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

Cavafy, C. P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393061426 ISBN 13: 9780393061420

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006

Synopsis

A new translation of a poet widely considered one of the most important of the twentieth century.

C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has written some of the most powerful poems in history. His work uncannily translates history, the record of the many, into an individual personal document. Though Cavafy is wickedly satirical, many of his poems are located in a landscape of intimacy. Drawing on the spectrum of ancient Greek poetic tradition, his poetry is still internal, whether his speaker is a spoiled rich boy who plans to enter politics or a poor, ostracized, pure and beautiful young man destroyed by poverty and priggish social mores.

In these glimmering and lyrical translations, with an introduction and scholarly endnotes cowritten with Willis Barnstone, Aliki Barnstone has been faithful to the original Greek, capturing both Cavafy's song and his vernacular in ways neglected in previous translations. Paying close attention to tone and diction, she has employed her well-tuned poet's ear, making Cavafy's verse breathe new music in English.

About this title

About the Author

Aliki Barnstone’s translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. An editor and critic, she lives in Las Vegas and teaches at UNLV.

Reviews

Excellent as the versions of Theoharis Constantine Theoharis ( Before Time Could Change Them, 2001), Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard ( Collected Poems, 1975), and Rae Dalven ( Complete Poems, 1961) are, Barnstone's translations of the great Greek modernist poet are the most immediate of all. Gerald Stern acknowledges as much in the foreword here and seconds Auden's wonder that poetry in a language he doesn't know could so powerfully influence him. Stern attributes Cavafy's impact to the "tender humanism" he shares with such peers as Yeats, Rilke, and Stevens. Cavafy wrote two kinds of poetry, often in the same poem. One is about homosexual love; the other, about turning points in Greek history from the Trojan War to the late Byzantine Empire. There is always in a Cavafy poem a focal consciousness, the poet's or a historical figure's, that has become alienated from his or her most intense experiences--sexual in the erotic poems, usually political in the historical poems. All a Cavafy persona retains is memory, but that is what life is: memory. Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393061426
• ISBN 13: 9780393061420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304