scholar, with bibliography.

30 Lechonitis, G., Κχβαφικά αυτοσχΆια (Athens 1977 Google Scholar; first pub. 1942) 19-20; cf. D1.340.

31 Eliot, T. S., Selected Essays (London 1999 Google Scholar; first pub. 1932) 14.

32 Eliot, T. S., On Poetry and Poets (London 1957) 33 Google Scholar.

33 D1.340, 335.

34 D1.435.

35 6N.23.

36 6N.24.

37 6N.16. We cannot be sure whether this reference to the Apology 41e-42a, comes from the first draft of Six Nights, in 1926-8, or the second, in 1954. For the view that the reference to Thucydides may date from the first draft of Six Nights see Tambakaki, ‘Διαβάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη’, 84-7.

38 D1.46. In the Index to Dokimes this reference is missing; it does not appear either under ‘Plato’ or under ‘Socrates’.

39 D3.28.

40 D3.20.

41 See especially the Apology 28b-29a; for this passage see Plato, Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito , ed. Burnet, J. (Oxford 1924) 199–200 Google Scholar; also Plato, Apology , ed. Stokes, M. C. (Warminster 1997) 141-7Google Scholar; and Clarke, M., ‘Manhood and heroism’, in Fowler, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge 2004) 84 Google Scholar. See also Vitti, Φθορά και λόγος, 148 and 256 (especially in relation to the presence of Socrates in ‘Thrush’). The word Όρφανός (another hapax in Seferis’ poems) may have sounded ironic during Metaxas’ paternalistic dictatorship (Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 115), with the members of the National Youth Organisation (EON) singing in the streets: ‘We have but one father and chief: the Leader’ ( Petrakis, M., The Metaxas Myth: Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece (London 2005) 51)Google Scholar.

42 D2.224-5.

43 Cf. D1.435; see also p. 224 above.

44 Note that the lineation of the poem connects the children with the Homeric scene and separates them from the quarries (but not in the Keeley-Sherrard translation).

45 See Thuc. 5.100 and 116.

46 Thuc. 2.35-6.

47 See ‘Appendix’.

48 D3.34; see also Petrakis, The Metaxas Myth, 37. It is worth examining the history of the publication of J. Th. Kakridis’ commentary on the Funeral Oration in this respect (the preface to the first edition of Πρικλέους Επιτάφιος (Θουκυδ. II 34-46), ΚείμΒνο Μετάφραση ΣχαΑ,ια Επιλεγόμενα carries the dateline ‘Φλώρινα, Καλοκαίρι του 1937’).

49 Quoted in Petrakis, The Metaxas Myth, 148-9.

50 D3.35. Cf. Seferis’ description of Venizelos’ funeral, where he used the word ‘γέροντας’ (M3.31-2); see also Maronitis, H ποίηση του Γιώργου Σεφέρη, 115-8 (with 152-3, in relation to the funeral of Andreas Michalakopoulos); and Tambakaki, ‘Διαβάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη’, 91-2. As Peter Mackridge notes, there is no distinction in the meaning of the words ‘γέρος’ and ‘γέροντας’ in Seferis’ writing ( Mackridge, P., ‘O Στράτης Θαλασσινός συναντά τον θαλασσινό γέρο: о Σεφέρης στην Αίγυπτο’, Κονδυλοφόρος 4 (2005) 216-17)Google Scholar.

51 This may account for the fact that other poems, such as ‘The Return of the Exile’ and ‘Spring AD’, where no reference to the army appears, were not censored (cf. n. 10 above and ‘Appendix’). For a reference to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier see Seferis, G., Τετράδιο γυμνασμάτων, В’, 2nd edn (Athens 1993) 17 Google Scholar.

52 See Maronitis, H ποίηση του Γιώργου Σεφέρη, 124: [Ή τελευταία μερα’] απορρίπτει καταρχήν τη ρητορική προσφορά του ανθρώπου στην ιστορία. [...] H ψευδοηρωική αυτή παγίδα χρησιμοποιεί συνήθως αρχούα σύμβολα кои σύνεργα ηρωολογίας: την εποχή των στοίνροφόρων (θρησκευτικη κάλυψη της αυτοθυσίας) ή την εν-Σαλαμινι-ναυμαχία (πατριωτική κάλυψη της αυτοθυσίας)’. Cf. pp. 228-30 below regarding the issue of heroism.

53 For this issue see Mosse, G. L., The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford 1999)Google Scholar.

54 See p. 219 above.

55 It is perhaps no accident that in ‘Manuscript ‘41’ Seferis said how much he admired Dimitrios Glinos, one of the leading demoticists, when he was his teacher at high school; it was then, Seferis said, that he was taught the Apology (D3.24 and 20). Seferis’ reference aimed in fact to express his deep disappointment at Glinos’ views during the time of Orthodoxies’ (see pp. 224-5 above).

56 D 1.126-7.

57 Cf. also Eliot’s statement about allusiveness quoted above, p. 223; also Seferis’ views about the Erasmian pronunciation, precisely at the point where he speaks of the sense of history ( Keeley, E., Modern Greek Poetry: Voice and Myth (Princeton 1983) 183 Google Scholar, with D2.200).

