Seferis and Sophocles: Character is Fate

TWO POEMS FROM GEORGE SEFERIS, Translated from the Greek by Rex Warner:

EURIPIDES THE ATHENIAN

He lived and grew old between the burning of Troy

And the hard labour in Sicilian quarries.

He was fond of rocky caves along the beach;

Liked pictures of the sea;

The veins of man he saw as it were a net

Made by the Gods for trapping us like beasts.

This net he tried to pierce.

He was difficult in every way. His friends were few.

The time arrived and he was torn to pieces by dogs.

--George Seferis
PENTHEUS

Asleep he was filled with dreams of fruits and leaves;

Awake he was not permitted to pick one berry.

Sleep and wakefulness shared out his limbs to the Bacchae.

--George Seferis

My favorite lines from Sophocles' Oedipus the King, spoken by Oedipus himself, translated by Meineck & Woodruff:

But I see myself as a child of good-giving

Fortune, and I will not be demeaned.

She is my mother, the seasons my kin,

And I rise and fall like the phases of the moon.

That is my nature, and I will never play the part

Of someone else, nor fail to learn what I was born to be.

--Sophocles

Context, as usual, being everything.

The photos: Woad, Under--

Sculpture mix clay, blue and green glazing.

Ferry Point, Richmond, CA