{"product_id":"cavafy-poems-isbn-9780375712425","title":"Cavafy: Poems","description":"The Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) is a towering figure of twentieth-century literature. No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the taboos of his time surrounding homoerotic desire. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this edition, award-winning  translator and editor Daniel Mendelsohn has made a selection of the poet’s best-loved works, including such favorites as “Waiting for the Barbarians,” “Ithaca,” and “The God Abandons Antony.” Accompanied by Mendelsohn’s explanatory notes, the poems collected here cover the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization, from the Trojan War through Cavafy’s own lifetime. Whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death, Cavafy’s poems make the historic profoundly and movingly personal.Preface \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePUBLISHED POEMS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePOEMS 1905–1915 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe City \u003cbr\u003eThe Satrapy \u003cbr\u003eBut Wise Men Apprehend What Is Imminent \u003cbr\u003eIdes of March \u003cbr\u003eFinished \u003cbr\u003eThe God Abandons Antony \u003cbr\u003eTheodotus \u003cbr\u003eMonotony \u003cbr\u003eIthaca\u003cbr\u003eAs Much As You Can \u003cbr\u003eTrojans \u003cbr\u003eKing Demetrius \u003cbr\u003eThe Retinue of Dionysus \u003cbr\u003eAlexandrian Kings \u003cbr\u003ePhilhellene \u003cbr\u003eThe Steps \u003cbr\u003eThe Tomb of Lysias the Grammarian \u003cbr\u003eTomb of Eurion \u003cbr\u003eDangerous \u003cbr\u003eManuel Comnenus \u003cbr\u003eIn the Church \u003cbr\u003eVery Rarely \u003cbr\u003eIn Stock \u003cbr\u003ePainted \u003cbr\u003eMorning Sea \u003cbr\u003eSong of Ionia\u003cbr\u003eIn the Entrance of the Cafe´ \u003cbr\u003eOne Night \u003cbr\u003eCome Back \u003cbr\u003eHe Swears \u003cbr\u003eI Went \u003cbr\u003eChandelier \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePOEMS 1916–1918 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSince Nine -\u003cbr\u003eComprehension \u003cbr\u003eCaesarion\u003cbr\u003eNero’s Deadline \u003cbr\u003eOne of Their Gods \u003cbr\u003eTomb of Lanes \u003cbr\u003eTomb of Iases \u003cbr\u003eIn a City of Osrhoene \u003cbr\u003eTomb of Ignatius \u003cbr\u003eIn the Month of Hathor \u003cbr\u003eFor Ammon, Who Died at 29 Years of Age, in 610 \u003cbr\u003eWhenever They Are Aroused \u003cbr\u003eTo Pleasure \u003cbr\u003eI’ve Gazed So Much \u003cbr\u003eIn the Street \u003cbr\u003eThe Window of the Tobacco Shop \u003cbr\u003ePassage \u003cbr\u003eIn Evening \u003cbr\u003eGray \u003cbr\u003eBelow the House \u003cbr\u003eThe Next Table \u003cbr\u003eRemember, Body \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePOEMS 1919–1932 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Afternoon Sun \u003cbr\u003eTo Stay \u003cbr\u003eOf the Jews (50 A.D.) \u003cbr\u003eAboard the Ship \u003cbr\u003eYoung Men of Sidon (400 A.D\u003cbr\u003eThat They Come-\u003cbr\u003eDarius \u003cbr\u003eTheir Beginning \u003cbr\u003eMelancholy of Jason, Son of Cleander: Poet in Commagene: 595 A.D. \u003cbr\u003eI Brought to Art From the School of the Renowned Philosopher \u003cbr\u003eThose Who Fought on Behalf of the Achaean League \u003cbr\u003eIn an Old Book \u003cbr\u003eIn Despair \u003cbr\u003eTheater of Sidon (400 A.D.) \u003cbr\u003eBefore Time Could Alter Them \u003cbr\u003eHe Came to Read – \u003cbr\u003eOf Colored Glass\u003cbr\u003eThe 25th Year of His Life \u003cbr\u003eOn the Italian Seashore \u003cbr\u003eIn the Boring Village \u003cbr\u003eCleitus’s Illness \u003cbr\u003eIn a Municipality of Asia Minor \u003cbr\u003ePriest of the Serapeum \u003cbr\u003eIn the Taverns \u003cbr\u003eSophist Departing from Syria \u003cbr\u003eJulian and the Antiochenes \u003cbr\u003eDays of 1896 \u003cbr\u003eTwo Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old \u003cbr\u003eDays of 1901 \u003cbr\u003eA Young Man, Skilled in the Art of the Word – in His 24th Year \u003cbr\u003ePortrait of a Young