Cavafy: 166 Poems: Translated with an Introduction by Alan L. Boegehold

Constantine Cavafy is considered the greatest of modern Greek poets. His poems treat historical, philosophical, and erotic themes, sometimes altogether, and share a unique voice.This volume includes a fresh translation by noted classical scholar Alan Boegehold, a translation that captures the style as well as the meaning of the Greek, and a foreword discussing Cavafy's distinctive values.

There are many English translations of the work of the Alexandrian Greek poet C.P. Cavafy (1863−1933), and the coincidence of two recent translations, one much discussed and one more obscure, illustrates why.

Famous for his poems of erotic longing and regret, Cavafy writes about the Greek past as if it were a personal memory, as indeed it was for he made it so. We see this in his poems about Julian (Roman emperor, born in 361 BC in Constantinople, the half-brother of Constantine the Great). Called The Apostate, Julian, raised a Christian, converted and cracked down on the paganism of contemporary Christians in Antioch. As historian Glenn Bowersock has written in his indispensable From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 240 pages, $45), Antioch "with its traditional style of life was the kind of city in which he longed to live"--for in his own day, homosexuality remained a scandal and a crime.

Even with Bowersock's help, reading Cavafy is a personal thing. Take the new translations by Daniel Mendelsohn in two volumes: C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Knopf, 547 pages, $35) and C. P. Cavafy: The Unfinished Poems (Knopf 119 pages $30). Mendelsohn attempts to render the complex stylistic mix of the original, and, within the parameters set by English, may be felt to do so. "Julian and the Antiochenes" opens:

"Was it ever possible for them to give up / their beautiful way of life; the rich array / of their daily entertainments; their glorious / theatre where was born a union of Art / and the erotic predilections of the flesh!"

Compare this to the translation by Alan L. Boegehold in Cavafy: 166 Poems (Axios Press, 240 pages, $18):

"Was it possible ever for them to disown / their beautiful life, their mix / of daily entertainments / their luminous / theatre where Art joined / the erotic tendencies of flesh?" Boegehold's versions startle one with a tough lyric fierceness as well as wisdom; his Cavafy is indeed "something precious and real."

Through a mixture of Latinate and Germanic−root words, both translators attempt the rich diction of the original Greek. Mendelsohn's longer line allows the stanza to breath a little easier in keeping with the luxurious topic. Behind the difference, however, is interpretation. Reading Cavafy in these translations is profoundly personal and ultimately rewarding. In his poems, the presense of Cavafy's past--and it goes back centuries--is positively Proustian. --Providence (RI) Journal Bulletin, August 28, 2009