Edmund Keeley, ‘the gold standard in translators of modern Greek poetry’ and ‘unwavering’ advocate of the humanities at Princeton, dies at 94

Edmund “Mike” Keeley, the inaugural Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, Emeritus, and professor of creative writing, emeritus, poet and renowned translator of modern Greek poetry, died peacefully at home in Princeton on Feb. 23. He was 94.

by Randall

Keeley, a 1949 alumnus, joined Princeton’s faculty in 1954 and transferred to emeritus status in 1994. He taught English, creative writing, comparative literature and translation at Princeton for 40 years and was instrumental in expanding the Program in Creative Writing, which he directed for 16 years, and in establishing the Program in Hellenic Studies.

“Mike was the preeminent scholar and translator of modern Greek poetry of our time,” said Dimitri Gondicas, the Stanley J. Seeger '52 Director of the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. A 1978 alumnus, Gondicas entered Princeton in fall 1974 and met Keeley that semester. It was the beginning of a friendship that lasted nearly 50 years, until Keeley’s death.

Gondicas continued: “As president of the PEN American Center from 1991 to 1993, Mike was a champion of writers’ rights around the world. He was America’s most distinguished cultural ambassador to Greece. Closer to home, he was a founder and pillar of Hellenic studies at Princeton. Mike was our teacher, mentor, colleague, comrade in all things Hellenic, fellow traveler all over Greece, and steadfast friend. Until his last hours, Mike kept asking about Hellenic studies and our future plans.”

In 1982, Keeley received Princeton’s Howard T. Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities.

He was born on Feb. 5, 1928, in Damascus, Syria, to American parents, Mathilde Keeley and James Hugh Keeley, Jr., a career diplomat, and grew up in Canada, Greece and Washington, D.C. He first fell in love with the land, people and language of Greece as a child, when his family lived at the American Farm School, focused on environmental, agricultural and

education, in Thessaloniki, while his father was the American Consul. He had two brothers: Robert Keeley, a 1951 alumnus and 1971 graduate alumnus, who entered the foreign service and served for a time as the U.S. ambassador in Athens; and Hugh Keeley, a 1946 alumnus.

During World War I, before Keeley was born, his father was the officer in charge at Princeton assigned to train the University’s unit of the Army air force. When Keeley entered Princeton in fall 1944 at age 16, there were just 40 members of his class, and he intended to enter the foreign service after graduation. After his first year, he went to Trenton and signed up for the Navy, on Aug. 7, 1945, the day after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He spent a year as a seaman second class, based in Guantanamo.

When he returned to Princeton, Keeley fell in love with literature after taking an English course in Shakespeare and started writing poetry. He wrote his thesis on F. Scott Fitzgerald.After graduation, Keeley returned to the American Farm School to teach on a Fulbright scholarship. He earned his doctorate at Oxford on a Wilson fellowship in 1952, writing his dissertation on the modern Greek poets C.P. Cavafy and George Seferis. He saw his foray into translation as a way of being a poet and an academic. At Oxford, he met his wife Mary Stathatos-Kyris, also a student of modern Greek. They were married for 61 years and frequently collaborated in translating Greek fiction and prose. They established the Edmund and Mary Keeley Modern Greek Studies Fund in 2004. Mary died in 2012.

“His belief in the humanities, even when sorely tested, proved unwavering,” said Maria DiBattista, who now holds the chair Keeley had, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, as well as professor of comparative literature. “He loved most to talk about literature, about the authority and power of words before the most obstinate realities, the most obdurate, often contradictory but deep and thus precious feelings. He was the most companionable of men, his largeness of mind and heart exemplifying the Hellenic spirit that inspired his life and work.”

Keeley served as director of the Program in Creative Writing from 1965 to 1981. He once said he considered it a great reward when both he and his students were moved to tears by discovering something new in literature that touched their hearts. He also said he felt a great debt to the New Criticism, a major source for his work as a critic and teacher in his early years, promoting the close reading of fiction and poetry, as well as an important inspiration for his persistent belief in the value of the humanities. In 2016, the Lewis Center for the Arts established the Edmund Keeley Literary Translation Award, given annually to a promising young translator.

“Though it was founded as long ago as 1939, the Program in Creative Writing took on something of its present shape and significance only under the leadership of Edmund Keeley,” said Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities and professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. “Inspired partly by the model of Iowa, he instituted the workshop as the key pedagogical component in the program, allowing students not only to write but, no less importantly, to read the work both of past exemplars and their peers.”

Muldoon continued: “Another key notion was that only the very best practitioners in the field be hired to teach workshops in poetry, prose fiction and literary translation. This last had a special place in Edmund Keeley’s heart, of course, since he himself represented the gold standard in translators of [modern] Greek poetry.”

One of these writing practitioners is the prolific Joyce Carol Oates, the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus.

