George Seferis: 55 years since his statement to the BBC against Junta

On 28 March 1969, about six years from the day he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and almost two years after the establishment of the Colonels, the great George Seferis, in a public statement, disapproves of the dictatorship of 21 April. Nobel Prize winner George Seferis, one day today 55 years ago, decided to speak openly against the junta of the colonels. “I see before me the cliff where the oppression that covered the place leads us. This anomaly must stop. It is a national check,” said George Seferis on 28 March 1969. George Seferis in the early years of the dictatorship had chosen silence and published no work in Greece. However, on 28 March 1969, he decides to speak for the first time in public and denounce the dictatorship. The Nobel Prize-winning poet is recording a statement, in which, among other things, he rings the alarm of the danger to the military regime for the tragedy Greece was going through. The tape arrived illegally in London and on the same day his statement is broadcast by the BBC’s Greek Service, while being broadcast by Paris radio and German Deutsche Welle. The statement by a world-famous Greek writer at the BBC, as it was natural, made a huge sense in Greece and abroad, giving hope to the anti-doctoral movement. The entire Seferi statement “It’s been a long time since the decision to keep out of the political place. I tried to explain it. It doesn’t mean anything to me that our political lives are different. So, over the years, it has now been the last time, that I have stopped, as a rule, to touch such matters; besides the things I published in the beginning of 1967, and the attitude that I have followed – I have not published anything in Greece, since it was silenced by freedom – they have shown, it seems, quite clearly my thoughts. Nevertheless, one day, I feel in me and around me, all one drinker, the duty to speak of our present situation. I’d like to say: They are two years away from the ideals that our world has fought and our people have been so proud of in the last world war. It’s a state of mandatory hibernation, which we have managed to keep alive, with pains and labor, and also to destroy themselves in the shallow standing waters. I don’t think it would be hard to understand how such damage would count too much for certain people. Unfortunately it is not only about this danger. Everyone who’s been taught it and knows it in the dictatorial situations can begin to look easy, but tragedy awaits the inevitable at the end. The drama of the end torments me, consciously, as in the old dances of the staff. As long as there’s an anomaly, so go forth evil. I’m a man without any very political ties and can speak without fear and without passion. I see before me the cliff that led me the oppression that covered the place. The anomaly must stop. It’s a national order. Now I return to my silence. Please God bring me another time in a similar need to speak again.” Disturbing Junta Junta, openly annoyed by this development, removed from Seferis the ambassador’s title for honor and the right to use his diplomatic passport. He justified this act on the grounds that his statement was broadcast by radio from the Soviet Union and thus constitutes anti-national propaganda. Her friendly Press, who will write that Seferis “sold Cyprus to get the Nobel”, and described him as a hidden communist and a hired organ of foreign governments. The coupists, following their announcement, described the statement as an act derived from his desire to come out of alleged obscurity and also as an act motivated by international anti-Greek circuits. On September 20, 1971, George Seferis left life and two days later his funeral was held which developed into a silent march against dictatorship…