Books 2010: pray that the road be long

Books 2010: 3


3. C.P. Cavafy, The Collected Poems, translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou.

Constantine Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863, and died there in 1933. Described by novellist E.M. Forster as "a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe", his poems are full of a looking back on lost things: it cannot be called nostalgia, precisely, because they are weighted with irony, and the ones that do not deal with things long past have a quiet, bitter homoeroticism and remembrance of youth.

I love "Ithaca" and "Donations of Alexandria" and "The god abandons Anthony" and many of the poems that treat Alexandria-the-city, but the other poems are beautiful, too. I wholeheartedly recommend them.

This edition has a parallel Greek text. My Greek is too poor (and too ancient) to properly appreciate this, but it's interesting to see where the stresses and the rhythm falls in the original, and in the translation.

Books 2010: pray that the road be long

Books 2010: 3


3. C.P. Cavafy, The Collected Poems, translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou.

Constantine Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863, and died there in 1933. Described by novellist E.M. Forster as "a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe", his poems are full of a looking back on lost things: it cannot be called nostalgia, precisely, because they are weighted with irony, and the ones that do not deal with things long past have a quiet, bitter homoeroticism and remembrance of youth.

I love "Ithaca" and "Donations of Alexandria" and "The god abandons Anthony" and many of the poems that treat Alexandria-the-city, but the other poems are beautiful, too. I wholeheartedly recommend them.

This edition has a parallel Greek text. My Greek is too poor (and too ancient) to properly appreciate this, but it's interesting to see where the stresses and the rhythm falls in the original, and in the translation.

the fierce Poseidon you'll not encounter unless you carry him along within your soul

Eight thousand words of thesis.

Twelve thousand will make a draft, since the final object needs to be between twelve and fifteen thousand words. I'll settle for somewhere over ten, as long as I get that much before the middle of next week: I need a couple of days as cooling-off period (and to finish the other items on the to-do list) before classes start again.

I've been sounding out the Greek text of Cavafy's Ithaca, every now and then, this afternoon. Oh, beautiful.

the fierce Poseidon you'll not encounter unless you carry him along within your soul

Eight thousand words of thesis.

Twelve thousand will make a draft, since the final object needs to be between twelve and fifteen thousand words. I'll settle for somewhere over ten, as long as I get that much before the middle of next week: I need a couple of days as cooling-off period (and to finish the other items on the to-do list) before classes start again.

I've been sounding out the Greek text of Cavafy's Ithaca, every now and then, this afternoon. Oh, beautiful.