“Mike had been the brilliant, tireless, often hilarious and irrepressibly charismatic director of the Program in Creative Writing when I arrived, in 1978, with the intention of teaching just one year; it is due to Mike that, in 2022, I am still here, and I am even teaching a workshop in advanced fiction this term,” said Oates.

She continued: “Mike and his beloved wife Mary were at the center of a most lively literary circle. At their wonderful parties, newcomers to Princeton were made to feel welcome amid a dazzling ensemble of writers, poets, professors, friends from both Princeton and New York; often there were distinguished visitors, members of PEN. In our community of famously congenial colleagues, Mike’s generosity was legendary…. His work, like his life, was suffused with a sense of purpose, and a particular sort of radiant joy in that purpose. He was one who had loved life — and whom life had loved in return.”

Keeley liked to swim in Dillon Gym. One day he ran into President William G. Bowen and asked if the University could use a supporting grant for a program to teach modern Greek. That conversation led to the transformational gift by Stanley J. Seeger, a 1952 alumnus, to create the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund in 1979, providing the foundation for the Program in Hellenic Studies, established in 1981. In 2011, the University formally named the Stanley J. Seeger ’52 Center for Hellenic Studies to consolidate and expand its research activities, international initiatives, scholarly exchanges and offerings in the classroom. Until very close to the end of his life, Keeley would return to campus for the weekly lunch at the center, where he enjoyed catching up with graduate students and colleagues.

W. Robert Connor, a 1961 graduate alumnus in classics and professor of classics, emeritus, traveled to Greece with Keeley to convince Seeger that Princeton would make good use of his generosity.

“I was nervous but Mike was, apparently, completely relaxed, and certainly completely persuasive,” Connor said. “Later, I came to realize that underlying Mike’s success in establishing this program, in steering the Program in Creative Writing, and in his own prose and poetry was a rich love of literature, and even more fundamentally a love of life itself.”

Alexander Nehamas, a 1971 graduate alumnus, the Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and professor of philosophy and comparative literature, emeritus, called Keeley “the heart and soul” of the Program in Hellenic Studies.

“His translations and studies of the major modern Greek poets were essential to making them widely known in the English-speaking world,” Nehamas said, “His spirit was generous, his commitment to intellectual work profound, his love of good company infectious. He was my teacher, my colleague, and my friend, as he was to many others: we are all sad to have lost him.”

In 2016, the University added a formal home base for Princeton scholars in Greece with the opening of the Princeton University Athens Center for Research and Hellenic Studies, led by the Seeger Center.

Edmund “Mike” Keeley, the inaugural Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, Emeritus, and professor of creative writing, emeritus, poet and renowned translator of modern Greek poetry, died peacefully at home in Princeton on Feb. 23. He was 94.

Photo by Randall Hagadorn

Keeley, a 1949 alumnus, joined Princeton’s faculty in 1954 and transferred to emeritus status in 1994. He taught English, creative writing, comparative literature and translation at Princeton for 40 years and was instrumental in expanding the Program in Creative Writing, which he directed for 16 years, and in establishing the Program in Hellenic Studies.

“Mike was the preeminent scholar and translator of modern Greek poetry of our time,” said Dimitri Gondicas, the Stanley J. Seeger '52 Director of the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. A 1978 alumnus, Gondicas entered Princeton in fall 1974 and met Keeley that semester. It was the beginning of a friendship that lasted nearly 50 years, until Keeley’s death.

Gondicas continued: “As president of the PEN American Center from 1991 to 1993, Mike was a champion of writers’ rights around the world. He was America’s most distinguished cultural ambassador to Greece. Closer to home, he was a founder and pillar of Hellenic studies at Princeton. Mike was our teacher, mentor, colleague, comrade in all things Hellenic, fellow traveler all over Greece, and steadfast friend. Until his last hours, Mike kept asking about Hellenic studies and our future plans.”

In 1982, Keeley received Princeton’s Howard T. Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities.

He was born on Feb. 5, 1928, in Damascus, Syria, to American parents, Mathilde Keeley and James Hugh Keeley, Jr., a career diplomat, and grew up in Canada, Greece and Washington, D.C. He first fell in love with the land, people and language of Greece as a child, when his family lived at the American Farm School, focused on environmental, agricultural and sustainability education, in Thessaloniki, while his father was the American Consul. He had two brothers: Robert Keeley, a 1951 alumnus and 1971 graduate alumnus, who entered the foreign service and served for a time as the U.S. ambassador in Athens; and Hugh Keeley, a 1946 alumnus.

During World War I, before Keeley was born, his father was the officer in charge at Princeton assigned to train the University’s unit of the Army air force. When Keeley entered Princeton in fall 1944 at age 16, there were just 40 members of his class, and he intended to enter the foreign service after graduation. After his first year, he went to Trenton and signed up for the Navy, on Aug. 7, 1945, the day after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He spent a year as a seaman second class, based in Guantanamo.

When he returned to Princeton, Keeley fell in love with literature after taking an English course in Shakespeare and started writing poetry. He wrote his thesis on F. Scott Fitzgerald.