Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
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with an Asia Minor connexion is thought of as part of Asia Minor literature. In some 
cases this is for obvious reasons. There is a number of major authors in Greek 
literature whose origins are in Asia Minor or Constantinople (Istanbul) but who do 
not draw much of their work directly and explicitly from the war and its aftermath. 
But in other cases the reasons would repay research. The most striking example is 
the case of the poet and Nobel Laureate, George Seferis, who was born in Smyrna. 
While there is no overt reference to Asia Minor in his poems, he wrote (in a letter to 
Timos Malanos of 13 May 1944)
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that the event which influenced him more than 
any other was the Asia Minor disaster and the pages of his diary which describe his 
visit in 1950 to his childhood haunts in Izmir and Skala express an extraordinary 
intensity of feeling without being remotely sentimental
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. Two other major poets, 
Kostis Palamas (b. Patras 1859 – d. Athens 1943) and Constantine Cavafy (b. 
Alexandria 1863 – d. Alexandria 1933) responded to the Asia Minor directly: for 
example: 
Το Τραγούδι 
των 
Προσφύγων
(The Song of the Refugees, 3 November 
1922) in the case of the former
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and 
Υπέρ της Αχαικής Συμπολιτείας Πολεμήσαντες
(Those who Fought for the Achaean League) published in February 1922 in the case 
of the latter
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. The relevance of this allusive poem to contemporary events is 
expounded by Seferis in his essay comparing Cavafy with T. S. Eliot
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and 
vigorously defended by him against the doubts of Malanos in a letter of 9th May 
1948
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. 
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Seferis 1990, 238 
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Seferis 1977, 196-203 
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Liatsos, 19-22 
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Cavafy, 31
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Seferis 1981, 328-335 
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Seferis 1990, 294-297 

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