On October 24, 1963, the joyous news of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the poet Giorgos Seferis reached Athens. Sixty years later to the day, on October 24, 2023, the Benaki Museum opened its latest exhibition, “George Seferis: 60 Years Since the Nobel Prize,” dedicated to the historic anniversary of the announcement and the award ceremony that followed it. The exhibition is hosted at the museum’s Ghika Gallery and will run through February 24, 2024.
An acclaimed poet, essayist, and career diplomat, Giorgos Seferis (1900–1971) was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century. Noted for his refined lyricism and the freshness of his diction, Seferis was at the forefront of Greece’s famed Generation of the ‘30s, a group of Greek writers, poets, artists, intellectuals, critics, and scholars who introduced modernism to modern Greek art and literature. His wide travels throughout his life provided the backdrop for much of his writing, which is permeated with themes of alienation, wandering, and death, as well as a deep feeling for the tragic predicament of the Greeks, as indeed of modern man in general. And then in 1963, he became Greece’s first Nobel laureate.
The Benaki Museum’s new exhibition on the poet, titled “George Seferis: 60 Years Since the Nobel Prize,” presents a range of artefacts and photographic documents related to this extraordinary achievement. Built around Seferis’s Nobel Prize medal and diploma (which are part of the Ghika Gallery’s permanent collection and were donated by the poet’s wife, Maro Seferi), the exhibition aims to bring to life the atmosphere of the day of the historic announcement and that of the days that followed leading up to the award ceremony on December 10, 1963.
The exhibition includes material from the George Seferis Papers, a collection that is part of the Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and is held at the school’s Gennadius Library, as well as photos from the Megalokonomou collection at the Benaki Museum’s Photographic Archives, and other material from newspapers and magazines of the time, from both Greece and abroad. Of particular interest are the congratulatory letters and telegrams to Seferis—among which stand out those from Andreas Embirikos, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Nikos Gavriil Pentzikis, Nanos Valaoritis, and Sofia Vembo—and Maro Seferis’s correspondence with the Benaki Museum regarding the donation of the poet’s Nobel Prize, which is presented for the first time.
At the time the award was announced in October 1963, the atmosphere in Athens was politically fluid and socially tense, with the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis in May, the resignation of Konstantinos Karamanlis in June, and the elections announced for November monopolizing interest. News of the announcement made the front pages of newspapers and the arts and culture sections of newspapers and magazines ran extensive tributes, but public interest quickly waned. December 11, the day after the Nobel Prize ceremony, saw news of the awards relegated to the inside pages of newspapers, or perhaps a single column on the front page single column, overshadowed by ongoing political developments.
Today, the Benaki Museum celebrates the poet’s historic achievement through its “George Seferis: 60 Years Since the Nobel Prize” exhibition, which is organized in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Athens and was inaugurated by the Ambassador of Sweden to Greece, Johan Borgstam. A concurrent exhibition celebrating the anniversary is held at the Greek Embassy in London, in the space where George Seferis’s office was once located. Finally, Ikaros Publishing is releasing a new book, I Am a Living Contradiction…, featuring Seferis’s two landmark speeches at the Nobel Prize awards. A trilingual edition in Greek, English, and French, the book will be launched on December 18, 2023, with a special event at Ghika Gallery.
The Nobel Prize
Born in Stockholm in 1833, Alfred Nobel believed that people are capable of helping to improve society through knowledge, science, and humanism. This is why, in his last will and testament signed in 1895, he laid the economic foundations for the Nobel Prize, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of a prize and the subsequent Nobel Foundation, which is tasked with a mission to manage his fortune and has ultimate responsibility for fulfilling the intentions of his will.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, for discoveries that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind; a memorial prize in economic sciences was subsequently added in 1968.
George Seferis: 60 Years Since the Nobel Prize
25.10.2023 – 24.02.2024
Open Wednesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 18:00
The Ghika Gallery
3 Kriezotou Str., Athens
T: +30 210 361 5702
Curator: Konstantinos Papachristou
Exhibition design: Pavlos Thanopoulos
As part of its efforts to support and promote culture, Saracakis Group is among the companies supporting the Benaki Museum’s “George Seferis: 60 Years Since the Nobel Prize” exhibition honoring the great Greek poet and diplomat.
