Selected Poems by C.P. Cavafy - Princeton Legacy Library

Publisher Marketing: C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) is now considered by many to be the most original and influential Greek poet of this century. The qualities of his poetry that were unfashionable during his lifetime are the very ones that make his work endure: his sparing use of metaphor; his evocation of spoken rhythms and colloquialisms; his use of epigrammatic and dramatic modes; his aesthetic perfectionism; his frank treatment of homosexual themes; his brilliantly alive sense of history; and his commitment to Hellenism, coupled with an astute cynicism about politics. The translations in "Selected Poems" are completely new. Realizing that Cavafy's language is closer to the spoken idiom than that of other leading Greek poets of his time, and that earlier translations have failed to capture the immediate, colloquial qualities of Cavafy's voice, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard have rendered his most significant and characteristic poems in a style and rhythm as natural and apt in English as the poet's is in Greek. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contributor Bio:  Keeley, Edmund Edmund Keeley taught English, Creative Writing, and Hellenic Studies at Princeton for forty years until his retirement as Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English Emeritus. In addition to his seven novels and his literary and historical studies focused on Greece, he has published fifteen volumes of poetry in translation, including the collected poems of Cavafy and Seferis (in collaboration with Philip Sherrard) and selected poems of Eltyis and Ritsos. Among his awards are the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, the Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation. He was elected Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens and Honorary Member of the Hellenic Authors Society. Contributor Bio:  Sherrard, Philip Philip Sherrard was a poet, translator, literary scholar, theologian and interpreter of the Orthodox tradition.