Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47 - Softcover

Keeley, Edmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810119390 ISBN 13: 9780810119390

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In the looming shadow of an oppressive dictatorship and imminent world war, George Seferis and George Katsimbalis, along with other poets and writers from Greece's fabled Generation of the 1930s, welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together, as they spent evenings in Athenian tavernas, explored the Peloponnese, swam off island beaches, and considered the meaning of Greek life, freedom and art, they seemed to be inventing paradise. In a lyrical blend of personal memoir, literary criticism, and interpretative storytelling, Edmund Keeley takes readers on a journey into the poetry, friendships and politics of this extraordinary time.

About this title

Review

"Writing of past and present, of Miller and Seferis, of Seferis and the gods and, occasionally, of himself and Seferis, Professor Keeley has made a complex and illuminating connection."
--Richard Eder, New York Times
"In this masterly weave of scholarship and personal experience, Keeley, a renowned translator of modern Greek poetry, uses letters, journals, and poems, and his own lucid prose to recreate the world of Miller's 'little band of friends' and track them through the war."
--New Yorker

About the Author

Edmund Keeley is the Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English Emeritus at Princeton University, where he served for some years as the director of the Creative Writing Program and of the Program in Hellenic Studies. The author of novels, poetry, and works of nonfiction, including Cavafy's Alexandria, he is also the noted translator of many important modern Greek poets; his translations of poetry earned him the Harold Morton Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets. In 1999 he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0810119390
• ISBN 13: 9780810119390
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290