Man of Twenty-Three Done by His Friend of the Same      Age, an Amateur \u003cbr\u003ePotentate from Western Libya \u003cbr\u003eDays of 1909, ’10, and ’11 \u003cbr\u003eMyres: Alexandria in 340 A.D. \u003cbr\u003eBeautiful, White Flowers as They Went So Well \u003cbr\u003eCome Now, King of the Lacedaemonians \u003cbr\u003eIn the Same Space \u003cbr\u003eThe Mirror in the Entrance \u003cbr\u003eHe Asked About the Quality –\u003cbr\u003eAccording to the Formulas of Ancient Greco-Syrian Magicians \u003cbr\u003eDays of 1908 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom THE SENGOPOULOS NOTEBOOK \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eVoices \u003cbr\u003eLongings \u003cbr\u003eCandles \u003cbr\u003eAn Old Man \u003cbr\u003ePrayer \u003cbr\u003eOld Men’s Souls \u003cbr\u003eThe First Step \u003cbr\u003eInterruption \u003cbr\u003eThermopylae \u003cbr\u003eChe Fece...Il Gran Rifiuto \u003cbr\u003eThe Windows \u003cbr\u003eWalls \u003cbr\u003eWaiting for the Barbarians \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eREPUDIATED POEMS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBuilders \u003cbr\u003eBard \u003cbr\u003eTimolaus the Syracusan \u003cbr\u003eSweet Voices \u003cbr\u003eHours of Melancholy \u003cbr\u003eOedipus \u003cbr\u003eNear an Open Window \u003cbr\u003eHorace in Athens \u003cbr\u003eThe Tarentines Have Their Fun \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eUNPUBLISHED POEMS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTo Stephanos Skilitsis\u003cbr\u003e“Nous n’osons plus chanter les roses”\u003cbr\u003eThe Hereafter \u003cbr\u003eIn the Cemetery \u003cbr\u003eEpitaph \u003cbr\u003eDread \u003cbr\u003eIn the House of the Soul\u003cbr\u003eJulian at the Mysteries \u003cbr\u003eImpossible Things \u003cbr\u003eGarlands \u003cbr\u003eAddition \u003cbr\u003eStrengthening \u003cbr\u003eSeptember of 1903 \u003cbr\u003eDecember 1903 \u003cbr\u003eJanuary of 1904 \u003cbr\u003eOn the Stairs \u003cbr\u003eIn the Theatre \u003cbr\u003ePoseidonians \u003cbr\u003eHearing of Love \u003cbr\u003eThat’s How \u003cbr\u003eTheophilus Palaeologus \u003cbr\u003eAnd I Got Down and I Lay There in Their Beds \u003cbr\u003eSimeon \u003cbr\u003eThe Bandaged Shoulder \u003cbr\u003eFrom the Drawer \u003cbr\u003eThe Regiment of Pleasure (prose poem) \u003cbr\u003eShips (prose poem) \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTHE UNFINISHED POEMS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Item in the Paper \u003cbr\u003eIt Must Have Been the Spirits \u003cbr\u003eAnd Above All Cynegirus \u003cbr\u003eOn the Jetty \u003cbr\u003eAfter the Swim \u003cbr\u003eBirth of a Poem \u003cbr\u003eThe Photograph \u003cbr\u003eRemorse \u003cbr\u003eCrime\u003cbr\u003eOf the Sixth or Seventh Century \u003cbr\u003eAbandonment \u003cbr\u003eNothing About the Lacedaemonians \u003cbr\u003eCompany of Four \u003cbr\u003eAgelaus \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNOTES \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eC. P. CAVAFY\u003c\/b\u003e (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, and worked as a journalist and civil servant. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete. His fame grew substantially after his death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDANIEL MENDELSOHN\u003c\/b\u003e is a frequent contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, where he is the Editor at Large. His books include the international best seller \u003ci\u003eThe Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and many other honors; a memoir, \u003ci\u003eThe Elusive Embrace\u003c\/i\u003e, a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; a translation, with commentary, of the complete poems of C. P. Cavafy; and two collections of essays, \u003ci\u003eHow Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWaiting for the Barbarians\u003c\/i\u003e. A professor of Humanities at Bard College, he is Director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation.PREFACE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConstantine Cavafy was born on April 29, 1863 