Stratis Haviaras

[11] A milestone in his engagement with the literary world was his acquaintance, starting in 1957, with Kimon Friar, a distinguished translator into English of The Odyssey: a Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis, whom he met in Athens.

Recognizing Haviaras’s passion for literature and writing, Friar invited him to travel to the United States to assist him in the translation of Kazantzakis’s Salvatores Dei: Spiritual exercises, and reading of essays on US arts over The Voice of America radio, and in the typing of archival material.

[citation needed] During his stay in the U.S. he also studied mechanical drawing at the Manhattan Technological Institute in New York, and machine design at the Jefferson School of Commerce in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lived with relatives, working in the evenings in a Greek restaurant.

[citation needed] Haviaras first appeared in the Greek letters with the dramatic monologue "The Rusty Nail" (Kainouria Epochi, Summer 1959), later performed in The Actors Studio in New York.

In 1963 he published his first collection of poems, Η κυρία με την πυξίδα (Lady with a Compass) and for the next few years he worked as a supervising engineer in the construction of the Achelous River hydroelectric dam.

His next collection of poems Η νύχτα του ξυλοπόδαρου (Night of the Stiltwalker), amply reflects his opposition to totalitarian rule – it was confiscated by the police soon after it appeared in the bookstores.

[14] In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Haviaras worked as a clerk at Harvard’s Widener Library and joined The Committee for the Restoration of the Democratic Government in Greece, founded by members of the academic community.

Following a complaint by “Twenty Greek-American businessmen,” the Federal Communications Commission imposed the submission of translated texts from Greek to English and vice versa 96 hours before broadcasting, in essence silencing the program.

After completing 40 years of service at the University,[31] a fund for an annual poetry lecture[32] to honor Stratis Haviaras was established in the Department of English and American Literature and Language by a grant from film maker Robert Gardner and a donation from the poet Elizabeth Gray.

Cavafy The Canon (Hermes Publishing 2000,[40][41] Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University Press, 2007[42]) and collaborated with others in the translation of works by Seamus Heaney and Charles Simic into Greek.