In the transition of seasons, from the summer that seems to vaguely meander, doesn’t the autumn rouse us like a return to reality? As much as I adore the nascent autumn, I always want to salvage something of its belated forebear and hopelessly find something to cling to… With that said, let’s get to the week’s poem.
A Word for Summer – George Seferis
We have returned again to autumn; summer
like a notebook that has tired us with writing remains
full of erasures, abstract scribblings
on the margins and question marks; we have returned
to the season of eyes that gazeS
in a mirror beneath the electric light,
lips compressed and the people strangers,
to rooms, to roads under the pepper trees
while the headlights of motorcars kill
thousands of pallid masks
We have returned; we always set out to return
to solitude, a handful of earth in our empty palms.
And yet I have once loved Syngros Avenue
the double rocking of the wide road
that would leave us miraculously by the sea,
the everlasting sea, to be cleansed of our sins;
I have loved a few unknown persons
suddenly met at the day’s ending
talking to themselves like captains of sunken armadas,
a sign that the world is wide.
And yet I have loved these very roads, these columns;
no matter if I was born on the other shore near
rushes and reeds, islands
where there were wells in the sand that a rower
might quench his thirst, no matter if I was born
by the sea which I wind and unwind in my fingers
when I am weary–I no longer know where I was born.
There still remains the yellow distillate, summer,
and your hands touching medusae on the water,
your eyes suddenly unveiled, the first
eyes of the world, and caverns of the sea;
bare feet on the red earth.
There still remains the blond enmarbled youth, summer,
a little salt dried up in the hollow of a rock
a few red pine-needles after the rain
scattered about like tattered fishing nets.
I do not understand these faces, I do not understand them;
sometimes they imitate death and then again
they shine with the lowly life of the glowworm
with an effort at once restrained and desperate
compressed between two wrinkles
on two soiled coffee-house tables;
they kill one another, they decrease,
they stick like postage-stamps to the windowpanes,
faces of the other tribe.
We walked together, we shared bread and sleep
we tasted the same bitterness of parting
we built our houses with whatever stones we had
we took to the ships, we left our native land, we returned
we found our women waiting for us
but they recognised us with difficulty, no one knows us.
And our comrades put on the statues, put on the bare
and empty chairs of autumn, and our comrades
slew their own faces. I do not understand them.
There still remains the yellow distillate, summer,
waves of sand receding as far as the last circle
a rhythm of drums pitiless and endless
blood-shut eyes sinking in the sun
hands with the manner of birds cutting the sky
saluting the ranks of the dead that stand at attention
lost to a degree I cannot control and which commands me;
your hands touching the untrammeled wave.
Autumn, 1936
Form:
Free verse, at least in its English translation. This is the first poem of the week that I have not been able to read in the original language.
First stanza
The poem takes place during the transition from summer to autumn. The two seasons are in this stanza contrasted: whereas the summer is presented as something vague, abstract, hard to comprehend (what a simile Seferis gives us!–“like a notebook that has tired us with writing…full of erasures, abstract scribblings/on the margins and question marks”) the autumn is stark, penetrating and confrontational (“the season of eyes that gaze/…in a mirror beneath the electric light,/ while the headlights of motorcars kill/ thousands of pallid masks…”). The autumn s also marked by it’s urban and artificial qualities–note the images of cars, roads and electric lights. It is also a return to something solitary and fruitless: “We have returned; we always set out to return/ to solitude, a handful of earth in our empty palms.”
Second stanza
The poet mentions that he is not completely averse to the city however. He says that he has once loved it (Syngros Avenue is one of the major roads in Athens, leading from the city centre to the coast). Here the sea is invoked for the first time in the poem and will remain a central symbol throughout. Contrasting with the merciless temporality of seasons, the sea is eternal (“everlasting”) and purifying–it ‘cleanses our sins’. He goes on to further explain that he has also loved the people inhabiting the city, though all the same juxtaposing it with his more provincial background: “no matter if f I was born on the other shore near/ rushes and reeds, islands/ where there were wells in the sand that a rower/ might quench his thirst, no matter if I was born/ by the sea which I wind and unwind in my fingers/ when I am weary.” A biographical note can be helpful here–Seferis was born close to Smyrna in the former Ottoman Empire, his family forcibly expelled in 1923 alongside hundreds of thousands of other Ottoman Greeks. It is a recurring theme in his poetry. The poem introduces a feeling of alienation in this stanza, not just geographically, but there is a sense of alienation from himself–of a man no longer sure of his own identity. Whereas he has told us just before where he was born, the stanza nonetheless concludes, “I no longer know where I was born.”
Third & fourth stanza
Just as there is something left of the summer, the poet wants to express that there is perhaps something relatable, something comprehendible to hold onto: “your eyes suddenly unveiled, the first/eyes of the world, and caverns of the sea;/bare feet on the red earth.” It is nonetheless expressed as something fragmentary, broken: “scattered about like tattered fishing nets.”
Fifth stanza
The theme of alienation continues here, specifically relating to the people around him. The people are presented as barely living “sometimes they imitate death and then again/ they shine with the lowly life of the glowworm”; mean, “they kill one another,” and unrelatable, distant, foreign–they are “faces of the other tribe.”
Sixth stanza
The “we” seems to refer to the same people mentioned in the preceding stanza. The use of this pronoun indicates that the poet and these people have many things in common–a similar origin, a similar sense of deprivation, a similar sense of alienation: “we tasted the same bitterness of parting/we built our houses with whatever stones we had/we took to the ships, we left our native land, we returned/we found our women waiting for us/but they recognised us with difficulty”. Nonetheless, the poet has ceased to be able to understand even them. All that is left, once again, like the remnant of a passing summer, are his incomprehensible and fragmentary memories that he cannot master, like a ‘hand touching an untrammeled wave.’