Essential Cavafy

Cavafy's mythical world presents us with an image of the good life--the life of exquisite sensuality, refined tastes, and mixed faiths--that more often than not carries within it the ripening prospect of its own death; yet in his work there appears to be no other life more worthy of celebration.... As ironist and realist, his vision is readily translatable into the language of contemporary experience; and the commitment to hedonism, to political skepticism, and to honest self-awareness... anticipates the prevailing aura of our times.