58 ‘[...] πόσο διάφορα μπορεί να κρίνουν και va αισθάνουνται οι άνθρωποι σε διάφορες εποχές’ (D1.132-3).

59 Keeley, Modern Greek Poetry, 102-3 and Beaton, George Seferis, 162. The poem was read in translation by Edmund Keeley; Seferis read the Greek originals without commentary.

60 D3.262.

61 M4.348; see Appendix below.

62 Kokolis’ interpretation (Σεφερικά, 38) seems to agree with the reaction of the Harvard audience; for a different view see Maronitis, H ποι’ηση τοο Γιώργου Σεφερη, 121, though without further analysis.

63 See Savvidis, G. P., Μεταμορφώσεις του Ελπήνορα στην νέα ελληνική ποίηση. Απότον Έζρα Πάονντ στον Τάκη Σινόπουλο (Athens 1981) 15–22 Google Scholar, Keeley, Modern Greek Poetry, 53-67, and Vayenas, N., О ποιητής και о χορευτής: μια εξεταση της ποιητικής кал της ποίησης του Σεφέρη (Athens 1979) 271-5Google Scholar, but without reference to ‘The Last Day’.

64 D2.41.

65 D2.39: ‘δεν είνοα ήρωες, είναι Ελπήνορες. [...] ήρωες (ομηρική έννοια, όχι, για όνομα του θεού, καρλαϊλική)’. This reference to Carlyle by Seferis in 1949 is not irrelevant to the popularity of the Scottish historian, and especially of his book Heroes and Hero-worship, in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany (see how Carlyle was presented in an article of 1945: Schapiro, J. S., ‘Thomas Carlyle, prophet of fascism’, journal of Modern History 17.2 (June 1945) 97–115 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See also how Metaxas himself referred to Carlyle in his Diary on 1 September 1921: ‘About to finish reading Carlyle; I have had such a great book around me for so long and did not realize it’ (Diary III, 125, quoted in Vatikiotis, P. J., Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936-1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas (London 1998) 115-6)Google Scholar.

66 See indicatively ‘Agianapa I’ (with D3.166-7), ‘Summer Solstice’ 12, and ‘Thrush’, where it is Odysseus who attains to the light, not Elpenor; see Vayenas, О ποιητής και о χορευτής, 275-7. For the connection of light and darkness with knowledge, truth and madness in ancient Greek literature see Padel, R., In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Note what he wrote in his analysis of ‘Thrush’ in relation to his use there of the Apology: ‘I have a very organic feeling which identifies humanity with Greek nature’ (D2.54)) - this nature being depicted in ‘The Last Day’ by the images of the cypresses and the sea.

68 It is worth comparing these final lines of ‘The Last Day’ with the final lines of ‘Last Stop’ from Logbook II, which alludes to ‘The Last Day’ not least through its title, and is the only poem in which Seferis referred explicitly to heroes with the aphorism Όιήρωες προχωρούν στα σκοτεινά’ (95); see Maronitis, H ποίηση zoo Γιώργου Σεφερη, 110-1, and 128-9, where a comparison between the two poems is made, though without reference to the couple of ‘The Last Day’ as the ‘negative’ of Michalis.

69 D3.31.

70 Il. 3.380-448; for this scene, in comparison with the scene of Hector and Andromache in book 6, see Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, 6-8; also ibid. 5: ‘Paris it was who doomed Troy by choosing Aphrodite and the life of pleasure; and since Paris is the archetypal Trojan, the sin of Paris is one in which Troy is inextricably implicated.’ This also brings to mind Cavafy’s ‘Trojans’, a poem in which the emphatic repetition of the verb ‘αποφασίζω/decide’ is also reminiscent of the word ‘απόφαση’ in ‘The Last Day’. I thank David Ricks for both suggestions.

71 M4.99; cf. D2.50.

72 Griffin, Homer: The Odyssey, 78.

73 See M.85-92 and ‘Appendix’. Despite the many differences, the themes of inertia, waiting, surrender, even the return home of the people at the end of the poem might owe something to Cavafy’s ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’; see also n. 70 above. On patriotic poetry with reference to Aeschylus and Cavafy see D1.202.

74 M4.13.

75 D3.29-30.

76 Έλλάς• πυρ! Ελλήνων• πυρ! Χριστιανών πυρ! / Τρεις λέξεις νεκρές. Γιατί τις σκοτώσατε;’ (Άπό βλακεία’, Τετράδιο γυμνασμάτων, B’, 103, with D3.260).

77 Koà την εϊωθϋϊαν άξίωσιν τών όνομάτων ές та εργα. άντήλλιχξιχν τί/δικαιώσει (Thuc. 3.82.4); for the phrase see Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, I, 483, with bibliography.

78 See Tambakaki, ‘Διαβάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη’, 88.

79 ‘Eívott μνα πράξη και η ποίηση’ (D1.196). Cf. Maronitis, Ηποίηση του Γιώργοο Σεφε’ρη, 127: ‘“The Last Day” constitutes an answer by Seferis to the exhausted model of national poetry and the national poet’.

