C.P. Cavafy and the Art of Good Translation

In reading A Distant Pleasure, Keith Taylor’s discussion of Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translations of the poems of C.P. Cavafy, one is reminded that every translated poem is always largely a novel construction. A good translator must be almost impossibly nuanced in her attempt to faithfully translate a poem, delicately balancing her consideration for rhythm, meaning, connotation, and many other elements. For the famous modern Greek poet who put so much of his own desire into his poetry that he prompted fellow poet Goerge Seferis to remark that “outside his poems Cavafy does not exist,” the question of translation seems particularly pertinant.

Taylor traces his own beloved relationship with Cavafy’s poems. He expresses admiration for Mendelsohn’s new translation of both Cavafy’s completed works and recently-found unfinished ones, appreciating how Mendelsohn conveys the rhythmic cadences absent in previous translations. Taylor both compliments and criticizes Mendelsohn’s attempt to reflect Cavafy’s interplay of vernacular Greek diction with “high” official language imposed on the populace after the collapse of Ottoman rule, reinforcing how translation is endlessly political because languages are so invariably wedded to history. Most of all though, what A Distant Pleasure conveys is how a new translation of a poet’s work can can help the reader approach the poet’s original intentions, imbuing old and beloved poems with new meaning that at once strengthens old affections and offers novel perspectives. As James Longenbach suggests in his own laudatory review in the Times Sunday Book Review, Mendelsohn seems to possess a profound understanding of the essence of Cavafy’s work and to have distilled this essence in his translations.