cavafyinenglish

I opened this channel so that I might post my 'adaptations' of the whole of Cavafy's poetical output as contained in the collected edition published at Alexandria in 1935.

This is not a literal representation of Cavafy's text, such a thing being beyond my capabilities. I have consulted all available translations into English and have attempted, from these, to do the poet justice in the English language. I am more concerned with making a readable English poem of each of Cavafy's Greek poems than of making a faithful translation. It is a truism that an altogether faithful translation very rarely satisfies the poetic sensibility.

These adaptations of Cavafy's poems are part of my own poetic oeuvre and are best seen as being jointly authored, firstly by him and then by me in a similar manner to that used by Edward Fitzgerald in his Omar Khayyam.

Additionally, I am posting here poems from my first collection 'Poems Opus One' (1963) to add a little variety.

- Charles Bryant, December 2010

less