80 Ricks, The Shade of Homer, 158; for other references to Homer see P252 and Seferis, Τετράδιο γυμνασμάτων, В’, 42.

81 One may conjecture that the writing itself of ‘The King of Asine’ would have been different, if ‘The Last Day’ had not been omitted from the first edition of Logbook I. As he told T. S. Eliot, Seferis wrote the final form of ‘The King of Asine’ in January 1940, after two years’ gestation, ‘triggered by the necessity of filling two typographical pages which had been left blank’ (D2.203); see Yatromanolakis, ‘O βασιλιάς της Ασίνης’, 67-8, and Beaton, George Seferis, 182. Had ‘The Last Day’ not been censored, these two blank pages would not have existed.

82 Cf.Yatromanolakis, , ‘O βασιλιάς της Ασίνης’, 76, and Beaton, George Seferis, 182, with Σεφερης кои Μαρώ, Αλληλογραφία, Ä (1936-1940) , ed. Kopidakis, M. Z. (Heraklion 1989) 295 Google Scholar (photograph of Maro at Asine).

83 Cf. also Krikos-Davis, K., ‘The king of Asine, Makriyannis, Seferis and ourselves’, BMGS 25 (2001) 200 Google Scholar.

84 D3.18.

85 For the circumstances under which Seferis accepted this job see Beaton, George Seferis, 155-7.

86 Cf. Ibid., 159-61.

87 Kokolis (Σεφερικά, 40-1) explains why the ‘new’ dateline could be a mistake, on the grounds that the 1950 edition was not published under Seferis’ meticulous eye, since he was abroad. But even if this might apply to the 1950 edition, it does not offer a sufficient explanation as far as later editions are concerned.

88 See Beaton, George Seferis, 161.

89 For the connection of the two poems through the folk-song of ‘The Last Day’ and the metrical form of ‘Spring AD’, reminiscent of Maniat laments, see Laoumtzi, ‘K. Π. Καβάφης-Γ. Σεφερης και δημοτικό τροιγουδι’, 284-7.

90 See pp. 224-5 above.

91 κώ έπεπεσε πολλχ και γαλεπά [...] ταΐς πόλεσι, γιγνόμενα μεν κώ αίεί έσόμενα, εως άν ή οώτη φύσις άνθρώπων íjCThuc. 3.82.2); trans. Smith, C. F. (Thucydides, Loeb edn, II (Cambridge, Mass., 1930)Google Scholar).

92 See Tambakaki, ‘Διαβάζοντας τον Θουκυδίδη’, 92-6.

93 Cf. Vitti, Φθορά κοίΐ λόγος, 149, and Yatromanolakis, ‘О βασιλύς της Ασίνης’, 25. Cf. also p. 235 below.

94 See also Beaton, George Seferis, 446 (n. 12).

95 See Yatromanolakis, ‘О βασιλύς της Ασίνης’, 20.

96 See ibid. 20.

97 According to Genette, the ‘paratext’ consists of elements such as titles, prefaces and notes (what he calls ‘peritext’), and elements such as interviews, reviews, private letters, and other authorial and editorial discussions outside of the text in question (what he calls ‘epitext’). These elements on the threshold of a text help to direct its reception by its readers; see Genette, G., Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Lewin, J. E. (Cambridge 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 For the principle of άκρίβεια praised by Thucydides, and on the grounds of which he is regarded as the father of Objective’ history, see Thuc. 1.22.1, 2. For the question of the relationship of history and poetry as raised by Aristotle see Hornblower, S., ‘Introduction’ in Hornblower, S. (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford 1994) 33 Google Scholar, with bibliography; for recent contributions to the question of Thucydides’ Objective’ history see Rood, T., Objectivity and authority: Thucydides’ historical method’, in Rengakos, A. and Tsakmakis, A. (eds) Brill’s Companion to Thucydides (Leiden 2006) 225-49Google Scholar, and Greenwood, E., Thucydides and the Shape of History (London 2006)Google Scholar (especially the chapter ‘Speaking the truth’). Note also Seferis’ intention of expanding on a comparison between the style of Thucydides and Makriyannis; see Γράμματα Σεφέρη-Λορεντζάτον, ed. Triantaphyllopoulos, N. D. (Athens 1990) 83 Google Scholar, with Lorentzatos, Z., Μελετες, II (Athens 1994) 275-6Google Scholar. For the issue of poetry and fiction see Eagleton, T., How to Read a Poem (Maiden 2007) 31-8Google Scholar.

99 P314. See, indicatively, Beaton, R., ‘From mytbos to logos: The poetics of George Seferis’, JMGS 5.2 (1987) 135–52 Google Scholar and Maronitis, D. N., Πίσω-Μπρος: προτάσεις коч οποθέσεις για τη νεοελληνική ποίηση και πεζογροίφία (Athens 1986) 155-69Google Scholar (‘Μϋθος και ιστορία στο Ημερολόγιο καταστρώμ ατος, Γ”).

100 D1.139-44.

101 D1.389.