The complete Cavafy poems
- including the unfinished works
- in a stunning new translation published in the UK on the 150th anniversary of his birth & 80th anniversary of his death. No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history & culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break with such taut energy the early twentieth-century taboos surrounding homoerotic desire; no poet before or since has so gracefully melded elegy & irony as the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933). Whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death Cavafy's poetry makes the historical personal
- & vice versa. He brings to his profound exploration of longing & loneliness fate & loss memory & identity the historian's assessing eye as well as the poet's compassionate heart. After more than a decade of work Daniel Mendelsohn
- an acclaimed award-winning author & classicist 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. This volume
Includes:: the first-ever English translation of thirty unfinished poems that Cavafy left in drafts when he died
- a remarkable hitherto unknown discovery that remained in the Cavafy Archive in Athens for decades. With Mendelsohn's in-depth introduction & commentary situating each work in a rich historical literary & biographical context this revelatory new translation is a literary event
- the definitive presentation of Cavafy in English.