Overview
The radiant light of Greece-its landscape and poetry-as witnessed in the dark years when it was almost extinguished.In the looming shadow of an oppressive dictatorship and imminent world war, George Seferis, George Katsimbalis, and other poets and writers from Greece's fabled Generation of the Thirties welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together they explored the Peloponnesus, swam off island beaches, and considered the meaning of Greek life and freedom. They seemed to be inventing paradise. In this evocative synthesis of personal memoir, literary criticism, and interpretative narrative, Edmund Keeley explores the poetry, friendships, and politics that made those extraordinary encounters so vital.
For Miller and Durrell, the journey into Greece transformed their art and their lives, and in response they wrote some of their most important work. For the Greek poets, it reconfirmed their sense of the vitality of their own country and helped to sustain them during the harsh seasons to come. As Keeley shows, their eloquence, courage, and dedication kept the greatness of Greece alive when the German occupation, a violent civil war, and the depredations of mass tourism threatened to destroy it. Other writers later drew on the invented paradise of these good friends and reimagined it for the future. This remarkable work of cultural history and imaginative criticism is a crowning achievement from one of our finest literary interpreters.
Edmund Keeley was awarded a 1999 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Editorials
Library Journal
Keeley, a noted scholar and translator of Greek poetry, has written an interesting blend of biography, travel guide, and literary criticism. Focusing on Henry Millers and Lawrence Durrells love affair with the Greek isles and their warm friendships with George Katsimbalis (as seen in Millers Collosus of Marousi), George Seferis, and other poets, Keeley celebrates this little band of friends who together...worked to create their individual images of an earthly paradise against the backdrop of the coming war. For Keeley, the spirit of this closely knit group kept poetry alive in Greece and served as a ray of light during the dark days of the German occupation. In return, argues Keeley, their encounter with Greece liberated the imaginations of these writers and provided them with paradisal models for future works. Quirky and unusual, this book is more fun to read than you might expect, and Keeley does make his case. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYBooknews
Drawing heavily on the diaries, journals, and correspondence of writers Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, and a number of Greek poets, the author synthesizes literary criticism, cultural history, and personal intellectual memoir. Central to his discourse is the effect of the interactions of Greek poets Seferis, Katsimbalis, and others with their foreign visitors on the construction of the meaning of Greek culture and history as it related to their art. The period under question, according to the author, witnessed the rediscovery of the spirit and genius of classical Greece within the language and gestures of a living culture. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Richard Eder
...[A] wonderfully personal hybrid: part history, part literary evocation, part memoir and most of all a travel journal....[P]oetry...is the heart of the book....Writing of present and past...Professor Keeley has made a complex and illuminating connection.— The New York Times