COLLECTED POEMS C. P. CAVAFY

First edition. Publisher's original blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm with minor bumping at the spine tips, the contents clean throughout. Complete with the dustwrapper showing some minor wear to the extremities, with one small closed tear (c. 0.5cm) neatly repaired to the verso. Not price-clipped (£4.00 net to the lower front flap). A lovely copy.

C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and no collected edition of his poems was published in his lifetime. He is now regarded as one of the most important figures in twentieth-century Greek poetry, the poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature. This volume of the acclaimed translations of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, capture Cavafy's idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and astute political ironies. The editor, George Savidis provides notes to the poems (with dates, metrical details, and mythological and historical allusions) as well as a biographical essay on the poet and a bibliographical note. "Cavafy has now at last fallen upon translators who can do full justice to his wry melodious poems, glinting with insight as if from veins of mica. He is lucky too to have an editor as brilliant as Savidis." (Lawrence Durrell in 'The New York Times Book Review').