> Jon, what is your opinion?
I should say at this point that I'm not a native Greek speaker, so no doubt
both of the translators are more sensitive to the original than I could be.
But I also like the Economou version better. It seems to recreate better the
technique of presenting a poignant subject in fairly plain language.
I think one of the miraculous things about this poem is that by the end you've
forgotten that you're supposed to be looking at an old picture instead of a
living person. I also have a feeling, which I can't at all support by
pointing to anything specific in the text, that the young man becomes
collapsed, as it were, with Cavafy's own remembered youthful self.
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Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
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