The Greek Poet Cavafy and History

This book presents a survey and evaluation of Cavafy’s poetical work with an emphasis on his historical and didactic poems. The poet prefers to describe events while they are still in progress. We, the readers, know from History that the game is lost and we feel like wise men hearing “the mystic sound of the approaching events”. We see the future of that era which is the past of our era.For the first time, the relation of Cavafy’s poetics to Aristotle’s Poetics is examined. Some of Cavafy’s techniques, including the use of details and of an intervening narrator are also discussed in detail, showing that, through such devices, he succeeds in taking the reader back to the living past. The basic motifs of Cavafy’s poetry are also systematically analysed, under the light of his proclaimed manner of revisiting the same areas by completing, illuminating or revealing the oppositions of the initial form. In addition, new translations of Cavafy’s most well-known poems, including “Thermopylae”, “Ithaca”, “Expecting the Barbarians”, “Voices”, “Desires”, “Walls”, and “The City”, are appended to this volume.