Selected Poems by C.P. Cavafy (Princeton Legacy Library) - Softcover

Cavafy, C. P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691619387 ISBN 13: 9780691619385

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2015

Synopsis

C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) is now considered by many to be the most original and influential Greek poet of this century. The qualities of his poetry that were unfashionable during his lifetime are the very ones that make his work endure: his sparing use of metaphor; his evocation of spoken rhythms and colloquialisms; his use of epigrammatic and dramatic modes; his aesthetic perfectionism; his frank treatment of homosexual themes; his brilliantly alive sense of history; and his commitment to Hellenism, coupled with an astute cynicism about politics.

The translations in Selected Poems are completely new. Realizing that Cavafy's language is closer to the spoken idiom than that of other leading Greek poets of his time, and that earlier translations have failed to capture the immediate, colloquial qualities of Cavafy's voice, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard have rendered his most significant and characteristic poems in a style and rhythm as natural and apt in English as the poet's is in Greek.

Originally published in 1972.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

About the Author

Edmund Keeley is the Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English Emeritus and the Director Emeritus of the Creative Writing and Hellenic Studies programs at Princeton University, where he taught for forty years. His novels, literary and historical studies, and translations have earned him the Rome Prize and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal and the 2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets. He is the author of several books published by White Pine Press: AN ALBANIAN JOURNAL (1997), SOME WINE FOR REMEMBRANCE (2002), and BORDERLINES: A MEMOIR (2005). His latest publications are his eighth novel, The Megabuilders of Queenston Park, and the poetry collection REQUIEM FOR MARY (Greenhouse Review Press, 2015).

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0691619387
• ISBN 13: 9780691619385
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112