Poets from smaller European languages have always struggled to make their voices heard. Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) presents us with a singular case of poetry translated into all major languages – indeed, retranslated at a rate unheard of for a modern poet – to the extent that we now speak less about a voice from Greece, primarily associated with a ‘small’ national literature. His publication history alone (listed at the end of this chapter) immediately shows how this body of work has long outstripped notions of minority; the fact that this poetry speaks for characters and settings that belong in the margins of antiquity, culture and sexuality makes this situation even more poignant. Though Cavafy's poetry nowadays exists in most languages, it is with English that a unique – even excessive – relationship has been forged. Alongside a wealth of imitations, in the early twenty-first century alone we can count at least ten extensive translation projects related to the accepted canon of 154 poems. There are rarely ‘second chances’ for a poet rendered into a major language, but in Cavafy's case, the consecutive acts of translation suggest not simply the reconfirmation of his value beyond his own culture, but the expression by translators and publishers of needs and desires, explored in this chapter.

For modern Greek writers, the enduring continuities with their ancient Greek counterparts – the diachrony of a language, where the gist of ancient texts can be somewhat understood without intralingual translation – are simultaneously a blessing and a curse. A key figure in the presentation of Greek literature to English-speaking audiences in recent decades, David Connolly (2003, 13, my emphases) laments in his foreword to a bilingual edition of a poetry collection by Yannis Kondos (1943–2015) how