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, the contents, with a previous owner's name neatly in ink to the front free endpaper, otherwise clean throughout. Spine tips and corners a little faded and softened. Light spotting to the upper page block edge. In the worn dustwrapper, faded to the spine, variously nicked, torn and creased to edges and extremities, a stain to the lower outer corner of the rear panel. 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."