Лучшие книги Теодора Стефанидеса

Теодор Стефанидес (1896–1983) был греческим ученым, врачом, астрономом, натуралистом, писателем, поэтом и переводчиком. Родившись в Индии, Стефанидес еще в детстве переехал с семьей на остров Корфу, где много лет спустя познакомился с семьей Дарреллов, поселившихся на острове в 1935 году. Лоренс (Ларри) Даррелл, автор знаменитого «Александрийского квартета», стал близким другом Стефанидеса. Брат Лоренса Джеральд был введен Стефанидесом в очаровательный и загадочный мир природы и стал впоследствии всемирно известным писателем и зоологом. В своей книге «Моя семья и другие звери» Джеральд дает живое описание Теодора Стефанидеса, своего друга и…

This new book by Theodore Stephanides (1896-1983) consists of his accounts of his meetings with Lawrence Durrell (and other members of the Durrell family) in Corfu, and afterwards in Athens and Egypt, in the period 1935-1944 (these are the "Corfu Memoirs"), together with his final collection of English poems to which he himself gave the title "Autumn Gleanings". The collection of poems and most of the memoirs are published here for the first time. (A few of the memoirs have appeared in Deus Loci, the journal of the International Lawrence Durrell Society.) The book also contains and Editor's Introduction by Richard Pine, explaining how the materials in the book came to light, and "A Brief Biography" of Theodore Stephanides, also by Richard Pine. There is also a "Select Bibliography" of Stephanides' writings; and the book closes with a humorous (and entirely fictional) story by Stephanides, "Bishop's Move", in which Lawrence Durrell is mistaken for a bishop with far-reaching consequences. To quote from the back cover of the book, "Theodore Stephanides was a polymath. He had an international reputation as a scientist (he was a medical doctor, a naturalist and an astronomer), but he was also a poet and a translator. Stephanides was born in India, but came to Corfu with his family as a child, and it was there, many years later that he encountered the Durrell family who moved to Corfu in 1935. Lawrence Durrell, who was to write The Alexandria Quartet, became a close friend of Stephanides and his collaborator, while Gerald Durrell, who was introduced by Stephanides to the beauties and mysteries of the natural world, went on to become one of the most distinguished zoologist of his day. In My Family and Other Animals, Gerald presents a lively portrait of Stephanides."

In this dual-language volume Anthony Hirst has brought together for publication - the first publication in nearly every case - all of Theodore Stephanides' translations of Ancient Greek poetry, consisting chiefly of consummate examples of personal or choral lyric created by Sappho in the seventh or sixth century BC. Stephanides, who is associated with the island of Corfu, off the Greek mainland, echoes the work Sappho of Lesbos, an Island off the cost of Asia Minor, not far from luxurious Sardis, the Lydian capital (which figures in these poems). Known later as the "Tenth Muse", Sappho was to lyric poetry what Homer was to epic: while Homer sang of men and the slaughter of war, Sappho's songs are of beauty, women and nature; desire. jealousies and rapture; youth, loves and life; but also of old age, memories and death.