 C.P.
Cavafy by Edmund Keeley (Translator), Philip Sherrard
(Translator), George Savidis (Editor),
Constantine Cavafy
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
Also available:
 Cavafy
( 1996, 85 min, Greece)
A beautifully photographed, haunting film experience that brings
to life the writings and personal history of Constantine P.
Cavafy (1863-1933), one of Greece’s most celebrated modern
poets. His intensely writings, often filled with homoerotic
imagery, has been influential to such diverse people as painter
David Hockney and Jackie Kennedy Onassis (Cavafy’s poem
"Ithaca" was read at JFK’s funeral). The story
begins in Alexandria, Egypt in 1933 where the 70-year-old Cavafy
lies terminally sick. A young writer, who is writing a book
about the artist, reads passages from his biography, flooding
the elderly poet’s memory with images from earlier days. We
are taken back to colonial Alexandria, where the young Cavafy
lives with his mother in opulent splendor. But the Arab uprising
causes him and his family to flee to Constantinople and as well
as to Athens where he is initiated into those cities’ dark
homosexual underworld and to Cavafy’s first sexual encounters
with young men. He eventually resettles in Alexandria, now only
a city bureaucrat who writes in his spare time and roams the
city’s streets at night for men. He meets the unconsummated
love of his life in the person of a young poet named Mavroudis,
to whom he dedicates his future poems. A dreamy, erotic,
mesmerizing drama, reminiscent of Visconti’s Death in
Venice but an intriguing work of art in its own right.
Winner: Greece’s 1997 National Film Award for Best Feature.
The film has played in film festivals throughout the world but
there is currently no theatrical or video distribution in the
United States.
Director: Yannis Smaragdis
Starring: Vassilis Diamantopoulos, Lazaros
Georgakopoulos, Dimitri Katalifos, Maya Lyberopoulou
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