George Seferis: Collected Poems

From Seferis’ speech at the Swedish Academy

I belong to a small country. A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun. It is a small country, but its tradition is immense and has been handed down through the centuries without interruption. The Greek language has never ceased to be spoken. It has undergone the changes that all living things experience, but there has never been a gap. This tradition is characterized by love of the human; justice is its norm. In the tightly organized classical tragedies the man who exceeds his measure is punished by the Erinyes. And this norm of justice holds even in the realm of nature. “Helios will not overstep his measure”; says Heraclitus, “otherwise the Erinyes, the ministers of Justice, will find him out”. A modern scientist might profit by pondering this aphorism of the Ionian philosopher……In our gradually shrinking world everyone is in need of all the others. We must look for man wherever we can find him. When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: “man”. That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus.