I was led to this project by a practical necessity: whilst planning a critical investigation into the themes of Cavafy’s poems, I realised that two essential tools for study were missing: a critical edition and an index of words. Since no one was working on producing them, I decided to create them myself. And since the Cavafy archive was inaccessible to me at the time, my first task was to request access to all the original publications of each poem; in other words: to compare every printed version of the poems based on Cavafy’s manuscripts, and in particular the editions he had produced himself, that is, the separate printings of his poems as independent volumes: leaflets, issues, collections.
Excerpt from the foreword to the edition.
- Pages: 368
- ISBN: 978-960-7233-00-4
- Publication: 1991
- Dimensions: 25,5 x 17
- Categories: Books, Essays & Thought, Μελέτη
G.P. Savvidis
Scholar and professor of modern Greek literature. He began his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens, but continued them at King’s College, Cambridge, and at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he was awarded a PhD in Philology in 1966 with the thesis The Cavafy Editions (1891–1932). He served as an adjunct professor of Modern Greek Literature at the University of Thessaloniki from 1966, he resigned for academic and ethical reasons in 1971 and returned in 1974 as a full professor for a further nine years (voluntary retirement). He served as a permanent visiting professor at the George Seferis Chair of Modern Greek Studies, Harvard University, from 1977 to 1984 (voluntary resignation).
His academic publications began in 1951, whilst at the same time he contributed to numerous publications (mainly To Vima and Ta Nea). He edited, in an exemplary manner, collections of poems by Seferis, Cavafy, Karyotakis, Sikelianos, Valaoritis, Daponte and others.
