Collected Poems (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Collected Poems
The significance of each new translation of the poetry of Cavafy (in recent decades there has been a plethora of these) lies less in fresher or more accurate renderings than in how this crucial and increasingly resonant oeuvre is presented. To translate Cavafy badly is not easy. Even if the distinction between demotic and katharevousa is lost, even if a translation fails to convey the poetry's formal panache and renders it as bland free verse, nevertheless the voice, with its signature irony, its long historical sweep, and its erotic directness is unmistakable. The challenge faced anew by each translator is rather how to put Cavafy's pieces together. A Rorschach principle is at work here too: queer theorists tend to see one Cavafy, Byzantinists another. Stressing the poet's "unique perspective [that] allowed him to see history with a lover's eye, and desire with a historian's eye," Daniel Mendelsohn in this compendious volume braids together strands that others have sometimes taken pains to separate. Mendelsohn's translations are more than adequate, but his luminous introduction, thorough notes, and new arrangement of the poems are what distinguish this latest version of an inexhaustible poet.
Rachel Hadas is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University. A recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Literature Award, she is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, translations, and essays, including Classics, Indelible, Laws, The River of Forgetfulness, The Empty Bed, The Double Legacy, Mirrors of Astonishment, Living in Time, and Halfway Down the Hall: New and Selected Poems.
