Volume 22, Number 12 · July 17, 1975
Marvelous Poet
By James Merrill
Cavafy, a Critical Biography
by Robert Liddell
Duckworth (London), 222 pp., £4.95
C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems
translated by Edmund Keeley, by Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis
Princeton University Press, 451 pp., $3.45 (paper)
Mr. Liddell's is the first life in English of the Greek poet Cavafy. A sensitive and informed chronicler, he also quotes generously from Greek sources, Cavafy's diaries and scholia, as well as recollections of people close to him. His treatment of Cavafy's social and sexual life is entirely plausible. Mr. Liddell knows Egypt, too, and guides his reader blindfolded through the Alexandrian genealogical maze, as through the smart or infamous quarters of the city.
Review, 4677 words
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