C.P. Cavafy: Selected Poems

Cavafy is by far the most translated and most well-known Greek poet internationally. His work exists in multiple translations in a wide range of languages and major 20th-century poets as diverse as Auden, Brecht, Brodsky, Durrell, Milosz and Montale have all paid tribute to Cavafy, either by writing poems in the style of Cavafy, or by openly admitting their debt to his poetry in their own work. Whether his subject matter is historical, philosophical or sensual, Cavafys unique poetic voice is always recognizable by its ironical, suave, witty, world-weary and aesthetic tones. It is a voice which lends itself to translation. Indeed, translations of Cavafys poetry are the best possible counter to the often quoted platitude that poetry is what is lost in translation. Cavafys is a poetry that not only survives but actually thrives in translation.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; The City; The Satrapy; The God Forsakes Antony; Ithaca; As Far As You Can; Dionysus Entourage; Ionic; One Night; Return; He Vows; I Went; Aristobulus; Caesarion; Remember, Body; Voices; Candles; The Souls of Old Men; Thermopylae; Che fece il gran rifiuto; Walls; Waiting for The Barbarians; To Remain; Young Men of Sidon (A.D. 400); So They May Come ; I Brought to Art; In The Boring Village; Sophist Leaving Syria; Two Young Men, 23 or 24 Years Old; Days of 1901; He Asked About the Quality ; Chronology of Cavafys Life; English Translations of Cavafys Canon; Index of Greek Titles

About the Author :
Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863 and died there on the morning of his 70th birthday in 1933. He worked as an employee in the Irrigation Service at the Ministry of Public Works in Alexandria and was a leading figure in the literary life of the city. Surprisingly, he chose not to publish any collected edition of his poems during his lifetime, but preferred to circulate small privately printed collections among his friends, seemingly confident of the afterlife of his work and of his subsequent recognition. The first collection of his poems was published in 1935, and the international acclaim for his work has grown ever since.

Review :
he inventor of a modernity and an Alexandrianism of his own, so pungent and of such sad, dry elevation that his work transcends his language and his century. Robert Fitzgerald Poet and Translator; Cavafy is for me not only the great poet of the Levant, but of all culture in decline which makes him universal in this century. John Fowles Novelist; His complete sincerity, his angular stance to the world, his tenderness that is combined with the accuracy of a surgeon, his awareness of the past in the present and of the present in the past, his meticulousness, his grandeur these are some of the qualities which no reader can fail to observe and which, singly and together, make him one of the greatest writers of our times. Rex Warner Classicist and Translator