�� The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes��: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis
| dc.contributor.author | Field, Roger | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2013-01-24T07:31:59Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2013-01-24T07:31:59Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The Greek poet George Seferis (1900-1971) spent 10 months in South Africa during WWII as a senior diplomatic official attached to the Greek government in exile. Drawing on his diary entries, correspondence and poetry this article challenges earlier interpretations of his work best described as a �synchronic panoptic vision� (Bhabha). Beginning with an exploration of the troubled relationship between the �glory that was Greece� and the failure of its early 20thcentury nationalist, expansionist and modernization projects, the article argues that Seferis tried to overcome alienation from landscape and a crisis of creativity in two ways: he transcribed and commented on Cavafy�s poetry, but was unable to resolve his relationship with the latter; by reaching down into the ruins of ancient Greece and back into its mythological past, through a process of negative displacement he transforms these crises into a descent to the world of the dead. Unlike Odysseus, he receives no guidance from its inhabitants, for they speak only the language of flowers and there are none. Accompanying Seferis� dual purpose use of classical mythology as national heritage and ironic device is a more problematic aspect of modernism � the relegation of Africa and its sub- Saharan inhabitants to a primitive otherness that, he felt, limited his ability to express himself, and which generated some of his greatest poetry. | en_US |
| dc.description.accreditation | Web of Science | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Field, R. (2012). �� The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes��: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis. English Studies in Africa, 55(1): 77-92 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.issn | 0013-8398 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10566/512 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.privacy.showsubmitter | FALSE | |
| dc.publisher | Taylor & Francis | en_US |
| dc.rights | This is the author's post-print version of an article published by Taylor & Francis. | |
| dc.source.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2012.682466 | |
| dc.status.ispeerreviewed | TRUE | |
| dc.subject | Seferis | en_US |
| dc.subject | poetry | en_US |
| dc.subject | Diaries | en_US |
| dc.subject | Exile | en_US |
| dc.subject | South Africa | en_US |
| dc.subject | Race | en_US |
| dc.subject | landscape | en_US |
| dc.subject | Odyssey | en_US |
| dc.subject | Hellenism | en_US |
| dc.subject | Greece | en_US |
| dc.title | �� The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes��: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |