Edmund Keeley

Edmund Leroy "Mike" Keeley (Greek Έντμουντ Κίλι, born February 5, 1928 in Damascus , French Syria ) is a comparatist , Anglicist and Neo-Greekist as well as poet, narrator, essayist and literary translator.

Live and act

Keeley is the son of US diplomat James Hugh Keeley, Jr. and brother of diplomat Robert V. Keeley. He grew up first in Syria, from 1931 on in Canada. From 1936 to 1939 his father was the US ambassador to Thessaloniki ; there Keeley attended the Greek elementary school. In 1939 the family moved on to Washington DC After attending secondary school there and studying at Princeton University , which he graduated with a BA in 1949 , he studied comparative literature at the University of Oxford on a grant from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation , where he obtained his Ph.D. in comparative literature. During this time in Oxford he married Mary Stathatos-Kyris, a Greek woman with whom he later worked on translation projects.

From 1949 to 1950 he also worked as a Fulbright teacher at a US school in Greece. From 1952 to 1953 he worked as an instructor in English at Brown University and from 1953 to 1954 in the same position at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki . From 1954 he taught English, creative writing and Modern Greek (in the Hellenic Studies program ) at Princeton University , from 1954 to 1957 as an instructor in English, from 1957 as an assistant professor, from 1963 as an associate professor and from 1970 as a professor . He retired in 1993 and has been Charles Barnwell Straut Professor Emeritus there ever since.

Together with Peter Bien and Peter Topping he founded the Modern Greek Studies Association , of which he was president from 1970 to 1973 and from 1980 to 1982. He was also chairman of the PEN American Center from 1992 to 1993 .

In 1992 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1999 he received the John D. Criticos Prize of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies . He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens .

Keeley is primarily concerned with modern Greek poetry ( Dionysios Solomos , Andreas Kalvos , Kostis Palamas , but above all Konstantinos Kavafis , Angelos Sikelianos , Giorgos Seferis , Odysseas Elytis and Giannis Ritsos ) and the history of modern Greece. He has published six novels, fourteen volumes of poems in translation, on which he often collaborated with Philip Sherrard and Giorgos Savvidis , and five volumes of non-fiction.

Publications (selection)

• The Libation. Charles Scribner's & Sons. 1958.
• The gold-hatted lover. Little, Brown and Company. 1961.
• The Imposter. Doubleday. 1970.
• Voyage to a Dark Island. Curtis Books. 1972.
• Problems in rendering Modern Greek. 1975.
• Cavafy's Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress . Harvard University Press. 1976.
• Ritsos in Parentheses . Princeton University Press. 1979.
• A Wilderness Called Peace. Simon & Schuster. 1985. ISBN 0-671-47416-2 .
• The Salonika Bay Murder, Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair . Princeton University Press. 1989.
• School for Pagan Lovers . Rutgers University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-8135-1935-7 .
• Albanian Journal, the Road to Elbasan . White Pine Press. 1997. ISBN 1-877727-76-8 .
• On Translation: Reflections and Conversations. Harwood Academic Publishers. 1998.
• Inventing Paradise. The Greek Journey, 1937-47 . Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1999.
• Some Wine for Remembrance . White Pine Press. 2002. ISBN 1-893996-15-8 .
• Borderlines, A Memoir. White Pine Press. 2005. ISBN 1-893996-33-6 .
• The Megabuilders of Queenston Park. Wild River Books. 2014, ISBN 978-0-9839188-4-4 .
• Requiem for Mary. Greenhouse Review Press. 2015, ISBN 978-0-9838094-2-5 .
• The Problem of Time and Other Poems. Greenhouse Review Press. 2018, ISBN 978-0-9838094-4-9 .

Editions and translations

• with Philip Sherrard: George Seferis, Collected Poems: 1924–1955 . Princeton University Press, 1967, ISBN 0-691-01300-4 .
• with George Savvidis: CP Cavafy, Passions and Ancient Days. Hogarth Press 1972, ISBN 0-7012-0351-X .
• with Peter Bien : Modern Greek Writers: Solomos, Calvos, Palamas, Cavafy, Kazantzakis, Seferis, Elytis. Princeton University Press 1972
• with Philip Sherrard: CP Cavafy, Selected Poems. Princeton University Press, 1972.
• with George Savvidis: CP Cavafy, Three Poems of Passion. Plain Wrapper Press, 1975.
• with Philip Sherrard and George Savvidis: CP Cavafy, Collected Poems . Princeton University Press, 1975, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-691-01537-6 .
• with Philip Sherrard: Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems. Princeton University Press, 1979.
• Odysseus Elytis, Selected Poems. Viking-Penguin, 1981, ISBN 0-670-29246-X .
• Yannis Ritsos, Return and Other Poems . Parallel Editions, 1983.
• with Philip Sherrard: CP Cavafy, A Selection of Poems. Camberwell Press, 1985.
• Yannis Ritsos, Exile and Return: Selected Poems, 1967-74. Ecco Press, 1985.
• Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses. Princeton University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-691-01908-8 .
• with Philip Sherrard: The Essential Cavafy. Ecco Press, 1995, ISBN 0-691-01491-4 .
• with Philip Sherrard: George Seferis, Collected Poems. Princeton University Press, 1995.
• George Seferis and Edmund Keeley: Correspondence, 1951–1971. Princeton University Library, 1997, ISBN 0-87811-042-9
• with Peter Bien, Peter Constantine and Karen Van Dyck : A Century of Greek Poetry 1900–2000: Bilingual Edition. Cosmos Publishing, River Vale, NJ 2004, ISBN 1-932455-00-0 .
• with Philip Sherrard: Selected Poems of Odysseus Elytis. Anvil Press, 2007, ISBN 0-85646-355-8 .
• as co-editor: The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. WW Norton, 2009.
• with Philip Sherrard: Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems. 2nd edition, Denise Harvey, 1996, ISBN 960-7120-12-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Edmund Keeley in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Edmund Keeley Papers , Princeton University Library 1996, 2001, 2003 (includes a biographical note, in English)