The Canon: The Original One Hundred and Fifty-four Poems

by Cavafy, C. P.

• ISBN13: 9780674025868
• ISBN10: 0674025865
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Sexual desire, political ambition, artistic need: Cavafy has a singular apprehension of how these forces make themselves felt in individual lives. Their inexorability both enthralls and dismays him, and one of the things that gives the poetry its rare steadiness is his ability to penetrate past circumstance into what is sensed as fate-sensed not only by the poet but by his protagonists and his readers also. Everywhere in these poems there is reverie and hedonism, irony and antiquarianism, but we can never identify the poet himself as a pure and simple daydreamer or hedonist or ironist or antiquarian. Even so, the plane of regard is not over-elevated: the human predicament here is presented neither as divine comedy nor fully blown tragedy, but is seen from a viewpoint located somewhere between Olympus and Gethsemane. [...] Content may be where these poems begin but they cannot attain their end without [Cavafy's] voicing. We are lucky that Stratis Haviaras has been so responsive to its bewitching registers and has been able to transpose them and afford them an extra carrying power in English. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vi
Introduction	p. viii
Translator's Preface	p. xii
1896-1910
Walls	p. 23
An Old Man	p. 25
The Horses Of Achilles	p. 27
Supplication	p. 29
The Funeral of Sarpedon	p. 31
Candles	p. 35
The First Step	p. 37
The Souls of Old Men	p. 39
Che Fece...Il Gran Rifiuto	p. 41
Intrusion	p. 43
The Windows	p. 45
Thermopylae	p. 47
Perfidy	p. 49
Waiting for the Barbarians	p. 53
Voices	p. 57
Desires	p. 59
Trojans	p. 61
King Demetrios	p. 63
The Cohort of Dionysos	p. 65
Tedium	p. 67
The Footsteps	p. 69
He's the One	p. 71
The City	p. 73
1911
The Satrapy	p. 77
The Ides of March	p. 79
All Ended	p. 81
Sculptor of Tyana	p. 83
The God Abandons Anthony	p. 85
Ionic	p. 87
The Glory of the Ptolemies	p. 89
Ithaka	p. 91
1912
Risky Things	p. 97
Philhellene	p. 99
Herodes Attikos	p. 101
Alexandrian Kings	p. 103
Return Often	p. 107
In Church	p. 109
1913
Very Seldom	p. 113
As Much As You Can	p. 115
Of the Shop	p. 117
I Went	p. 119
1914
Tomb of Lysias, Grammarian	p. 123
The Tomb of Evrion	p. 125
Chandelier	p. 127
Long Ago	p. 129
1915
Wise Men Sense Things about To Happen	p. 133
Theodotos	p. 135
At the Cafe's Door	p. 137
He Vows	p. 139
One Night	p. 141
Morning Sea	p. 143
Painted	p. 145
Orophernes	p. 147
The Battle of Magnesia	p. 151
Manuel Komnenos	p. 153
The Displeasure of Selefkides	p. 155
1916
When They Rouse	p. 161
Down the Street	p. 163
Before the Statue of Edymion	p. 165
1917
In a Town of Osroine	p. 169
Passage	p. 171
For Ammones, Who Died at 29 in 610 CE	p. 173
One of Their Gods	p. 175
In the Evening	p. 177
Arousal	p. 179
Gray	p. 181
The Tomb of Iases	p. 183
In the Month Athyr	p. 185
So Much Have I Gazed-	p. 187
The Tomb of Ignatios	p. 189
Days of 1903	p. 191
The Tobacconist's Window	p. 193
1918
Caesarion	p. 197
Body, Remember	p. 201
The Tomb of Lanes	p. 203
Significance	p. 205
Nero's Tenure	p. 207
Envoys from Alexandria	p. 209
Aristovoulos	p. 211
In the Harbor	p. 215
Aemilianos Monae, Alexandrian, CE 628-655	p. 217
Since Nine-	p. 219
Outside the House	p. 221
The Next Table	p. 223
1919
Afternoon Sun	p. 227
Comes To Rest	p. 229
Of the Jews (CE 50)	p. 231
Imenos	p. 233
On the Ship	p. 235
Of Demetrios Soter (162-150 BCE)	p. 237
1920
If Indeed Dead	p. 243
Young Men of Sidon (400 CE)	p. 247
For Them To Be Summoned-	p. 249
Dareios	p. 251
Anna Komnene	p. 255
1921
A Byzantine Gentleman, Exiled	p. 259
Their Beginnings	p. 261
The Favor of Alexandros Valas	p. 263
Melancholy of Iason Kleandros	p. 265
Demaratos	p. 267
I've Brought To Art	p. 271
From the School of a Renowned Philosopher	p. 273
Craftsman of Wine Krateres	p. 277
1922
For Those Who Fought for the Achaian League	p. 281
To Antiochos Epiphanes	p. 283
In an Old Book-	p. 285
1923
In Despair	p. 289
Julian Seeing Indifference	p. 291
Epitaph of Antiochos, King of Kommagine	p. 293
Theater of Sidon (400 CE)	p. 295
1924
Julian in Nikomedia	p. 299
Before Time Changed Them	p. 301
He Came To Read-	p. 303
In Alexandria, 31 BCE	p. 305
Ioannes Kantakouzinos Prevails	p. 307
1925
Temethos, Antiochian, CE 400	p. 311
Of Colored Glass	p. 313
The 25th Year of His Life	p. 315
By an Italian Shore	p. 317
In the Dreary Village	p. 319
Apollonios of Tyana in Rhodes	p. 321
1926
Kleitos' illness	p. 325
In a Township of Asia Minor	p. 327
Priest at the Serapeion	p. 329
In the Tavernas	p. 331
A Great Procession of Clerics and Laymen	p. 333
Sophist Leaving Syria	p. 335
Julian and the Antiochians	p. 337
1927
Anna Dalassene	p. 341
Days of 1896	p. 343
Two Young Men, Between 23 and 24	p. 345
Greek Since Ancient Times	p. 349
Days of 1901	p. 351
1928
You Didn't Understand	p. 355
A Young Poet in His 24th Year	p. 357
In Sparta	p. 359
Portrait of a Twenty-three Year Old Made by his Friend	p. 361
In a Great Hellenic Colony, 200 BCE	p. 363
A Sovereign from Western Libya	p. 367
Kimon, Son of Learchos, 22, Student of Greek Letters (in Kyrene)	p. 369
On the March Toward Sinope	p. 373
Days of 1909, '10, and '11	p. 375
1929
Myres; Alexandria, 340 CE	p. 379
Alexandros Iannaios and Alexandra	p. 385
Lovely White Flowers, So Very Becoming	p. 387
Come, O King of the Lacedaemonians	p. 391
In the Same Space	p. 393
1930
The Mirror in the Hallway	p. 397
He Asked about the Quality-	p. 399
They Should Have Thought	p. 403
1931
According To The Formulae of Graeco-Syrian Alchemists	p. 409
In the Year 200 BCE	p. 411
1932
Days of 1908	p. 417
1933?
In the Outskirts of Antioch	p. 423
Plates	p. 427
Endnotes	p. 439
Index of Greek First Lines	p. 449
Index of English First Lines	p. 457
Contributors	p. 465
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.