Greek literature's reception in the English-speaking world has been poor in the past. Novelist Nikos Kazantzakis is the Greek novelist best known outside of Greece, judging from titles published, reprints and movies (including Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ ). Kazantzakis and poet C.P. Cavafy - whose poem Ithaca was read at Jackie Onassis's memorial service in 1994 - stand out as two illustrious exceptions. Greek writing has fared better in other languages, especially in France. But its eclipse in the United Kingdom and the United States is painful since English is the lingua franca of our age.

Things looked more promising in 1979, when the poet Odysseas Elytis was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. His achievement came only fourteen years after another poet, George Seferis , became Greece's first Nobel laureate. Given that Greece is a small country, and that the number of Greek speakers globally does not exceed fifteen million, the awards were cause for national pride and were thought to assure worldwide recognition for contemporary Greek literature .

Yet the last fifteen years have marked a reversal of fortune for Greek letters. Did the writers and poets succeeding Seferis' and Elytis' Generation of the '30s fail to live up to its legacy? To limit the discussion to a Balkan context, no living Greek writer today claims the international renown of the Turk Orhan Pamuk or the Albanian Ishmail Kadare. And the Nobel laureates themselves have not fared so well either. It is telling that neither made Harold Bloom's The Western Canon , published in 1994.

The obvious question is why? Is it a problem of content or distribution? To answer this question, let us look at the career of a Greek man of letters who did achieve recognition in the English-speaking world: George Seferis . An outstanding poet, Seferis was a high-ranking Greek diplomat with solid middle class credentials and fluency in both French and English. He shared the prevailing cultural concerns of his time and possessed a cosmopolitan outlook on literature. A major part of his poetry was thematically constructed around the civilisation of ancient Greece and its interaction with the land's contemporary history.

Seferis' case is worth mentioning because it indicates the qualifications a Greek writer needed (apart from the quality of his writing, of course) to make his name in the English world at that time. Seferis needed:

• 1) Class credentials combined with fluency in foreign languages and an ability to foster contacts with foreign colleagues.
• 2) An oeuvre fitting the international literary context, sensitive to prevailing intellectual trends and concerns, and
• 3) Last but not least, a filtering of present-day Greek experiences through the culture of ancient Greece.

These criteria can serve as a checklist for assessing the performance of other Greek writers in the English-speaking world until 1979. C.P. Cavafy , for instance, passes the test with high marks. Isolated though he was in Alexandria, he assiduously cultivated E.M. Foster, who spread the good news about his poetry. Indeed, Cavafy surpasses the checklist in so many ways that he undermines it. He managed to remain magnificently oblivious both to the demands of the society of his day, and to the prevailing literary trends and concerns of his time.

Other Greek writers of the time, however, fail the checklist. Nikos Engonopoulos , a fine poet and painter of '30s Generation, never made it in the English-speaking world. He was poor, reclusive, influenced by French surrealism and lacked access to Anglo-American literary circles. Novelists Kostas Tachtsis and Stratis Tsirkas conformed to part of the checklist. Tachtsis' The Third Wedding , published by Penguin, met with good reviews but is sadly out of print. Tsirkas' Drifting Cities found a major American publisher but ended up in pulp.