tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post2923178917098424227..comments2024-03-28T05:13:13.921-04:00Comments on Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Question of the day ...Frank Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-57567926702737439022007-11-23T17:40:00.000-05:002007-11-23T17:40:00.000-05:00"Ever since I was first introduced to his poetry b..."Ever since I was first introduced to his poetry by the late Professor R.M. Dawkins over thirty years ago, C.P. Cavafy has remained an influence on my own writing; that is to say, I can think of poems which, if Cavafy were unknown to me, I should have written quite differently or perhaps not written at all. Yet I do not know a word of Modern Greek, so that my only access to Cavafy’s poetry has been through English and French translations.<BR/><BR/>"This perplexes and a little disturbs me. Like everybody else, I think, who writes poetry, I have always believed the essential difference between prose and poetry to be that prose can be translated into another tongue but poetry cannot.<BR/><BR/>"But if it is possible to be poetically influenced by work which one can read only in translation, this belief must be qualified."<BR/><BR/>"What, then, is it in Cavafy’s poems that survives translation and excites?"<BR/>--W. H. Auden, <A HREF="http://greece.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2429" REL="nofollow">"Introduction to Cavafy's poems"</A>Dave Lullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01053227199985293516noreply@blogger.com