The isles of Greece

Demetrios Capetanakis was born in Smyrna in 1912, twelve years after the Greek poet, George Seferis, was born in the same city. Seferis himself is reticent about his younger compatriot. Perhaps this is not accidental. Seferis on his own confession had "nο idea about philosophical positions". Capetanakis was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: a lover of wisdom. Before he came to England in 1939 he had received his doctorate in philosophy from Heidelberg University, and had written, in Greek, various philosophical studies, notably , "The struggle of the solitary soul and the mythology of beauty". Before he died, in London, in 1944, he had written, in English, several essays οη philosophical and literary themes, and had intended to write others, among them one οn Plato and another οn Kierkegaard. He felt that he had something οf significance to say about both οf them. Alas, he left nothing in a form that could be published. But in another sense, what he had to say he said through his poetry. Although he knew that, in his own words, "poetry means language -the inmost essence οf language", he also knew that unless the language expresses a meaning it will not be poetry. His Ianguage was the vehicle οf his thought, his poems are metaphysical poems. And their language is English, not Greek. Ιη the space οf a few years -he knew little English when he first came to England- he had achieved such mastery οf the English language that he was able to pack the intensity οf his thought into the four-Iine five-beat stanza οf English verse. It is fulsome to make claims for poems beyond those which the poems make for themselves. Capetanakis' poems were written close οn half a century ago. The best οf them, and this in the end may mean nο more than four or five, have not dated, or lost any of that strange, concentrated power of which Edith Sitwell speaks in her introduction. They have withstood the test of time, and will ensure for their author a place among the few poets who in the twentieth century have made a lasting contribution to the rich heritage of English poetry. (from the foreword of Philip Sherrard)