Constantine Petrou CavafyBesprekingen

A delightful translation.

So, to be clear, I'm not giving Cavafy's poems 2 stars; my opprobrium is reserved for Daniel Mendelsohn's dishearteningly dead translations. Yes, Cavafy was writing free verse in the modernist vein. Yes, his poetic tone often borders on conversational. But Mendelsohn has decided to ignore the rhythmic torrents of the great poet's work, to select the most mundane word in any situation, to replace the feeling with the cerebral, rather than let the two walk hand in hand. The conversational, perhaps, has become colloquial.

It is certainly impressive for Mendelsohn to have translated all of Cavafy's poems (this edition is a "highlights reel" from the full two-volume collection). This should not be taken as a slight on his lifetime of work or his command of Greek! (Who am I to make such judgments?) Yet dedication alone, however admirable, is not achievement. Perhaps it's an American thing - or a generational one! Mendelsohn's collection has been rapturously received by American institutions, and I suspect there is something appealing, to those soaked in the American literary tradition, in the understated ordinariness of this verse.

As one who does not have Greek, it would be folly to discuss the art of translation in this context. So allow me to compare just two lines from Cavafy's most famous poem The City to try and express the intangible something which I find to be missing from DM's translation.

Here is DM:
"You'll always end up in this city. Don't bother to hope
for a ship, a route, to take you somewhere else;
they don't exist."

Here Edmund Keeley:
" You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road."

Rae Delven:
"Always you will arrive in this city. Do not hope for any other–
There is no ship for you, there is no road."

Theoharis C. Theoharis:
"Always you will end up in this city.
For you there is no boat - abandon hope of that -
no road to other things."

And finally Lawrence Durrell, consciously "transplanting" rather than "translating", in a version from the appendices to his Justine:
"The city is a cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you from yourself."

Four versions of Cavafy I would enjoy reading. And none of them Mendelsohn's.

Adding to the translated poems of C. P. Cavafy, Daniel Mendelsohn has performed a great work of translation and help in understanding this seminal poet. Admired by his poets and translators alike this selection is a fine edition to appreciate the poetry of a favorite poet.

While living in Alexandria Cavafy wrote lyrical poetry featuring Greek culture and its past. This collection contains both narrative poems about the past and more personal lyrics often concerned with homosexual love. The style and tone is expressed in simple dry language that is unique to Cavafy. He is one of my favorite poets.½

Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure put this modern Greek poet on my radar. Luckily, the next day, I got a small bonus on my paycheck and allowed myself to purchase this Harcourt paperback of Cavafy's complete poems, as translated by Rae Dalven. With poetry, I like to dive right in and read poems at random from the beginning, middle, and end of the book. This gives me a sense of the poet's themes, motifs, style, and a view of their development as an artist (typically a book of complete poetry is assembled chronologically). Though Cavafy's poems aren't of epic length, they are of many Hesiodic and Homeric topics and figures. (I always imagine that, in the same way Chaucer and Shakespeare loom over modern English poets, Homer and Pindar must loom over modern Greek ones.) His style is clear, forthright, and barbed with longing. I agree with W. H. Auden in his introduction that Cavafy's poetry lacks ornamentation, but I disagree with Auden that "simile and metaphor are devices he never uses"—the first poem in this volume, "Desires," begins with the word "Like" and proceeds to be, in fact, entirely a simile. A sampling of the verses should serve to give the flavor of Cavafy's disposition: "Every lost chance / now mocks his senseless prudence"; "Body, remember..."; "they have built big and high walls around me"; "Shut up in a greenhouse"; "other echos / return from the first poetry of our lives"; "And the morrow ends by not resembling a morrow"; "And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?" The main thread running through the poems is the modernist contradiction of proselytizing carpe diem from a state of ennui.

I hadn't realised that this was a collection of LGBTQ poems. They tackled many themes such as sensuality, moral attitudes, fear over being found out and more. I quite enjoyed them, but some of them seemed a little disjointed to me, but that could be an effect of the translation.

I hadn't realised that this was a collection of LGBTQ poems. They tackled many themes such as sensuality, moral attitudes, fear over being found out and more. I quite enjoyed them, but some of them seemed a little disjointed to me, but that could be an effect of the translation.

Los poemas de Cavafy son bastante interesantes. En esta edición, el estudio introductorio ayuda mucho a entender la relación entre el autor y sus poemas.

