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This web page was created by the braintumorguy, in Athens, GREECE.

please make a Small Donation, in my fight against my Brain Tumor which is Growing, ((( for more information about me, please visit my MEDICAL web page

https://sites.google.com/site/niactec/homeenglish )))

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This web page is a tribute to

...

C. P. Cavafy, who was once described as “standing at a slight angle to the universe,” is internationally celebrated as one of the most original poets of the twentieth century. A Greek from Alexandria, Cavafy lived most of his life in Egypt amid the ruins of several empires, in the dust of Cleopatra, Antony, and Alexander. The spirit of Alexandria’s great, lost library inspired his lifelong learning. Consumed by a curiosity about things past, Cavafy set his poems, written in elegant, economical Greek, in the great empires of the eastern Mediterranean, from the Hellenistic to the modern period. He charged his words with irony, eroticism, longing, and deep reflections on history’s changing fortunes.

A tribute is a sign of respect or admiration, an award to honor a person's accomplishments.

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PLEASE YOUR ATTENTION ! ...

AT THE END ( THE BOTTOM OF THIS WEBPAGE )

YOU CAN SEE THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE ORIGINAL POEMS, AND TO FREE DOWNLOAD THE BOOK ! ... 134 pages !, in English

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and ...

C. P. CAVAFY IN TOKYO animated project

The Project Exhibition Events Artists Contributors Sketches Animations

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ATTENTION : ALL THE PODCASTS and YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN THIS WEB PAGE ... ARE AVAILABLE ON ...

Buy at low price, ( TO COVER ONLY THE COST FOR THE HOURS WE SPENT IN ORDER TO COLLECT AND GROUP TOGETHER ).

PLEASE view, and place your order.

Send your email order to

niactec2014@gmail.com

Thank you very much.

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The more people hear them the better, and we are not trying to make money off them or anything.

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duration 04:23 minutes

( please using the right click of your mouse, and Open Link in Next Private Window, )

Ithaca C. P. Cavafy - Recitation by Sean Connery - Music by Vangelis

Readout :

Ithaca C. P. Cavafy | Recitation by Sir Sean Connery - Music by Vangelis

Published on Jan 12, 2015

Music composed, arranged, produced and performed by Vangelis

Poem recited by Sean Connery

Poem by C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933).

Lyrics transcribed from book.

Ithaca lyrics:

As you set out for Ithaca

hope that your journey is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon - do not be afraid of them:

you'll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare sensation

touches your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope that your journey is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind -

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and learn again from those who know.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so that you're old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

===

ENGLISH - Lluís Llach – Ítaca - Extensions II & III

II

Further, you have to go further

of the fallen trees that now imprison you,

and when you have won them

be very welcome not to stop.

Farther, always go farther,

farther from today than now you are chained.

And when you will be released

start the new steps again.

Farther, always much further away,

further away from tomorrow that it is now approaching.

And when you think you arrive, find new ways.

III

Good trip for warriors

that in his town they are faithful,

favor the God of the winds

the sail of his boat,

and despite their old combat

Have pleasure from the most loving bodies.

Fill networks of dear stars

full of ventures, full of knowledge.

Good trip for warriors

If his people are faithful,

the sail of his boat

favor the God of the winds,

and despite their old combat

love fills your generous body,

find the paths of old-fashioned,

full of ventures, full of knowledge.

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Ithaka - Rich DeVore

Rich DeVore

Published on Jun 26, 2015

A new song! The lyrics were inspired by a poem by C.P. Cavafy. Or I should say from several different English translations from the original Greek poem. Recorded at Kate Sessions Park in San Diego, CA.

duration 04:10 minutes

( please using the right click of your mouse, and Open Link in Next Private Window, )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFu1nKTQUcg&list=PLk3AHdGJ1bR9SkbARojI_Ui-FJVTn5mt0&index=70

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Cuando salgas en el viaje...

Selanna

Published on Jul 8, 2010

ÍTACA

Cuando salgas en el viaje, hacia Ítaca

desea que el camino sea largo,

pleno de aventuras, pleno de conocimientos.

A los Lestrigones y a los Cíclopes,

al irritado Poseidón no temas,

tales cosas en tu ruta nunca hallarás,

si elevado se mantiene tu pensamiento, si una selecta

emoción tu espíritu y tu cuerpo embarga.

A los Lestrigones y a los Cíclopes,

y al feroz Poseidón no encontrarás,

si dentro de tu alma no los llevas,

si tu alma no los yergue delante de ti.

Desea que el camino sea largo.

Que sean muchas las mañanas estivales

en que con cuánta dicha, con cuánta alegría

entres a puertos nunca vistos:

detente en mercados fenicios,

y adquiere las bellas mercancías,

ámbares y ébanos, marfiles y corales,

y perfumes voluptuosos de toda clase,

cuanto más abundantes puedas perfumes voluptuosos;

anda a muchas ciudades Egipcias

a aprender y aprender de los sabios.

Siempre en tu pensamiento ten a Ítaca.

Llegar hasta allí es tu destino.

Pero no apures tu viaje en absoluto.

Mejor que muchos años dure:

y viejo ya ancles en la isla,

rico con cuanto ganaste en el camino,

sin esperar que riquezas te dé Ítaca.

Ítaca te dio el bello viaje.

Sin ella no hubieras salido al camino.

Otras cosas no tiene ya que darte.

Y si pobre la encuentras, Ítaca no te ha engañado.

Sabio así como llegaste a ser, con experiencia tanta,

ya habrás comprendido las Ítacas qué es lo que significan.

Constantinos Cavafis

duración 05:14 minutos

(por favor usando el clic derecho de su ratón, y elvínculo abierto en la ventana privada siguiente,)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrGrYIXhjg0

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and ...

ΙΘΑΚΗ ΚΑΒΑΦΗΣ ITHAKA KAVAFIS lyrics testo

duration 03:44 minutes

( please using the right click of your mouse, and Open Link in Next Private Window, )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vziSDOnm2lc&list=PLk3AHdGJ1bR9SkbARojI_Ui-FJVTn5mt0&index=19

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για karaoke - "ΙΘΑΚΗ" Κ.Καβάφης (μελοποίηση Κ.Πουλής)

Ithaka Kavafy

Published on Apr 28, 2013

Για να μπορεί να τραγουδηθεί απ` όποιον ενδιαφέρεται να ταξιδέψει μουσικά, με τους στίχους του καταπληκτικού αυτού ποιήματος.

Ιθάκη

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,

να εύχεσαι νά `ναι μακρύς ο δρόμος,

γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.

Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,

το θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,

τέτοια στο δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δε θα βρεις,

αν μέν' η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις

το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει.

Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,

τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δε θα συναντήσεις,

αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,

αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.

Να εύχεσαι νά `ναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.

Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωϊά να είναι

που με τι ευχαρίστηση, με τι χαρά

θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους,

να σταματήσεις σ' εμπορεία Φοινικικά,

και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν' αποκτήσεις,

σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ' έβενους,

και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής,

όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά,

σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,

να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους.

Πάντα στο νου σου νά `χεις την Ιθάκη.

Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν' ο προορισμός σου.

Αλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξίδι διόλου.

[Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,

το θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,]

Καλύτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει

και γέρος πια ν' αράξεις στο νησί,

πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στο δρόμο,

μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.

Η Ιθάκη σ' έδωσε τ' ωραίο ταξίδι.

Χωρίς αυτήν δε θά `βγαινες στο δρόμο.

Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια.

Κι αν πτωχική τη βρεις, η Ιθάκη δε σε γέλασε.

Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα,

ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.

[Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,

τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δε θα συναντήσεις,

αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,

αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.

Να εύχεσαι νά `ναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.]

διάρκεια 04:24 λεπτά

( παρακαλώ χρησιμοποιώντας το δεξιό κλικ του mouse, ανοίξτε τον επόμενο σύνδεσμο

( ιστοσελίδα ) σε ξεχωριστό παράθυρο προς τα δεξιά, )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDMg1ndxv0

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Cavafy’s “Ithaca” - What does this poem have to do with video games?

As you set out on the way to Ithaca

hope that the road is a long one,

filled with adventures, filled with understanding.

