Philip Sherrard

The division of Christendom into the Greek East and the Latin West has its origins far back in history, but its consequences still affect Europe, and thus western civilization. Philip Sherrard's classic study seeks to indicate both the fundamental character and some of the consequences of this division. He points especially to the underlying metaphysical bases of Greek Christian thought, and contrasts them with those of the Latin West; he argues persuasively that the philosophical and even theological differences, remote as they might seem from practical affairs, are symptoms of a deep divergence of outlook that has profoundly affected the history of ideas and hence the whole course of European history. He exemplifies this by comparing the relationships between the spiritual and temporal powers during the Byzantine period with those assumed by the medieval Papacy, by an analysis of the ‘Platonic reaction’ of such figures as Gemistos Plethon, and by an exposition of the intellectual background of the Renaissance, the Reformation and, finally, of the modern western world. His concluding chapters discuss the impact of modern western ideas on Greek life and letters during the last few centuries. With an unusual knowledge of aspects of the thought of the Greek Church Fathers often neglected in the West, and a deep sympathy with their outlook in these matters, Philip Sherrard presents a point of view that may be unfamiliar, but should be of great concern, both to theologians and philosophers, and to historians and students of European civilization and indeed of world affairs in general. ‘One of the principles that Sherrard strongly defended was the intimate relationship — almost identity — between theology and life. For Sherrard, a doctrinal attitude is inevitably reflected in practice. Spirituality is dogma lived out; the Church's ethos applies its thought to life. . . .This conviction is nowhere more clearly expressed among Sherrard’s writings than in The Greek East and the Latin West . . . The book is neither merely a manual of ecclesiastic history nor simply a history of Christian thought through the centuries. . . . it is intimately linked with the author’s profound interest outlined above, inasmuch as it represents his “first serious attempt to confront and to find some explanation for the spiritual dereliction . . . of the modern western world.” ’ John Chryssavgis, Journal of Modern Greek Studies. The Greek East and the Latin West was first printed by Oxford University Press in 1959. This present edition was reprinted from the original edition with amendments made by the author and the addition of an Appendix, ‘Church and State in Modern Greece’, in 1992, 1995 and 2002.

Travellers, poets, artists, even scholars, still go to Greece in search of something they feel that no other land quite offers them. Partly no doubt this is a by-product of the enormous prestige the world of ancient Greece acquired subsequent to the Renaissance; partly, too, it is due to the sheer physical beauty with which Greece presents one at practically every step. Even though the stereotype of classical Greece has now worn thin, and island after island, seashore village after seashore village, are overrun by the life-starved fugitives from the industrial wildernesses of northern Europe, loosed upon them week-in week-out by the seemingly endless succession of package-tours and charter-flights, the spell and the compulsion survive. For Philip Sherrard the enigma of Greece was a lifelong preoccupation. In this anthology, one of his earlier publications, he explores its various aspects through the writings of those who over the centuries have found in Greece not simply an object of study or a romantic haven, but a challenge, an incitement and a reciprocity that has stirred the wellsprings of both heart and imagination. To give an inner coherence to this exploration the passages chosen are presented in the form of an itinerary that includes all the major areas of Greece, the Aegean Islands and Crete. The remarkably evocative photographs by Dimitri complement this itinerary, providing the visual component of an image which cannot but enrich the experience of all who, for whatever reasons, have set out on this journey of self-discovery that Greece offers them. 'Balance — that is a difficult quality in speaking of a country one cares about, and I don't mean the old tag about nothing too much; for Greece everything is not enough. I mean the balance in accepting the extremes . . . And balance, the whole Greece, is what Mr Sherrard is after in this splendid anthology. Seferis and Sikelianos; Kevin Andrews' description of climbing Olympus; Patrick Leigh Fermor's passage on light; Flaubert fording the Alpheus; Robert Curzon enjoying an Athonite hermit's hospitality; poets, historians, travellers ironic, travellers intoxicated by their own emotions: a hundred scenes, a hundred reactions. . . . I am sometimes asked to recommend books about Greece. I should advise, then, reading The Pursuit of Greece not before but after a first visit — or during a second, when the noble or the lively writing will, as it were, bring out the scent of the country.' Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times. The Pursuit of Greece is a reprint of the 1964 London (John Murray) edition.

"...this dialectic of blood and lightwhich is the history of your people..."Sherrard to Seferis, 20 March 1950Philip Sherrard first came across George Seferis's poetry when as a young man still in the army he was transferred to Greece in 1946. It made such a powerful impression on him that when he returned to England he started corresponding with Seferis, began translating his poetry into English, and ultimately decided to do his PhD on modern Greek poetry. Much later Sherrard was to translate, together with Edmund Keeley, Seferis's Collected Poems for Princeton University Press. The Seferis - Sherrard correspondence is not vast, but nevertheless revealing of both men's orientation, most particularly Sherrard's as he became increasingly interested in the Christian Orthodox East, and who simultaneously with his involvement in Greek literature and especially modern Greek poetry went on to write a number of important theological studies. Included with the correspondence are the texts that the two men sent to each other and three studies of Seferis's poetry written by Sherrard, the one published here for the first time. The book is introduced by the Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at Oxford, Peter Mackridge, and the theologian Vincent Rossi, as well as by Sherrard himself in a text published here for the first time.From "The Other Mind of Europe", Philip Sherrard’s introductory essay to his correspondence with George Seferis:"I still remember my bewilderment when Seferis sent me a letter in which occur such phrases as: "I have a very organic feeling which identifies my human life with the life of nature", and went on to speak of the Greek world - the world of Greek nature - as "lines which occur and recur; bodies and features, the tragic silence of a face ... There is a process of humanization in the Greek light ... Just think of those cords that bind man and the elements of nature together, this tragedy which is at once natural and human, this intimacy. Just think how the light of day and man’s blood are one and the same thing. "or when some passages from his diary were given to me, one of which read: I know that all my life will not be sufficient to express what I have been trying to express for so long: this union of nature with the simple human body." It is as if Seferis thought, not by discursive reasoning, but intuitively, in terms of natural objects, in terms of sensual images. It is as if the subject of his thought revealed itself to him not as an abstraction divorced from the rest of life, but in all its relationships not only to other ideas but to nature as well.’