Philip Sherrard
The Marble
Threshing Floor
Studies in
Modern Greek Poetry
Since its emergence as an independent nation during the first decades of the nineteenth century Greece has produced a succession of poets of whom any country would be proud. Their poetry has behind it the majestic and awe-inspiring worlds of ancient Greece and Byzantium, as well as the centuries-old tradition of folk song and ballad; and each of these poets has drawn upon this background in various ways. At the same time their imaginations have been enriched through contact with other European cultures. It is this fusion of the local and the cosmopolitan that gives their poetry its unique quality, at once characteristically Greek and universal in its relevance.
In this book Philip Sherrard examines the poetry of five of Greece's major poets: Dionysios Solomos, Costis Palamas, C. P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos and George Seferis. Working from the centre outwards, he explores the inner struggle that issues in the complex pattern of the poetry, introducing the reader to each poet's imaginative world and giving access to the experience of life to which the poetry bears witness.
The Marble Threshing Floor, when first published over 50 years ago, was something of a pioneering venture, for apart from an article or two that had appeared in scattered journals, John Mavrogordato's translation of Cavafy's poetry and Romilly Jenkins' biography of Solomos, no other study in English existed of the works of these poets. Since then much has changed: modern Greek poetry is well established as a significant voice and full scale translations and studies of the poets' works have made them accessible to those who cannot read them in the original Greek. Nevertheless, despite the present availability of more modern evaluations and critiques of these poets, Sherrard's central interpretation of their poetry as well as the assessment of its distinctive quality are still valid and worth affirming, and in a distinctive way, a way which was to characterize his later writing, help to reveal the imaginative patterns that lie at the roots of the life of the Greek people.
'In the hurly-burley of modern criticism, it is a delight to find a book like this, firm lucid, coherent, written in excellent English and inspired by a feeling and respect for poetry which carry the reader away by their passion and their candour.' Sir Maurice Bowra, The Times Literary Supplement.
'Thrusting to one side the easy themes of prosody, technique and biography, Mr Sherrard wrestles with the dangerous daemons of inspiration. Nobody without his knowledge of the Greek language, history and thought could have attempted such a feat, and it needed deep penetration and poetic insight to carry it off. It is a lonely triumph of great and lasting value.' Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Sunday Times.
This book is a reprint of the 1956 edition published by Vallentine, Mitchell & Co, Ltd., London, with amendments in some of the translations of the poetry of Cavafy.
- 258 pages, 21.0 x 14.0 cm, sewn pages, 1992