Ὅπου κι ἂν ταξιδέψω, ἡ Ἑλλάδα μὲ πληγώνει.
Jerina Zaloshnja
This is what Giorgos Seferis wrote — and thus, before I even truly knew who Seferis was, I began to love Greece.
That verse — simple, clear, ablaze with love and pain — was, for me, once a gateway to another Greece: not the Greece of geographic borders, roads, cities, or seas, but an intimate, inner, spiritual Greece. A Greece that travels with a person as memory, as dream, as wound — a Greece that belongs to the whole world, just like its brilliant poet, Seferis.
Greece has been both so near and so distant for at least two generations, including my own — because of our tragic self-isolation. But the path was eventually found.
My journey — and, I believe, that of many other Albanians — toward Greece has always been a celestial one. We reached the Athens of Pericles through tragedies, crossed Crete through the myth of the Minotaur, and heard Socrates’ voice in the agora of our soul. But we entered modern Greece not through history, but through poetry. And there, we were guided by poets: Seferis, Elytis, Cavafy, Sinopoulos, Engonopoulos, Nasos Vayenas, Yannis Ritsos… and so many others.
My first encounter with Seferis was through that magical line: “Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me.” It is an irresistible invitation to journey into his universe.
But how was the idea born to bring Seferis’s Mythistorema into Albanian?
It began with a simple conversation that turned into a beautiful project. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Greek Ambassador in Tirana, Ms. Konstantina Kamitsi — a thoughtful, devoted, and luminous woman who radiates kindness. It was she, together with Mr. Albert Rakipi from the Albanian Institute for International Studies, who were developing the idea of establishing a Diplomatic Academy named after Seferis, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, right in our own Korça — as a tribute to the great poet who served in that city as a consul from 1936 to 1938.
When I heard about the project, I said to myself: why not translate Mythistorema into Albanian? And so it happened. With great love and dedication, the translator Romeo Çollaku brought to Albanian a Seferis that is vivid, lucid, and inspired. His translation is not merely a linguistic task — it is an absorption of Seferis’s spirit and a rebirth of it in another language.
Now, on July 7, 2025, the book will be presented in Korça, in the newly renovated building of the former Greek Consulate — where Greece’s celestial poet once wrote telegrams to his government and perhaps, while walking through the consulate’s garden, envisioned verses we do not yet know. It is a quiet, poetic, and rightful return — to the place where Seferis once served, now returning in the Albanian language to speak to us as well.
This edition by Tirana Times is more than just a book of poetry — it is an act of love for literature and an invitation to travel beyond ordinary borders, into what Seferis called “myth-history.” In this edition of Mythistorema, the Albanian reader encounters a foundational work of modern Greek poetry. This poetry is not simply a literary experiment of the 20th century, but an inner journey, a continuous search for meaning, roots, and identity.
Mythistorema is a poem that speaks through myth, yet shares with us the human being — with his sensitivities, fatigue, desires, and disappointments. And, like every true poetic journey, it does not offer answers, but awakens questions.
Through this cycle of poems, Seferis narrates the story of the modern Greek man, torn between antiquity and oblivion, between memory and emptiness. But paradoxically, it is precisely this feeling of being shattered that draws the Albanian reader closer to his verses. In Mythistorema we see a Greece that is not merely the country beyond the border — it is the very idea of a homeland, of a missing homeland, of a root in search.
This Albanian edition is an invitation to experience Seferis not only as a national poet of Greece, but as a Mediterranean poet — a poet of the human being who strives to keep hope alive amidst the ruins of history and the disillusionments of modernity. It is a call to read and love a poetry that does not seek to dazzle, but to reveal a quiet truth — one that hurts, but also connects.
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