2023 Lectures

1922-2022 Wherever I Go Greece Wounds Me: George Seferis

Van Dyck, Karen

It is a great honor to receive this doctorate from the English Department and in particular from the interdisciplinary MA in Translation at the University of Athens since translation is my passion. As my teacher and mentor, the much-loved translator Edmund Keeley, has just died at 94, I thought I would use this occasion to talk about one of his favorite poets, George Seferis, and to read with you one of his and Philip Shenard's translations: "In the Manner of G.S." with its haunting line: "Wherever I travel Greece wounds me" (Οπου και να ταξιδέψω η Ελλ.άδα με πληγώνει; opua kai na taksidepso i Ellada me pligonei) (52-3; Ποιήματα 99-101). I do this in memory of him, but also as a centennial tribute to the Asia Minor "Καταστροφή" (katastrofi; disaster) (1922-1923) and all those, then and now, who have been uprooted from their homes, ''unsettled" and ''unsettling others" (Said 53). It is a call to translate as a way to bring people together across languages and to retranslate when new times make new interpretations necessary.