Three Secret Poems

The universalization of the poetry of George Seferis: the significance of English translations

“…Just one year after this new work appeared in Greece, Paul Merchant, without Seferis' consent, translated Three Secret Poems and published it in Modern Poetry in Translation. 39 Then in the winter of 1969, Peter Levi published a special issue of Agenda, in which Peter Thompson offered his translation. 40 Walter Kaiser, Harvard's Professor of English Literature, was scathing in his criticism of Thompson's translation, however, saying that it was written in a kind of non-English that was not faithful to the original Greek.…”