WGBH Forum Network; Daniel Mendelsohn: Poems of C.P. Cavafy
Description:
Daniel Mendelsohn, cultural critic and classics scholar, discusses his recent translations of poetry by C.P. Cavafy, both Collected Poems and The Unfinished Poems.No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the early-20th-century taboos surrounding homoerotic desire; no poet before or since has so gracefully melded elegy and irony as the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863--1933). Now, after more than a decade of work and study, and with the cooperation of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, Daniel Mendelsohn--a classics scholar who alone among Cavafy's translators shares the poet's deep intimacy with the ancient world--is uniquely positioned to give readers full access to Cavafy's genius. And we hear for the first time the remarkable music of his poetry: the sensuous rhymes, rich assonances, and strong rhythms of the original Greek that have eluded previous translators.C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems brings together more than 250 works collected in this volume, comprising all of the Published, Repudiated, and Unpublished poems and covering the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization, from the Trojan War through Cavafy's own lifetime. C.P. Cavafy: The Unfinished Poems offers a first translation of the drafts of thirty poems Cavafy left among his papers at his death in 1933--some of them masterly, nearly completed verses, others less finished texts, all accompanied by notes and variants that offer tantalizing glimpses of the poet's sometimes years-long method of rewriting and revision. The two volumes together comprise the definitive English version of the modern poet's canon.