PO-1

I was required to learn a little Cavafy when I took Modern Greek in school, but he only made a partial impression on me at the time. It was this book which made me fall in love. When I read it, I have the sensation of finding a book I had written myself but somehow never read... I don't have the poetic skill in English or Greek, but the thoughts fit with my thoughts. I'm concerned that if I learned Cavafy's works too well, that feeling might slip away and never be recovered. And so Cavafy became my favorite poet, but I also carefully refrain from becoming too much of an expert. It is a book I pick up again once a year or so, especially if I start to think that I don't enjoy poetry after all. Highly recommended.

To read a poet only in translation, is to suffer a great loss. In spite of the strong recommendation by W.H. Auden, at the beginning of this collection, I have always felt that. None the less, in the "Alexandria quartet" by Lawrence Durrell, the quotes seem so apposite that I acquired this collection. I do not know how accurate, Rae Dalven translated the poems, but I have turned to this volume time and again, to read a poem or two. I recommend this book, perhaps because the poems that Dalven translated have a poetic effect on me, whether or not, the originals could have affected me the same way, had I the Greek to deal with them.½

Librería 7. Estante 4.

Having only a vague idea of Cavafy's work before picking this up--in Atlantis Books in Ia on Santorini--I was a bit surprised to notice a theme of, erm, amorous language describing the male form, etc. A bit awkward as I was reading it in church, but this is powerful stuff. My favorite piece in this collection is probably Ithaca, which has haunted me over the last few weeks. From near the end:

"Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey;
without her you wouldn't have set upon the road.
But now she has nothing left to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca didn't deceive you.
As wise as you will have become, with so much
experience,
you will understand, by then, these Ithacas,
what they mean."

Can't say I was blown away by this tiny selection from Cavafy, whom I've wanted to read for over a decade now. Unsure if that's due to the choices made for this edition, the translation (the book contains the original Greek, which I don't understand but am able to transliterate), or the poetry itself, which seems somehow 'dated' in my opinion: slow and seemingly unremarkable to a modern reader.

I suppose Cavafy isn't known for his elaborate language either; this is matter-of-fact, rather unsentimental realism. Still, Cavafy does manage to convey the sense of oppressiveness and the always furtive motions homosexuals must have gone through in his era, and -- knowing this is often still the case in a lot of places -- that does add an extra layer of tension and meaningfulness; it certainly brings home the message. Viewed this way, these snippets (all the poems are extremely short) do become the bleakest, saddest love poems one could come across -- a muffled scream full of impossible passion. Three stars instead of two because of that.

MAP MAGAZINE MAGAZINE 5/6 MOVEMENT AT KAI KAVAFI

The poems in this selection are simple, heartfelt, very short and surprisingly erotic. I know little of Cavafy's life and work, save his poem Ithaka, which was cited by Daniel Mendelsohn in his Odyssey, and Hockney's etchings which illustrate fourteen of his poems. I was surprised at the frankness of the desire expressed in these verses, though I shouldn't have been. It's precisely that which has made Cavafy so celebrated today: his luminous conjuring of smooth-limbed, beautiful boys and his memories of 'voluptuous illusions'. The poems have an overarching air of melancholy, of looking back. The poet seems to be on the brink of old age, warming the chill of his declining years by wandering past houses he once knew and remembering the sweetness of his early loves.

There are some non-homoerotic images too: I was profoundly moved by the poem Candles, which envisages 'The days of the future... like a line of burning candles - golden candles, warm with life' and contrasts those with 'the days of our past, a pitiful row of candles extinguished, the nearest still sending up their smoke'. The poet looks ahead, fixing his eyes on the burning candles, ignoring the lengthening line of guttered lights behind him. Yet the bulk of the poems celebrate male beauty, along with the cautious thrill of daring to make such desires known. For Cavafy, the passionate tumult of his youth was the arena in which his art was formed, and he draws on those lost days as if on nectar, savouring those loved and lost. As a taster of his work, this has done its job: I'd like to read more. His blend of simplicity and sensuality is very appealing.½

44 delle poesie di Kavafis tradotte da Guido Ceronetti.
Due poeti magistrali che si incontrano.
Non poteva che nascerne un’opera splendida, con traduzioni raffinate e un senso profondo dato all’amore e all’erotismo che solo Kavafis è riuscito a esprimere.
Le scelte di Ceronetti delle poesie da tradurre sono personali. Ma rappresentanti del modo di intendere la poesia di Kavafis.

