Lecture by Dimitra Amarantidou (Shandong) on the “Dao in Greek Soil: Seferis's Translation and Transplantation of the Daodejing’s 道德經 Imagery of Growth”, Thursday July 2

[Michael Konaris]

Dear list members,

 

The Research Centre of Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens is pleased to announce the lecture by Dimitra Amarantidou (Shandong) on the “Dao in Greek Soil: Seferis's Translation and Transplantation of the Daodejing’s 道德經 Imagery of Growth”. The lecture will take place online on Thursday 2 July (07.00 New York / 12.00 London / 14.00 Athens / 19.00 Beijing / Tokyo 20.00).

 

Abstract

 

What happens when Dao 道 is transplanted into Greek soil? This talk approaches Giorgos Seferis’s (1900–1971) unpublished Greek translation of the Daodejing 道德經 or Laozi 老子 as the site of a transcultural encounter between two distinct philosophical and poetic worlds. It explores how Chinese and Greek philosophical vocabularies interact, negotiate, and reshape one another. At the centre of this encounter lies the Daodejing’s understanding of sheng 生—not simply as biological life or growth, but as an immanent process of emergence through which Dao 道 and the myriad things (wanwu 萬物), including humans, animals, and plants, continuously unfold together. Focusing particularly on Chapter 42 and on Seferis’s translation choices, I examine how this generative vision is rendered into Modern Greek and how his Heraclitean philosophical inheritance informs that process.

 

 

To receive the ZOOM link contact mkon...@academyofathens.gr

Michael Konaris

Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature

Academy of Athens

https://www.academyofathens.gr/en/personel/konaris-mihalis

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