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58 JOURNAL OF THE IIELLENIC DIASPORA
The image of the three doves is reminiscent of Garcia Lorca's four
pigeons in his short poem "The Hunter":
Above the pine trees
four pigeons go through the air.
Four pigeons
fly and turn round.
They carry wounded
the four shadows.
Below the pine trees
four pigeons lie on the ground."
As C.M. Bowra remarks, commenting on this poem, the four pigeons
were "shot while in flight through the air."" The similarity with Seferis'
three doves may extend also to the symbolism, since also in Lorca's work
the doves killed by the hunters, or "murderers of doves," also stand for
human victims. Thus, the red doves seem to symbolize here the "people
whom [the protagonist) loved," and who died a violent death, as if
shot in flight. So it seems highly improbable that the red color of the
doves could symbolize here passion or sensuality.
A very different image, but one in which the same central symbolism
can be discerned, is found in Seferis' "Raven," in which this bird again
contains the memories of many dead people from the protagonist's past:
there's a whole crowd gathered in that bird
thousands of people forgotten, wrinkles obliterated
broken embraces and uncompleted laughter,
arrested works, silent stations
There are many wounds, inside those invisible people within it
suspended passions . . .
children slaughtered and women exhausted at daybreak.
Although this is a much more elaborate treatment, the theme is the
same: the raven here is not very different from the doves in poem "14,"
in the sense that they both symbolize dead persons whose death has left
an indelible mark on the narrator's consciousness—a mark which, in a
way, has played a central role in determining his fate.
'°Frederko Garcia Lorca, Selected Poems, tr. J.L. Gili and Stephen Spender
(London: Hogarth Press, 1943) 12.
"Bowra, 194.