Passions and Ancient Days

First edition. Sm. 8vo. Pp. xxiii, 68. Grey buckram over tan paper-covered boards, titled in gilt to spine and blind stamped to front; decorated end papers. Jacket design by Richard Rummond, printed at $5.00 to the front flap. Parallel Greek and English text on facing pages with copious endnotes. Twenty-one poems never previously published in English, translated and introduced by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis. The English Hogarth Press edition followed a year later.

"[A] Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing at a slight angle to the universe", in E. M. Forster's memorable phrase, Cavafy's poetry focused on marginal historical figures, furtive sexual desires, delusional aspirations, solitude, and mortality. This bilingual volume captures the poet's mixture of formal and idiomatic language in his frank treatment of homosexual eroticism, his re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies.