Anthony Hirst
Institute of Byzantine Studies, Queen's University
Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, U.K.
A critical edition of Cavafy's 'acknowledged' poems
My arrival in Princeton was delayed by last-minute hardware and software problems
related to the research I was coming here to do. Arriving on Sunday Aug. 18,
instead of Tuesday Aug.13., I was a little concerned that I might not finish
the work within the time available. However, the period from Monday Aug. 19
to Thursday Sept. 19 has proved exactly right to complete the work on the Princeton
corpus of the collections of Cavafy's poems printed at the poet's expense and
distributed by him hors de commerce, and on related materials in the
Princeton University Library.
The Rare Books Department of Princeton University Library has seven examples
of Cavafy's scarce and valuable, self-published collections:
Four of the thematically arranged collections:
A. Poiemata [Poems] 1908-1914 (an earlier form
of B)
B. Poiemata 1905-1915 (the final form
of A)
C. 2 copies of Poiemata 1916-1918
And one copy of each of the following three chronologically arranged
collections:
D. Poiemata 1912-1919
E. Poiemata 1915-1926
F. Poiemata 1919-1932.
Items B, C and F are the three collections which Cavafy was circulating during
the last three years of his life (1930-33), and it is in these that one finds
examples of his final printings of the poems. Unfortunately, for my immediate
purposes, the two examples of C are both quite early (C was first circulated
in 1929) and contain very few final printings. However, the Princeton copies
of B and F are late copies and rich in final printings. I had already completed
the identification of printings in the Princeton corpus during my year as a
post-doctoral fellow in Hellenic Studies (1999/2000). It was no surprise, then,
to find in B, C and F the final printings of 87 of the 154 poems of the Cavafy
'Canon'. The texts of these 87 final printings have been transcribed into my
database, checked, printed and rechecked. I have made a very small number of
corrections, correcting only where I felt sure that the deviation from normal
Greek orthography was a purely typographical error for which the printers rather
than the author were responsible. One of the main objectives of my new edition
of Cavafy is to avoid the normalization of Cavafy's spelling and of his use
of diacritics. Such normalization (often involving norms which were not generally
established and accepted until well after Cavafy's death) has increasingly plagued
even the best posthumous editions of his work. Cavafy is not consistent in his
spelling, using different forms of the same word in different poems. While some
of his choices may be purely arbitrary, others, I am convinced, have aesthetic
(aural or visual) or semantic significance. Some of his unusual spellings, particularly
of verbs, create hybrid forms: without changing the sound of a word,
he makes it look like another word, inviting (or subliminally compelling)
the reader to call on two sets of associations. I had already stumbled on a
small number of these intriguing word forms, and have now discovered others
in the course of the last five weeks' intensive immersion in his texts. They
will certainly not be "corrected" in my edition, though I shall comment on them.
My edition will be a critical edition, recording variants in all of Cavafy's
earlier printings of his poems (the poems were printed from one to thirteen
times each), and in all versions of his poems published in books, periodicals
and newspapers during his lifetime, including publication within critical articles
where the whole text of a poem is quoted (there are instances where the first
publication of a poem was in a critical article, from a manuscript supplied
to the critic by Cavafy). At present I cannot say how many of these published
versions there are, but I estimate the average as ten per poem.
As well as transcribing almost 60% of the copy texts for my edition from the
Princeton corpus of Cavafy's privately printed collections (over 60%
with five extra texts from a copy of B in Columbia University Library, which
I transcribed in the course of a day trip on Sept. 12), I have made a significant
start on the recording of variants. The Princeton corpus contains one, two or
three earlier printings of many of the poems whose final printings are in the
corpus. These have been carefully compared with the final printings and all
variants recorded. I have also found many, published forms of the poems in books,
pamphlets or journals in the Princeton University Library: some in Rare Books,
a few in the open stacks of the Firestone Library, others in old Greek journals,
recalled from the Forrestal Annex. From these sources I have accumulated photocopies
of almost one hundred examples of publications of poems in periodicals etc.
Where these are of poems whose final printings have been found and transcribed,
the variants in the published versions have been recorded. Many of these published
versions I already knew of, but some of the versions of poems I found in copies
of the Ethnikon Hemerologion [National Almanac], for instance, were not
previously known to me from any published bibliographical source. The most curious
and unexpected discovery was in the Firestone's only issue (April, 1925) of
the Greek-American illustrated periodical Ethnikos Keryx/Monthly Illustrated
National Herald, published in New York. This contains a mutilated version
of Cavafy's early poem, "An old man": the first three lines are omitted, making
nonsense of its complex rhyme scheme; and it is provided with a new title, which
translates (roughly) as "Contempt for the wretchedness of old age", a phrase
adapted from a line within the body of the poem.
Although I have completed all the work that I can do at present with the Princeton
corpus and the related publications in the PU Library, I have not exhausted
the usefulness of the material. There are many non-final printings which will
become useful once I have transcribed (from other sources) the final printings
of which they are earlier versions. I have, therefore, ordered photocopies of
the entire corpus, to enable me, first, to recheck my transcriptions and recording
of variants, and, secondly, to utilize later all the printings which I have
not yet been able to check against the corresponding final printing.
Since I was offered the Short-Term Library Fellowship in January, I have more
recently been awarded a two-year Special Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme
Trust, specifically for the Cavafy Critical Edition. I shall take up this fellowship
in November 2002, and the UK edition should be ready for publication by the
end of the two-year period. Publication in the UK is guaranteed, as the edition
will be produced by my home department, the Institute of Byzantine Studies,
Queen's University Belfast, in association with its established series, Belfast
Byzantine Texts and Translations. Some of the editorial matter in the Belfast
edition will be in English, and a companion volume of my own English translations
of the poems is also planned. I hope to interest a Greek publisher in producing
an entirely Greek edition, since it is among Greeks that the restored texts
of Cavafy's poems, in the first ever critical edition, should find its widest
readership.
In all publications the importance of the Princeton corpus of Cavafy's self-published
collections, and the financial assistance of the Friends of the Princeton University
Library will be fully and gratefully acknowledged. On a personal level, let
me end by saying how grateful I am for five marvelous and highly productive
weeks spent in the Dulles Reading Room and other parts of the PU Library, and
especially for the friendly and courteous assistance of all the staff in the
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
libraryf@princeton.edu
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