A vivid lesson

[Michael]

While I am not amazed and bedazzled by the poem, the two versions
below shows the importance of revision and also gave me a very vivid
lesson in what makes a poem better or worse. i am guilty all too often
of the sin of too many adverbs and adjectives.

The two versions of the poem below are by the Alexandrian Greek poet
C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), newly translated by Daniel Mendelsohn.
Mendelsohn explains, "Cavafy underwent a radical artistic
transformation during the decade from around 1894 to 1904—the year of
the ruthless 'Philosophical Scrutiny' to which he submitted both
himself and his poems, which resulted in a significant break with the
past and the gateway to his great mature style. Thanks to the poet's
habit of constantly rewriting and revising his work, we have a
thrilling glimpse into the nature of that metamorphosis. Compare, for
instance, the 1894 poem 'Sweet Voices'—a work the poet later repudiated
—and its final, 1904 incarnation, 'Voices': a comparison that shows us
the poet paring down the prettiness and stripping away the sentiment
of the earlier poem in order to achieve a more concentrated emotional
effect. First, he abandons the rhymes and the gentle cadences of the
meter of the earlier version; far more important—and far more
illuminating for our understanding of Cavafy's evolution—he has
jettisoned all of the cloying adjectives and adverbs of the early
version ('sweeter,' 'mournfully,' 'melancholic,' 'feeble,' 'precious,'
etc.). The tersely effective final version retains only two adjectives
('imagined,' 'beloved'), but they are all he needs to make his point
about loss, love, and memory."

Both these are Mendelsohn's translations from the original Greek.
Again - I think comparing the two versions gives us a vivid lesson in
what to do and not to do. The second is so much better than the first.

And the second is actually appropriate for those of you who may be
starting the celebrate Passover tonight.

All tbe best
Michael

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Sweet Voices
Those voices are the sweeter which have fallen
forever silent, mournfully
resounding only in the heart that sorrows.

In dreams the melancholic voices come,
timorous and humble,
and bring before our feeble memory

the precious dead, whom the cold cold earth
conceals; for whom the mirthful
daybreak never shines, nor springtimes blossom.

Melodious voices sigh; and in the soul
our life’s first poetry
sounds — like music, in the night, that's far away.

Voices
Imagined voices, and beloved, too,
of those who died, or of those who are
lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life—
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.