Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy

Rating:
Summary: Expatriot longings in Alexandria, the poetry of love
Review: Constantine P. Cavafy is one of the most intelligent and elloquent poets of this century, but remains barely known in American. Why is this? Probably because Cavafy is a man and his poems of lust and longing are addressed at other young men. I would never have discovered this amazing man if it were not for an essay about him published in Gore Vidal's "The Last Empire." Cavafy spent his life as a Greek citizen living in Alexandria egypt, and writing about the young men he found there. But beautiful males are far from his only subject. Some of his best poems are written with a technique where he becomes someone else, often a someone historical that has been dead hundreds of years. He writes as if he really were that person, describing what they are feeling, as well as what they see and hear. He can summon with words all the glory and magic of empires long extict, often to a degree of erie detail. These poems made me yearn to experience what he was describing, to be able to see what he can see in his mind. He wrote in Greek, and this book has been translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis. As I don't read Greek, I have no way of knowing how close he came to the original, but I know that what he did translate blew me away. I was transported from my life to the baths and cafes of Alexandria, the palaces of the Ceasars, from Greece in 1900 to the Greece of legend. Cavafy was able to take me places I'd never knew existed. Maybe the best compliment I can give this work is that it didn't just make me think, it made me imagine and dream. Anyone who loves the Greek world should own this book. Five stars just aren't enough.

Rating:
Summary: Expatriot longings in Alexandria, the poetry of love
Review: Constantine P. Cavafy is one of the most intelligent and elloquent poets of this century, but remains barely known in American. Why is this? Probably because Cavafy is a man and his poems of lust and longing are addressed at other young men. I would never have discovered this amazing man if it were not for an essay about him published in Gore Vidal's "The Last Empire." Cavafy spent his life as a Greek citizen living in Alexandria egypt, and writing about the young men he found there. But beautiful males are far from his only subject. Some of his best poems are written with a technique where he becomes someone else, often a someone historical that has been dead hundreds of years. He writes as if he really were that person, describing what they are feeling, as well as what they see and hear. He can summon with words all the glory and magic of empires long extict, often to a degree of erie detail. These poems made me yearn to experience what he was describing, to be able to see what he can see in his mind. He wrote in Greek, and this book has been translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis. As I don't read Greek, I have no way of knowing how close he came to the original, but I know that what he did translate blew me away. I was transported from my life to the baths and cafes of Alexandria, the palaces of the Ceasars, from Greece in 1900 to the Greece of legend. Cavafy was able to take me places I'd never knew existed. Maybe the best compliment I can give this work is that it didn't just make me think, it made me imagine and dream. Anyone who loves the Greek world should own this book. Five stars just aren't enough.