"Hidden things": Cavafy's thematic catliogues

Abstract

Throughout his literary career Cavafy was concerned with the thematic classification and arrangement of his poems. The arrangement of the poems in the thematic collections which Cavafy himself distributed has already been examined in detail by one of the present authors (Hirst, 1995). The purpose of this article is to attempt, and to comment on,
reconstructions of the unpublished thematic catalogues which are known to be in the Cavafy Archive. It is unfortunate that such an attempt is necessary and nothing would please us more than to see our reconstructions promptly rendered superfluous by the fun publication of
the relevant material from the Archive. Until such time as this happens, we believe that our necessarily incomplete reconstructions will be of interest and use to readers and interpreters of Cavafy's poems.