2017 Chapters (Layout Features)

Translating a Canonical Author: C. P. Cavafy

Van Dyck, Karen

Translation, Walter Benjamin reminds us, involves the afterlife of the work, not the author’s life. Teaching canonical works with attention to the history of their survival enables students to move away from fixed notions of authorship and invention. Translation becomes a hermeneutic practice worthy of study in its own right, where learning how to interpret is indistinguishable from learning how to translate into different media. These points form the basic rationale of my course on C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933), a poet of the Greek diaspora who lived in Alexandria and profoundly influenced many prose writers, poets, and artists, from E. M. Forster and Marguerite Yourcenar to James Merrill and Duane Michals.