Edmund Keeley (1928–2022)

I recently had the great good fortune to meet Edmund Keeley and his wife Mary Stathatos-Kyris at a party at the home of Landon and Sarah Jones. I am ashamed to admit that it is evidence of my very bad education that I wasn't familiar with Dr. Keeley's work. Generously, Lanny told me just how accomplished was the charming gentleman with whom I was able to chat for a few moments. I won't give you the full boat, but you can certainly go here for his long list of credentials and accomplishments, although I'm sure you're all far better educated than I and am well acquainted with Dr. Keeley's work. What I will tell you is that Dr. Keeley is the Charles Barnwell Professor of English Emeritus at Princeton University, where he served for some years as the Director of the Creative Writing Program and the Program of Hellenic Studies. He's written novels, poetry and nonfiction, including Cavafy's Alexandria, and is the friend and noted translator of many important Greek poets. I had so much of his work to consider it was difficult to know just where to begin.

I was familiar, in small measure, with some if the poets Dr. Keeley has translated -- Cavafy, George Seferis, Yannis Ritsos, Odysseas Elytis -- and so I began my introduction to Keeley's work by going back to a wonderful anthology I have called Against Forgetting, 20thc. poetry of witness, to re-read the section on "War and Dictatorship in the Mediterranean (1900-1991)" in which their work is anthologized. Sure enough, all are translated by Keeley. It seems I am more familiar with his work that I knew.

The City
by Constantine P. Cavafy
Translation by Edmund Keeley

You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

I don't speak Greek, but I can't imagine the original was more poignant, more evocative. I am often disappointed by translations, not because I can compare them to the original language (I speak only English and a passable French) but because translations often sound rigid to my ears, as though they're trying too hard, calling attention to the translator's effort rather than the author's intention. Invisibility is an art.

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