Cavafy, C. P.

The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation

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The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation
C. P. Cavafy
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Complete Poems of Cavafy: Expanded Edition

ASIN: 0393328996

Book Description

A new translation of a poet widely considered one of the most important of the twentieth century. C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) wrote some of the most powerful poems in world literature. His work uncannily translates history, the record of the many, into an individual personal document. He draws on the spectrum of Greek poetic tradition to write wickedly satirical yet internal poetry, whether his speaker is a spoiled rich boy planning to enter politics or a poor, ostracized, pure young man destroyed by poverty and priggish social mores.

The Complete Poems of Cavafy: Expanded Edition

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To the Most Audacious Amorous Desires
life reality
A note on the translation
Ironic Philhellene...Intelligent, Honest Lover of Males...
The Torment of Presence

The Complete Poems of Cavafy: Expanded Edition
C.P. Cavafy
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0156198207

Book Description

Cavafy, the foremost modern Greek poet, is a master at presenting a scene, an intense feeling, or an idea in direct, unornamented verse. Many of the poems are openly homosexual. Sixty-three newly translated poems have been added to the widely praised edition which includes the classic poem “Ithaca.” Introduction by W. H. Auden. Translated by Rae Dalven.

Customer Reviews:

To the Most Audacious Amorous Desires.......2006-03-15

Among the poets of the twentieth century, there is maybe one who can confidently say, "I am better than Cavafy." Yet, on a top five list of the twentieth century's greatest poets, Cavafy is far less likely to appear than, say, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, or W. H. Auden, yet Cavafy's work can stand against any of these.

Poets tend to squabble with tired questions, faith vs. reason, contemplation vs. experience, knowledge vs. serenity, life vs. language, etc. Cavafy, the Alexandrian Greek, does not squabble. Whether Cavafy's poems are about politics, art, or love (and those on the latter are the finest), it is as if his principal questions are answered before he writes the poem. Cavafy would never write a poem depicting the conflict between seamy, audacious amours and upright society. Instead, he goes ahead and writes about seamy, audacious amours, and at the end reminds us that upright society doesn't understand, that it makes "stupid comparisons."

And all of this Cavafy does with a fleeting tone (a la John Keats) that appears to be chiseled into marble (a la Ovid), at once the slightest and weightiest thing you've ever read.

Positively a must read and must own for any self-respecting poetry enthusiast.

life reality.......2006-01-16

candles ithaca speaks and compering for life it is amazing.

A note on the translation.......2004-06-26

This review is not about the work of Cavafy itself, which I love, but a comment on the translation. Many critics have complained that a great deal is lost in a translation of Cavafy, particularly some of the linguistic and stylistic craftsmanship, and that is true of any translation of a poet. However, I believe the tone or the mood of poems, so important in a poet like Cavafy, are underemphasized, and if a translation is capable of conveying them with profundity, it is commendable; and in this respect the Rae Dalven translation is far superior to the Keeley/Sherrard and the Theoharis translations I have read, and the only one worth returning to - it remains evocative where the others seem to miss the pitch, sounding flat or overdone.

Ironic Philhellene...Intelligent, Honest Lover of Males..........2004-02-15

This review relates to the volume -The Complete Poems
of Cavafy-, Expanded Edition, Translated by Rae Dalven,
published by Harcourt, Inc., 1976.
Although his name is spelled as Konstantinos Petrou
Kabaphes, the name by which he is usually referred is
an English version, C.P. Cavafy. He lived from
1863 - 1933, and resided most of his life in Alexandria,
Egypt. Perhaps the only poem that most modern readers
might come in contact with in modern poetry anthologies
is "Ithaca." And even in this poem, one can see the
interesting, wry, ironic way that Cavafy has of reversing
what one might think would be the usual, or "safe"
way of seeing things. Cavafy has that very interesting
double vision, which knows the "usual" and the "accepted,"
and yet dares to sail in the face of convention and
expectation and create the unexpected, the delightful,
the heart touching, the soulful. That is not to say
that he is maudlin or sentimental in a syrupy fashion.
That double vision comes from the double nature of the
experiencer and the viewer and the analyzer. Cavafy
was a lover of males. The words "homosexual" and "gay"
just don't even come close to doing justice or exactness
to what that life direction meant to him. For, though
he knows what he is and what he desires, he also knows
the surrounding culture's and religion's negative
attitudes and doctrines towards that direction. So
it results in a double-awareness, with multiple levels

