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C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems, Revised Edition
304 pages, Paperback
Published November 5, 2024
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August 17, 2025
For my full review of Cavafy's poetry and a brief discussion of a few translations, see here.
Here just to make a few notes:
The translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard served as the standard version in English since the 1970s but it has been surpassed by some of the most recent translations, above all by Daniel Mendelsohn (2009, 2013) and Stratis Haviaras (2004).
Since the Keeley-Sherrard is still the easiest to find in the bookshops and libraries, make sure to get their revised version that removed many jarring colloquialisms from their original edition (1975).
It's odd that Princeton University Press chose to order Cavafay's poems chronologically even though the Keeley-Sherrard translation was prefaced by the eminent Greek archivist, George Savridis, who uncovered Cavafy's privately printed collections in which the poet arranged his 1897-1918 poems thematically and then those from 1919-1933 chronologically. It sounds they left Savridis with the only option to make Cavafy's arrangement available in the appendix and I would advise a reader to read his 'canonical' poems in the order as listed in this appendix.
Here just to make a few notes:
The translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard served as the standard version in English since the 1970s but it has been surpassed by some of the most recent translations, above all by Daniel Mendelsohn (2009, 2013) and Stratis Haviaras (2004).
Since the Keeley-Sherrard is still the easiest to find in the bookshops and libraries, make sure to get their revised version that removed many jarring colloquialisms from their original edition (1975).
It's odd that Princeton University Press chose to order Cavafay's poems chronologically even though the Keeley-Sherrard translation was prefaced by the eminent Greek archivist, George Savridis, who uncovered Cavafy's privately printed collections in which the poet arranged his 1897-1918 poems thematically and then those from 1919-1933 chronologically. It sounds they left Savridis with the only option to make Cavafy's arrangement available in the appendix and I would advise a reader to read his 'canonical' poems in the order as listed in this appendix.
Displaying 1 of 1 review