In preparing for this review, I realized that Splendour of a Morning is the ONLY modern Greek literature I have in my possession and I believe it might be the only modern Greek book I have read. The other twenty or so Greek books I do have were written millennia ago. After reading this delightful edition of Cavafy’s poems, I will be remedying that situation quickly, both with more of his writing and by finding some works in translation from the modern Greek. Coincidentally, I just got a recommendation for The Scapegoat by Sophia Nikolaidou when checking out a new podcast today, called Reading Women.

So leave it to those two delightful Barbarians, Jan and Crispin, to introduce me yet again to an author and poet I was not familiar with. And to do it in a lovely edition that is a pleasure to read, hold, and just see on the shelf. They’ve moved my Greek reading up thousands of years and now at least I am in the 20th century. To steal a line from one of the poems in this collection, these Barbarians are a kind of solution!

This book had an interesting gestation and was the product of many people that wanted to see Cavafy presented in this manner. Originally, it was a project of Paul Razzell’s Inferno Press and Peter Lazarov had already done the illustrations before the press shut down. The manuscript was passed to Jan & Crispin to publish with generous help from others in the bookmaking community. David Smulders, whose translations of these poems originated from a trip he took to Greece to further his classical studies of and see a part of the world he (like me) had only seen through the lens of the ancient poets and writers. For this edition, he added the Introduction and a new translation of the poem Ithaka.

In the Introduction, Smulders notes that his youthful boondoggle to Greece seemed to reflect the joy of life he would soon discover in Cavafy’s poetry:

"As I recall, the hardest part about travelling was getting up the gumption to purchase that plane ticket. The rest was
easy. This turns out to be a very Cavafyesque idea--that is, the sheer joy of going for it, ignoring all those voices of
caution & fear that hold us back and stepping forward without regret."

That “Cavafyesque idea” resonated with me not in regards to a trip but in recently selling our home of 13 years and moving out of the town I have lived in for 28 years. A short jump a town over but one that caused one of the first poems in the book, 'The Morning Sea', to immediately catch my attention. In keeping with our dreams, we now can see the sea/ocean from our windows and I drive the coast highway a stones throw from the surf line multiple times a day. I’ve always thought of myself as a water spirit but now it’s confirmed in the way that daily and ever-changing sight affects me. Here are a few lines from the poem:

"Here let me stand. And let me look on Nature awhile--
seas of the morning and the deep blue
of the cloudless sky and the golden shores, all
beautiful and ever brightening."

Along with a couple of other sea poems, I find myself reciting these lines as I drive, ride, and walk along the Pacific Coast.

Cavafy’s poetry is varied in its subjects and its language. Here’s Smulders, again from the Introduction:

"One thing that appealed about Cavafy was that, in so many ways, he represented transition, the passing from one
age to the next. His work was hard to pin down…His writing seems to employ what it needs of both formal & informal
styles of the language to make his voice stand out. He is notorious for inserting classical or katharevousa [literary]
Greek into his usual demotic style. Nor are his themes of any definite era: in one poem we might meet a character
out of Homer or classical Greek history; the next moment we are in the Hellenistic period, and further on we might
encounter Cavafy in his own time, savouring the memory of an old experience.

In his poem 'Very Seldom', Cavafy seems to nod to the ancient poets, maybe also to his contemporary favorites that were reaching the end of their genius, and maybe even unknowingly predict how some might feel about him one day. He writes:

"Now youngsters repeat his verses;
before their flashing eyes his visions pass;
their vigorous, passionate minds,
their tender, rippling bodies
are moved by his impression of the beautiful. "

Then he’s off into his own mind, nostalgically remembering a lover or friend from long ago:

"O Memory, keep those grey eyes as they were,
and, Memory, whatever you can from that passion,
whatever you can, bring back to me this night."

Some of the poems that struck me the deepest have that flavor of Eastern mysticism and philosophy, rivaling what you see in various forms in various motivational, psychological, and self-help best-sellers these days. In 'As Much As You Can', he advises us:

"And if you can't live your life as you wish,
try this at least
as much as you can: don't degrade it
with too much mingling with company, with too much activity and talk.

Don't degrade it by dragging it around
from one place to another, exposing it often
to the everyday silliness
of social scenes and engagements
so that it comes to seem an impertinent nuisance."

These are ten lines that you could read and meditate on all your life before hopefully finally incorporating the wisdom within them.