of subtle nuance. He sees, knows, analyzes the outward
manifestations, experiences, modes -- and yet at the
same time internally is aware, secretly, of the inner
manifestations, desires, manifestations, and modes.
The critical edge of judgment and decision is when
and in what ways he will actualize the secret internal
desire into the "public" external world. These poems
reflect those attempts and results. However, Cavafy
is also interested in ancient history, and many of
his poems reflect a sort of world-weary love and
appreciation, yet sadness at the passing of the past,
towards the history of ancient Greece and that of
the Hellenistic World which followed in the wake
of the conquests and death of Alexander the Great.
Here is a sample of Cavafy, the poem titled "At the
Cafe Entrance":
Something they said beside me directed
my attention toward the cafe entrance.
And I saw the beautiful body that looked
as if Eros had made it from his consumate experience --
joyfully modeling its symmetrical limbs;
heightening sculpturally its stature;
modeling the face with emotion
and imparting by the touch of his hands
a feeling on the brow, on the eyes, on the lips.
--------------------
-- Robert Kilgore.

The Torment of Presence.......2004-02-04

I first encountered Cavafy as the writer ofa grim little poem called 'The City' - "You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas. The city will follow you." This bleak essay is the incarnation of the hopelessness of noir writing, and so my formative opinion of Cavafy perceived him as something much difference from what he is. Even though the bleak and an atmosphere of despair frequently haunt his efforts.

It was only in later study, after realizing that my 'secret' poet was actually one of the foremost of modern Greek poets. One who, despite the difficulties in the translation of his poems has had an influence well beyond the barriers of language. Cavafy habitually used to forms of Greek, demotic and purist, to carry out his devices. He writes plainly, with little or no metaphor or simile, but what makes his poems poetry is largely untranslatable. Yet, as one reads through his work in English translation, there are countless moments when something grabs your attention.

W. H. Auden, who wrote the introduction, attributes this to Cafavy's uniqueness, which somehow differentiates him from everyone else at the same time as it creates a connection. I find that reading Cavafy in translation is a bit like having a conversation with someone who has a very interesting way of expressing himself. His subjects are most often his own sensuality and the nature of the human state as a part of the old world of Greek history. But whether he is working within the parameters of his own homosexuality, or pondering the state of Demetrius Soter, Cafavy rarely fails to his home.

If you are looking to expand poetic horizons from an unexpected perspective, or smply enjoy verse that brings you up short and makes you think, there is much here for your reading. You will find Cavafy work easily accessible a valuable addition to the contemplatives library.

C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
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A must if you like modernist poetry

Cavafy is an excellent poet

Haunting, profound poems of antiquity, love and loss.

Cavafy in Greek...

Absolutely wonderful!

C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
C. P. Cavafy
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation

ASIN: 0691015376

Book Description

C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and a collected edition of his poems was not published until after his death. Now, however, he is regarded as the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature. Here is an extensively revised edition of the acclaimed translations of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, which capture Cavafy's mixture of formal and idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies. The resetting of the entire edition has permitted the translators to review each poem and to make alterations where appropriate. George Savidis has revised the notes according to his latest edition of the Greek text. About the first edition: "The best [English version] we are likely to see for some time."--James Merrill, The New York Review of Books "[Keeley and Sherrard] have managed the miracle of capturing this elusive, inimitable, unforgettable voice. It is the most haunting voice I know in modern poetry."--Walter Kaiser, The New Republic

Customer Reviews:

A must if you like modernist poetry.......2007-01-04

There is nothing that can adequately describe the first time you read Cavafy. It is like a breath of fresh air or a cold shower on a hot day... completely envigorating and different to anything you've ever read before.

