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Cavafy
166 Poems
Translated with an Introduction by Alan Boegehold
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“Cavafy’s is a poetic style so understated, so minimal, so extravagantly self-effacing as to seem to shout out. Boegehold has spent a lifetime living among the Greeks and is uncommonly good at finding a wealth of monosyllables and their most effective sequence to produce the striking effect of Cavafy’s demand to be let along while saying it all.”
—Charles R. Beye (Professor Emeritus of Classics, CUNY)
“Boegehold catches that atmosphere and tone unique to Cavafy, an odd blend of world-weariness, irony, propriety, passion, and nostalgia found in no other poet, and does so in a minimalist translation, bare-boned like its original, that never wastes a single word. His introduction is perfect for anyone who comes to Cavafy for the first time.
—Dr. Peter Green, FRSL (Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of Texas at Austin)
Summary
Constantine Cavafy was the most improbable [and] remains among the greatest, of modern Greek poets. “He wore a straw hat and stood at an angle to the universe,” said E.M. Forster. Deceptively simple and with hardly a metaphor in sight, Cavafy’s poetry nevertheless presents an enormous challenge to any modern translator (and since his international discovery in the mid-twentieth century there have been plenty of them). Alan Boegehold has several rare advantages for the task. He is a fine classicist, to whom Cavafy's forays into the Hellenistic and Byzantine past present no problems. His familiarity with the Greek language, both ancient and modern, makes him sensitive to subtle nuances that many would miss (no accident that he's an expert on Greek gestures).
About the Translator
Alan Lindley Boegehold took his A.B. in Latin at the University of Michigan in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Classical Philology at Harvard University in 1958. He taught Latin and Greek mostly at Brown University (1960-2001) but he began at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and taught from time to time as visitor at Harvard, Yale, University of California at Berkeley, Amherst College, and Florida State University . In exploring the world of Classical antiquity he has tried to use language, literature, philosophy, the structures of justice, and all material culture as ways to understanding. His most recent books are When a Gesture Was Expected (Princeton University Press, 1999), The Lawcourts at Athens, vol. 28 of the Athenian Agora series (American School of Classical Studies, Princeton, 1995), and In Simple Clothes: Eleven Poems by Constantine Cavafy (Occasional Works, Woodside, CA, 1992).
Boegehold came to an appreciation of modern Greek literature by way of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, a graduate research institute affiliated with over 150 leading American colleges and universities, where he has been a professor in residence and chairman of the Managing Committee.