C. P. Cavafy - The Canon

The Original One Hundred and Fifty-Four Poems

Constantine Cavafy"s poems survive translation better than most. One reason for this is the sheer interest of their content: homoerotic amours in exotic settings, the dooms of tyrants, the various crossed destinies of sophists and drifters and soothsayers - his treatment of such matters is enough to convince a non-Greek readership of his genius. Because of their psychological and political acuity, their unfazed at-homeness with the operations of sex and the city, his poems are immediately persuasive and would probably hold up well enough if translated into prose. Cavafy, in fact, could have altered Wilfred Owen"s famous apologia for his war elegies ("The poetry is in the pity") and have boasted of his own achievement, "The poetry is in the plotting".

Translated by Statis Haviaras. Foreword by Seamus Heaney. 215. pp