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by: C.P. Cavafy
List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $19.77 You Save: $10.18 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Not yet published
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 889.132
EAN: 9780375400964
ISBN: 0375400966
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: March 24, 2009
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 24, 2009
Sales Rank: 836346
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
An extraordinary literary event. The collected works—including the previously unpublished final poems—of the greatest modern Greek poet, translated by the renowned critic, classicist, and award-winning author of The Lost, and published simultaneously in two handsome volumes.
No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break with such exquisite lyricism the early-twentieth-century taboos surrounding homoerotic desire; no poet before or since has so gracefully melded elegy and irony as the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933). Now, after more than a decade of work and study, and with the exclusive cooperation of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, Daniel Mendelsohn is uniquely positioned to reveal the full extent of Cavafy’s genius. Here at last is the remarkable music of his poetry, and the rhymes, assonances, and rhythms of the original Greek that have eluded previous translators.
The more than 250 works in Collected Poems cover the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization from the Trojan War through Cavafy’s own lifetime. Powerfully moving, searching, and wise, Cavafy’s poetry and the stories he tells—whether advising Odysseus as he sets out for Ithaca, or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the night of his death—brilliantly make the historical personal. He also explores, with striking universality, longing and loneliness, fate and loss, memory and identity, all with a profound, humane sympathy. Including an in-depth introduction by Mendelsohn and extensive commentary that situates the work in a rich historical, literary, and biographical context, the Collected Poems is also a revelatory window into classics and classical history.
Equally exciting is the publication of The Unfinished Poems—thirty nearly complete drafts that Cavafy left behind at the time of his death, which languished in the Cavafy Archive for six decades and have never before been translated into English. These astonishing texts—as evocative and lyrical as Cavafy’s finished work—and the introduction and commentary that augment them, provide a fascinating glimpse into the poet’s creative process and allow the reader to take part in a major literary discovery.
These splendid translations will stand as definitive, firmly establishing Cavafy’s place in the pantheon of the finest artists of the modern era.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A beautiful and authentic translation
I am a big fan of Edmund Keeley's translations of Demotic Greek and Katherevousa. Having an armchair scholar's knowledge of the language I can appreciate the labor that has gone in to the refinement of the translations in the decades since the first edition. This volume reads very well in English, and I have given many of these as gifts over the years to poetry fans who do not know a word of Greek, always resulting in a comment about how such a poet could be so little known. Cavafy probably would ... Read More
Rating: - A must if you like modernist poetry
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Cavafy is an excellent poet
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.
Rating: - Haunting, profound poems of antiquity, love and loss.
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Cavafy in Greek...
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.
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