in Alexandria, the last of seven sons of well-to-do parents who had come to Egypt from Constantinople. The death of his father, when Cavafy was nine, left the family in financial difficulties; for a number of years afterward the widow Cavafy and her younger sons lived, dependent on the generosity of relatives, in England. (It was there that Cavafy acquired the British accent that, we are told, colored his Greek.) The family resettled in Alexandria when Cavafy was fourteen, and with the exception of a three-year sojourn with relations in Constantinople in the 1880s, he lived there for the rest\u003cbr\u003eof his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1892, Cavafy obtained a position with the Ministry of PublicWorks, in an office with a comically Dantesque name, the ‘‘Third Circle of Irrigation’’; he remained there until his retirement, thirty years later. At around the same time he began publishing articles and poems\u003cbr\u003ein newspapers and literary journals. These early publications already bear witness to a deep, even scholarly interest in all phases of Greek history, from the Classical and Hellenistic periods to Late Antiquity and Byzantium, which would provide the subjects for many of his mature poems. During the same formative period Cavafy lived with his mother, Haricleia, dutifully dining with her most evenings and escaping afterward into the city’s homosexual demimonde. This world of furtive yearnings and clandestine encounters would provide him with his other great subject: desire between men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEventually Cavafy settled into an antique-crammed apartment on the Rue Lepsius – today the Cavafy Museum – where he would hold forth to friends and guests, in Greek or English or French, on the erudite subjects he cherished: ‘‘the tricky behavior of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus in 1096,’’ as his friend E. M. Forster recalled, ‘‘or . . . olives, their possibilities and price, or . . . the fortunes of friends, or George Eliot, or the dialects of the interior of Asia Minor.’’ It is to Forster, whom Cavafy met duringWorldWar I in Alexandria, that we owe the most famous description of the idiosyncratic poet: ‘‘a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.’’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA lifelong smoker, Cavafy was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 1932. After traveling to Athens for treatment that summer, he returned to his beloved Alexandria, where he died the following year, on his seventieth birthday.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* * *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis volume contains selections from all of Cavafy’s work. PUBLISHED POEMS consists of selections from the three collections that the poet self-published (Poems 1905–1915, Poems 1916–1918, and Poems 1919–1932), as well as from the ‘‘Sengopoulos Notebook,’’ a selection of poems that he prepared for his friend and heir, Alexander Sengopoulos. The REPUDIATED POEMS are early published verses that Cavafy later disowned.UNPUBLISHED POEMS features finished work that the poet did not wish to publish but which he saved in his files; these were first published in 1968. UNFINISHED POEMS is the designation for the thirty nearly complete drafts that the poet left at the time of his death, edited and published in a scholarly Greek edition in 1994.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the case of selections from the Published Poems, italicized dates at the bottom of each page refer to the year of composition, when known; years in roman type refer to date of original publication.For theUnpublished and Unfinished Poems, the year in brackets at the bottom of the page indicates date of composition, when known.","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300329279717,"sku":"NP9780375712425","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375712425.jpg?v=1767723507","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/cavafy-poems-isbn-9780375712425","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}