Poetry Books
C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
RRP: $19.95
Our Price: $15.56
You Save: $ 4.39 ( 22% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
Author: C. P. Cavafy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $15.56
You Save: $ 4.39 ( 22% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
Author: C. P. Cavafy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Average Customer Rating:
Experimental feature: Order C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 889.132
EAN: 9780691015378
ISBN: 0691015376
Label: Princeton University Press
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1992-09-08
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Studio: Princeton University Press
Dewey Decimal Number: 889.132
EAN: 9780691015378
ISBN: 0691015376
Label: Princeton University Press
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1992-09-08
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Studio: Princeton University Press
Editorial Review of C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and a collected edition of his poems was not published until after his death. Now, however, he is regarded as the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature. Here is an extensively revised edition of the acclaimed translations of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, which capture Cavafy's mixture of formal and idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies. The resetting of the entire edition has permitted the translators to review each poem and to make alterations where appropriate. George Savidis has revised the notes according to his latest edition of the Greek text. About the first edition: "The best [English version] we are likely to see for some time."--James Merrill, The New York Review of Books "[Keeley and Sherrard] have managed the miracle of capturing this elusive, inimitable, unforgettable voice. It is the most haunting voice I know in modern poetry."--Walter Kaiser, The New Republic
Customer Reviews of C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A beautiful and authentic translation
Review: I am a big fan of Edmund Keeley's translations of Demotic Greek and Katherevousa. Having an armchair scholar's knowledge of the language I can appreciate the labor that has gone in to the refinement of the translations in the decades since the first edition. This volume reads very well in English, and I have given many of these as gifts over the years to poetry fans who do not know a word of Greek, always resulting in a comment about how such a poet could be so little known. Cavafy probably would have preferred it that way!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A must if you like modernist poetry
Review: There is nothing that can adequately describe the first time you read Cavafy. It is like a breath of fresh air or a cold shower on a hot day... completely envigorating and different to anything you've ever read before.
I've shared his poetry with friends and they are all blown away.
Cavafy's erotic poems show a sensitivity and directness that is quite unique.
His personal reflective pieces are extremely insightful. I would say that you will get a better understanding of Existential philosophy through this small book of poems than any tomes from the likes of Satre, Camus, Beckett.
His historical poems are best appreciated if you know Byzantine history and the notes in the book are a fantastic to set the context.
This book deserves to be in any personal or public library
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cavafy is an excellent poet
Review: Cavafy is a poet with a view that is both ancient and modern. It's a poet that has a language that is both exuberant and emotional without being too excessive.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Haunting, profound poems of antiquity, love and loss.
Review: As with any poems translated from a language I have never learned, I am left wondering just how close Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard have come to the original style and substance of C.P. Cavafy, the great Alexandrian Greek poet of the early 20th century. (Keeley and Sherrard are scrupulous in their end notes, noting untranslatable words and the original rhyme schemes of poems translated into free verse.) Even in translation, these poems are exquisite, haunting both my dreams and my waking thoughts. Cavafy essentially had only a few subjects, but they were great ones--the lost glory of antiquity, the inevitable decline of the mighty, the death of love and beauty, the folly of human striving, the crucial importance of memory and history. In language of deceptive simplicity, he limned the ephemeral nature of beautiful things and the empty spaces their loss leaves in the soul. (Cavafy, openly gay at a time when homosexuality was truly the love that dare not speak its name, wrote only of lost, passing or unrequited love.) Most of these poems are very short, but they insinuate themselves inextricably into memory, such as "The Mirror in the Front Hall," depicting a handsome young man who stops to straighten his tie: "the old mirror was all joy now,/proud to have embraced/total beauty for a few moments." My own favorite in the book is one of the longer poems, "Orophernis," about a wastrel king of the 2nd Century B.C. who came to grief trying to be a real king for once. The final five lines of this poems are Cavafy in a nutshell; The figure on this four drachma coin, a trace of whose young charm can still be seen, a ray of his poetic beauty-- this sensuous commemoration of an Ionian boy, this is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cavafy in Greek...
Review: I own a copy of the original collection of Cavafy's poems (in Greek) and I find that this translation has measured up to the task of translating the forceful and sensual poetry as closely as possible. And for anyone who cannot read Greek, this book will bring you as close as possible to the intense emotional response of reading the original. A must have for any poetry lover.
Review Summary: A beautiful and authentic translation
Review: I am a big fan of Edmund Keeley's translations of Demotic Greek and Katherevousa. Having an armchair scholar's knowledge of the language I can appreciate the labor that has gone in to the refinement of the translations in the decades since the first edition. This volume reads very well in English, and I have given many of these as gifts over the years to poetry fans who do not know a word of Greek, always resulting in a comment about how such a poet could be so little known. Cavafy probably would have preferred it that way!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A must if you like modernist poetry
Review: There is nothing that can adequately describe the first time you read Cavafy. It is like a breath of fresh air or a cold shower on a hot day... completely envigorating and different to anything you've ever read before.
I've shared his poetry with friends and they are all blown away.
Cavafy's erotic poems show a sensitivity and directness that is quite unique.
His personal reflective pieces are extremely insightful. I would say that you will get a better understanding of Existential philosophy through this small book of poems than any tomes from the likes of Satre, Camus, Beckett.
His historical poems are best appreciated if you know Byzantine history and the notes in the book are a fantastic to set the context.
This book deserves to be in any personal or public library
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cavafy is an excellent poet
Review: Cavafy is a poet with a view that is both ancient and modern. It's a poet that has a language that is both exuberant and emotional without being too excessive.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Haunting, profound poems of antiquity, love and loss.
Review: As with any poems translated from a language I have never learned, I am left wondering just how close Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard have come to the original style and substance of C.P. Cavafy, the great Alexandrian Greek poet of the early 20th century. (Keeley and Sherrard are scrupulous in their end notes, noting untranslatable words and the original rhyme schemes of poems translated into free verse.) Even in translation, these poems are exquisite, haunting both my dreams and my waking thoughts. Cavafy essentially had only a few subjects, but they were great ones--the lost glory of antiquity, the inevitable decline of the mighty, the death of love and beauty, the folly of human striving, the crucial importance of memory and history. In language of deceptive simplicity, he limned the ephemeral nature of beautiful things and the empty spaces their loss leaves in the soul. (Cavafy, openly gay at a time when homosexuality was truly the love that dare not speak its name, wrote only of lost, passing or unrequited love.) Most of these poems are very short, but they insinuate themselves inextricably into memory, such as "The Mirror in the Front Hall," depicting a handsome young man who stops to straighten his tie: "the old mirror was all joy now,/proud to have embraced/total beauty for a few moments." My own favorite in the book is one of the longer poems, "Orophernis," about a wastrel king of the 2nd Century B.C. who came to grief trying to be a real king for once. The final five lines of this poems are Cavafy in a nutshell; The figure on this four drachma coin, a trace of whose young charm can still be seen, a ray of his poetic beauty-- this sensuous commemoration of an Ionian boy, this is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cavafy in Greek...
Review: I own a copy of the original collection of Cavafy's poems (in Greek) and I find that this translation has measured up to the task of translating the forceful and sensual poetry as closely as possible. And for anyone who cannot read Greek, this book will bring you as close as possible to the intense emotional response of reading the original. A must have for any poetry lover.