And in perhaps his most famous poem, and the one that was translated specifically for this book because Crispin couldn’t bear for it not to be here, he imparts even more wisdom from his experience of life:

"Keep Ithaka always in your mind;
arriving there is your destiny,
but do not hurry the journey at all.
Better to take many years,
so that you reach the island an old man,
rich with all you have gained along the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you riches.

Ithaka gave you the beautiful journey.
Without her, you would not have found your way.
But she has nothing left to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka will not have fooled you.
Wise as you have become, with such experience,
by now you will have understood what all these Ithakas mean.

Substitute the word Ithaka for your dharma, your life’s destination or destiny, and there is much wisdom there. The full poem is wonderful and will be a regular source of meditation and contemplation for me in my life going forward.

And finally, I’ve read his poem 'Waiting for the Barbarians', over and over. I’ve already succumbed to punning on it with respect to the press’ name above. And it is just too apropos of the politics in the United States of America over the last several years:

"Why is it all quiet in the Senate?
Why are the Senators not legislating?

Because the Barbarians are coming today.
What need is there for new laws from the Senate now?
When the Barbarians come they will make the laws.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

Coming back to Smulders’ Introduction, he hits on what makes these poems so accessible here:

"...I confess that there is little method in my translation regarding fidelity to the technical aspects of Cavafy's poetry.
As a reader I am drawn to the simplicity of his ideas & the beautiful wisdom of his voice, whether he is writing about a
Persian prince or a former lover or just dwelling on the meaning of life.

As I’ve come to expect from the Barbarian Press, this book is well thought out in all respects. The combination of Jan’s impeccable printing of the illustrations with Crispin’s eye for laying out a page and book design in general, make to most of the beauty of Cavafy’s lines and Lazarov’s engravings. I love that both the Greek and the translation are included, sometimes en face and sometimes on the same page, depending on the text and illustrations. Again, that eye for details and aesthetics that make the books from this press so good. And I can’t love the illustrations enough in this one. Peter Lazarov is an amazing artist and illustrator. For more on him check out the Endgrains Edition Three the press published in 2003, if you are lucky enough to come across one. This is one of the BP books I was fortunate to find at a rare bookseller for a reasonable price. It is absolutely beautiful but not sure a review of it would be appropriate on this blog. In these particular illustrations, I really like how he’s integrated book images into the likeness of Cavafy and other illustrations that were inspired by the poems.

So, as they have done for me so many times in the past, the Barbarian Press has introduced me to a new writer or artist in the trappings of a beautiful hand-crafted and immaculate book form. A perfect melding of literature, art, and craft, that for me, is what fine and private printing is all about.

AVAILABILITY: The book was produced in an edition of 100, with 50 regular and 50 deluxe copies for sale. It looks to be sold out on the website although it might be worth contacting the press to see if any last copies are knocking about. Otherwise, I have seen an occasional book from the press on the second hand market.

For more book reviews, including photos of the physical books and overall reading experience, visit my blog The Whole Book Experience at http://www.thewholebookexperience.com/

Tante cose si potrebbero dire sulla calda sensualità della poesia di Kavafis, su una realtà levantina che l'impero ottomano, erede di Bisanzio, teneva assieme (come faceva quello asburgico con la mitica Mitteleuropa) oppure, se fossi uno studioso di letteratura, anche sulla forma scelta da Konstantinos, ma quello che ho scoperto davvero in questo libro è che la grecità trascende il tempo. Non me ne ero mai accorto prima che per loro potesse essere così. Lesbo e Konstantinos sono compatrioti nonostante i millenni che li separano. (Lo stesso non si può dire, mi perdonino i nostalgici del Fascio, di Montale e di Catullo o di qualsiasi altro poeta italiano contemporaneo o passato e qualsiasi altro rimatore romano...)-IMPERDIBILE -

Um conjunto de poemas de Constantino Cavafy selecionados, traduzidos, introduzidos e ricamente anotados por Jorge de Sena, com o objetivo de apresentar todas as fases da obra do grande poeta da Alexandria grega.

A poesia de Cavafy é etérea e nostálgica, usando as palavras de deuses, reis e guerreiros da antiguidade para evocar breves episódios dramáticos da história longínqua dos mundos grego e romano do período clássico, através dos quais nos deixa entrever os grande embates que se travavam à época, como o declínio político grego perante o poder romano ou a expansão inexorável da cristandade. Quando como em "Mires" ou "Deus Abandona Marco António", por exemplo, Cavafy consegue associar o instante histórico a uma tensão emocional muito forte, a sua poesia toca-me profundamente.

