Name: Giorgos Seferis
Year Won: 1963
Read: Collected Poems
Original Language: Greek
Reason: "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture"
About: This was a poetry collection of Seferis' poems. They are lovely lyrical poems that mostly describe the beauty of Greece and seem to focus heavily on the sea and classical mythology.
What I liked: I really love how the poems often dip between the ancient and the modern, bridging mythology with the eternal landscape of Greece.
What I Disliked: Not really anything. This was a very lovely collection of poetry and it's all quite lovely. With that said, I'm not sure that it made me think the way the best literature tends to. (It mostly just felt very lovely.)
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably? It's really hard for me to judge poetry, particularly in another language. To me, this felt like very lovely poetry (and it was probably better in its native language), but whether that is or should be enough is hard for me to tell. This didn't feel like it had the novelty or timelessness of, say, Hemmingway or Steinbeck, but I'm not sure that that's necessary either.
Next Up: "Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre
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