I've shared his poetry with friends and they are all blown away.

Cavafy's erotic poems show a sensitivity and directness that is quite unique.

His personal reflective pieces are extremely insightful. I would say that you will get a better understanding of Existential philosophy through this small book of poems than any tomes from the likes of Satre, Camus, Beckett.

His historical poems are best appreciated if you know Byzantine history and the notes in the book are a fantastic to set the context.

This book deserves to be in any personal or public library

Cavafy is an excellent poet.......2006-02-23

Cavafy is a poet with a view that is both ancient and modern. It's a poet that has a language that is both exuberant and emotional without being too excessive.

Haunting, profound poems of antiquity, love and loss........2005-04-16

As with any poems translated from a language I have never learned, I am left wondering just how close Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard have come to the original style and substance of C.P. Cavafy, the great Alexandrian Greek poet of the early 20th century. (Keeley and Sherrard are scrupulous in their end notes, noting untranslatable words and the original rhyme schemes of poems translated into free verse.) Even in translation, these poems are exquisite, haunting both my dreams and my waking thoughts. Cavafy essentially had only a few subjects, but they were great ones--the lost glory of antiquity, the inevitable decline of the mighty, the death of love and beauty, the folly of human striving, the crucial importance of memory and history. In language of deceptive simplicity, he limned the ephemeral nature of beautiful things and the empty spaces their loss leaves in the soul. (Cavafy, openly gay at a time when homosexuality was truly the love that dare not speak its name, wrote only of lost, passing or unrequited love.) Most of these poems are very short, but they insinuate themselves inextricably into memory, such as "The Mirror in the Front Hall," depicting a handsome young man who stops to straighten his tie: "the old mirror was all joy now,/proud to have embraced/total beauty for a few moments." My own favorite in the book is one of the longer poems, "Orophernis," about a wastrel king of the 2nd Century B.C. who came to grief trying to be a real king for once. The final five lines of this poems are Cavafy in a nutshell; The figure on this four drachma coin, a trace of whose young charm can still be seen, a ray of his poetic beauty-- this sensuous commemoration of an Ionian boy, this is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.

Cavafy in Greek..........2003-11-14

I own a copy of the original collection of Cavafy's poems (in Greek) and I find that this translation has measured up to the task of translating the forceful and sensual poetry as closely as possible. And for anyone who cannot read Greek, this book will bring you as close as possible to the intense emotional response of reading the original. A must have for any poetry lover.

Absolutely wonderful!.......1998-11-13

Kavafy is the the perfect guide in our exploration of life. I reccommend this book highly. Edmund Keeley has done a wonderful job in bringing Kavafy's poetry to us.

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The Complete Poems of Cavafy
C. P. Cavafy
Manufacturer: Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace and World
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JLJB96

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Selected Poems
C. P. Cavafy
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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C P Cavafy Collected Poems
C P Cavafy
Manufacturer: PRINCETON UNIV PRESS@
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0701136626

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C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
C.P. (George Savidis, Editor) CAVAFY
Manufacturer: Princeton University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HJJ3ZM

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POETRY Vol. CXXNo. 5 (August, 1972)
Daryl, Editor: C. P. Cavafy, Yannis Ritsos, Angelos Sikelianus, Kostes Palamas, Robert Morse, David Galler, H. B. Mallaieu, Marilyn Hacker, John L. Foster, A. D. Hope, Turner Cassity, Richard Howard, and Philip Murray HINE
Manufacturer: Modern Poetry Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IZN3PG

Four Greek Poets (Penguin Modern European Poets)

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Four Greek Poets (Penguin Modern European Poets)
C. P. Cavafy , George Seferis , Odysseus Elytis , and Nikos Gatsos
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000BJRBGG

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Passions and Ancient Days
C.P. Cavafy; Translated And Introduced By Edmund Keeley And George Savidi
Manufacturer: DIAL PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OK68ZM

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