Mas não só, também me toca a sua poesia muito pessoal, cheia de uma nostalgia leve e enternecedora, em que Cavafys, poeta velho, recorda na primeira pessoa as emoções que experimentou há longos anos perante a beleza dos jovens por quem se apaixonou e que, resignado, já só tem esperança de reviver na memória.

Não deve passar dos vinte e dois. Contudo, / quase tenho a certeza de que há uns vintes anos / este mesmo corpo foi que eu possuí. // Não é uma ilusão do meu desejo. / Entrei neste casino apenas há instantes, / não tive tempo de beber de mais. / Foi este mesmo corpo que eu possuí. // Se não me lembra aonde - pouco importa. // Na mesa ao lado, agora, vem sentar-se: / ah reconheço os gestos dele - e sob a roupa / vejo-lhe nus os membros que eu amei.

A compelling collection of all the poetry of the early 20th-century Greek 'poet-historian' C. P. Cavafy. Whilst that moniker might sound pretentious at first, it is an accurate description of the Alexandrian; his poems draw on Classical history, both well-known and obscure, and his research is meticulous and comprehensive. This can make some of Cavafy's poetry difficult to approach, as one requires the historical background for many of these poems in order to try and understand the main thrust of the poem. (To this end, editor Daniel Mendelsohn's excellent and exhaustive Notes – which comprise of approximately half of the entire book – are essential in navigating the poetry, rather than just a boon for more scholarly readers.)

This may deny the pleasure of Cavafy to many prospective readers, but in my opinion it was well-worth the mental effort it required. There's no poet quite like Cavafy; the muse he taps into is quite different from any other poet's, and consequently has an unspoilt richness that indeed makes it seem, to paraphrase his most famous poem 'Ithaca', like first putting into harbours new to your eyes. It's like entering a whole new world, and unfortunately Cavafy's pioneering work forged a path that has not been entirely explored by subsequent poets. Cavafy just gets the romantic undertones inherent in the study of history: the idea that, as Mendelsohn notes, "the backward glance can, in the end, be a glimpse into the future" (pg. lxxii) and, even more significantly, the idea that problems of emotion and of history both require the same remedy: the realisation that our understanding of events whether personal or historical can only come with the passage of time. For, as Mendelsohn further notes, Cavafy's poetry is:

"… richly coloured by a profound sympathy for human striving in the face of impossible obstacles. (Which could be the armies of Octavian or taboos against forbidden desires.)… That appreciation, that sympathy, that understanding are, of course, made possible only by Time – the medium that makes History possible, too… His poetry returns obsessively to a question that is, essentially, a historian's question: how the passage of time affects our understanding of events – whether the time in question is the millennia that have elapsed since 31 B.C., when the Hellenophile Marc Antony's dreams of an Eastern Empire were pulverized by Rome (the subject of seven poems), or the mere years that, in the poem 'Since Nine –', have passed since those long-ago nights that the narrator spent in bustling cafés and crowded city streets: a space of time that has since been filled with the deaths of loved ones whose value he only now appreciates…" (pg. xxxv – xxxvi)

It is this awareness of the immediacy of history, allowing "the blurring of the ancient and the modern" (pg. xx), which gives Cavafy his durability and integrity. I confess that I was drawn to read Cavafy due to my love of Greek mythology (I was already aware of and impressed by 'Ithaca'), but I found a body of work even more satisfying than just an indulgence of my own pet interests.

Favourites include: 'The God Abandons Antony', 'Ithaca', 'Trojans', 'Far Off', 'Gray', 'The Mirror in the Entrance', 'Candles', 'Thermopylae', 'The Windows', 'Walls', 'Oedipus', 'Azure Eyes', 'Hidden', 'The Rest I Shall Tell in Hades to Those Below', 'That's How', 'Half an Hour' and the prose poem 'Ships'.

copia 634/1000

Ed. Círculo de Lectores. Barcelona. 1999. Trad. Ramón Irigoyen. Dedicatoria del traductor.251 pp. 21 x 13 cm. Cartoné editorial con sobrecubierta

Poetry by a gay man living later 1800's to mid 1900's offers a different look at love and the struggle to be himself. Will make you think about how homosexuals have been treated in the past. Especially interesting considering how acceptable homosexuality was in ancient Roman and Greek times.