THE COMPLETE POEMS OF C. P. CAVAFY

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, lightly toned and rubbed to the edges, with mild toning to the text block. The contents are clean throughout, and without previous owners' inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the nicked, bumped and creased dustwrapper, which is mildly toned to the front panel, edges and spine. Not price-clipped (25s. net to the front flap).

Rae Dalven's translations of Cavafy's complete poems was published a decade after John Mavrogordato's translation of a smaller selection of poems, also issued by The Hogarth Press. "Ever since I was first introduced to his poetry [...] over thirty years ago", Auden writes in his extensive introduction to this edition, "C. P. Cavafy has remained an influence on my own writing; that is to say, I can think of poems which, if Cavafy were unknown to me, I should have written quite differently or perhaps not written at all. Yet I do not know a word of Modern Greek, so that my only access to Cavafy's poetry has been through English and French translations. Cavafy has three principal concerns: love, art, and politics in the original Greek sense. Cavafy was a homosexual, and his erotic poems make no attempt to conceal the fact. [...] One duty of a poem, among others, is to bear witness to the truth. [...] As a witness, Cavafy is exceptionally honest. He neither bowdlerizes nor glamorizes nor giggles."