Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47 [Hardcover]

Edmund Keeley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 1999

The radiant light of Greece-its landscape and poetry-as witnessed in the dark years when it was almost extinguished.

In the looming shadow of an oppressive dictatorship and imminent world war, George Seferis, George Katsimbalis, and other poets and writers from Greece's fabled Generation of the Thirties welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together they explored the Peloponnesus, swam off island beaches, and considered the meaning of Greek life and freedom. They seemed to be inventing paradise. In this evocative synthesis of personal memoir, literary criticism, and interpretative narrative, Edmund Keeley explores the poetry, friendships, and politics that made those extraordinary encounters so vital.

For Miller and Durrell, the journey into Greece transformed their art and their lives, and in response they wrote some of their most important work. For the Greek poets, it reconfirmed their sense of the vitality of their own country and helped to sustain them during the harsh seasons to come. As Keeley shows, their eloquence, courage, and dedication kept the greatness of Greece alive when the German occupation, a violent civil war, and the depredations of mass tourism threatened to destroy it. Other writers later drew on the invented paradise of these good friends and reimagined it for the future. This remarkable work of cultural history and imaginative criticism is a crowning achievement from one of our finest literary interpreters.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Keeley, a noted scholar and translator of Greek poetry, has written an interesting blend of biography, travel guide, and literary criticism. Focusing on Henry Millers and Lawrence Durrells love affair with the Greek isles and their warm friendships with George Katsimbalis (as seen in Millers Collosus of Marousi), George Seferis, and other poets, Keeley celebrates this little band of friends who together...worked to create their individual images of an earthly paradise against the backdrop of the coming war. For Keeley, the spirit of this closely knit group kept poetry alive in Greece and served as a ray of light during the dark days of the German occupation. In return, argues Keeley, their encounter with Greece liberated the imaginations of these writers and provided them with paradisal models for future works. Quirky and unusual, this book is more fun to read than you might expect, and Keeley does make his case. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Sunny, island-hopping philhellenism as encountered in Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi and Lawrence Durrell's Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a Marine Venus. Translator, scholar, novelist, and well-respected Hellenist Keeley (School for Pagan Lovers, 1993, etc.) lets himself fall under the spell of the characteristically colorful Greek travel writings of Miller and Durrell in the same way that they fell under the spell of prewar, pretourist Greece. Durrell and his wife moved to the island of Corfu in 1935, after a little bohemianism in Paris, where they had known Miller, and they eventually enticed him to visit in 1939. Durrell had already settled into the island's community, discovered C.V. Cavafy's poetry, and spent most of his time bathing in the warm Mediterranean and the country's Homeric heritage. Miller also found the countryside, company, and literary life convivial. Among those with whom they struck up friendships were the gourmand and man of letters George Katsimbalis, who would figure as Miller's ``Colossus,'' and George Seferis, who would become Greece's first Nobel laureate, in 1963. Miller's paean to Greece``No country I have visited has given me such a sense of grandeur . . .''came long after he had traveled all over the islands, and Keeley retraces his wanderings with unhurried pleasure. With WWII, Miller and Durrell were forced to leave, Miller never to return, Durrell for only a few years, and Keeley's account of what their friends suffered under the Nazis is a spare but moving example of how literature survives and helps others to survive. Keeley, as longtime translator of Cavafy, Seferis, and others, skillfully works excerpts from their poetry into his accounts sun-drenched landscape, giving a sense of how modern Greek culture still lives on Homer's islands. Learned literary tourism about literary tourism, in one of the best places on earth for it. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (June 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374177171
• ISBN-13: 978-0374177171
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,072,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, November 21, 1999

By 

Alekos (Cancun, Quintana Roo Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47 (Hardcover)

A writer of outstanding repute in all his endeavors (translator, novelist, critic), Keeley has temporarily left aside all that academic stuff to write one of the five most beautiful books I have read in the past twenty years. Greek and Anglo literati like Seferis, Durrell and Miller come alive for us in these pages and special features of their work are examined with new depth. There are also some minor writers who serve as attractive backround to, and greatly enrich, the larger story. In his final paragraphs, Keeley hints that he might have a first person narrative in store for us covering a subsequent generation of philhellene writers. Let's hope he makes good on this almost-promise.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An enlightening book about the Generation of the Thirties, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47 (Hardcover)

An interesting book about Henry Miller/Lawrence Durrill and the "Generation of the Thirties"-Greek poets that include Seferis, and painters such as Ghikas.

The book is exactly what the NY Times calls it--a combination of literary history/critique, and cultural history. It tries to provide a deep understanding of the poetry from the decade before World War 2. It dispells the notion that Greece only has offered the world Homer & Pericles. Seferis, for example, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.