Those are the first three lines of Constantine P Cavafy‘s poem Ithaca. I want to discuss Cavafy’s poem for two reasons. First, it’s about one of the great quest stories of Western civilization, Homer’s Odyssey. And second, it conveys a lesson that I think applies wonderfully to gamers. The poem is about relishing the journey for its own sake, and not just for the destination at the end of the quest.

Cavafy was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. He was a Greek, who lived most of his live in Alexandria, with some years spent in England and Constantinople. His poems were written in a revolutionary mixture of Greek demotic verse, that’s the ordinary language of contemporary Greeks, and the pure elevated language of the Greek classical tradition. Cavafy mentions some of the obstacles Odysseus had to face on his journey. In lines four through five, he writes,

The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes, Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them.

The Laestrygonians, as many of you all will know, are giant cannibals which attacked Odysseus on his way home and they actually destroyed 11 of his 12 ships by crushing them with rocks from high cliffs. The Cyclopeses were giants with a single eye in their foreheads. Polyphemus is the best known cyclops. He gets tricked by Odysseus who puts out his eye with a sharpened pole and sneaks by the blinded cyclops by hiding under the bellies of Polyphemus’s gigantic sheep. Poseidon was the God of the Sea. Poseidon did his best to frustrate Odysseus’ journey home. Of course, most of us will never have to face such terrifying challenges. We won’t discover the marvels that Odysseus discovered. Many of his adventures are included in the poem. The Sirens is a very famous adventure. These were women whose entrancing song would lure unwary sailors too close to shore, where they would be wrecked on hidden rocks. Odysseus got by them by having himself bound to the mast of his sailing ship, his vessel, he plugged all his sailor’s ears with wax so that they couldn’t hear the enticements of the sirens. Odysseus also ran into Circe, the witch who turned many of Odysseus’ men into swine. He had to sail in between the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla was a six headed monster that lived in a cliff beside the ocean and snatched sailors out of the ships that passed by. Charybdis was also a sea monster, a whirlpool.

But Cavafy tells us that we don’t need to worry about these kind of challenges. Not unless we bring them with us in our souls. Cavafy writes, “you’ll not encounter them, unless you carry them within your soul, unless your soul sets them up before you.” These lines deepen the poem. They make us realize that Cavafy is talking as much about inner demons, the fears that we set up for ourselves, as any external adventure that we might encounter. But let’s get back to the question that may be bothering some of you. What does this poem have to do with video games? The answer, I would propose, lies in the very first line, hope that the road is a long one. It’s the journey itself that matters. It’s who you meet and what you see along the road that will make the trip satisfying. Cavafy writes, do not rush your journey in the least. Better that it last for many years. This is a profound lesson about life and incidentally encapsulates my attitude toward video games. Not everyone shares this attitude, many gamers are obsessed with levelling up, with maxing out their characters and getting the most uber gear they want to reach the end game, they forget that it’s the experience of getting there that matters. After all, video games are entertainment. They’re out there for pleasure, and the trip to levelling up, the trip to maxing out is the real heart and soul of most games.

Ithaca is your goal. Ithaca is what, set, why you set out on your journey, and you’ll reach her someday. But it’s the experience of getting there that brings us the deepest pleasures and the deepest satisfactions. Here’s how Cavafy phrases that sentiment. Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey, without her you’d not have set upon the road. But you may find, once you reach the end of your journey. That you missed the adventures you encountered getting there. You may find that Ithaca is not all that you thought it would be. That was certainly what Cavafy thought. In his poem, he imagines that Odysseus was disappointed by Ithaca. But Cavafy ends his poem with a final twist. And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you. As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience, you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

Notice that odd plural in the last line. Ithacas. With that Cavafy wants to indicate that we carry our own Ithaca inside us all along. In your adventures along the way you will have been learning what Ithaca means to you.

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4. FIRST STEP

cavafyinenglish

Uploaded on Dec 3, 2008

4. FIRST STEP

A young poet

complained one day to his teacher:

'For two years I've been scribbling now

and have finished only one work.

I despair. The art is so very difficult

I'll never reach its height

but always be a very minor poet.'

His master said: Don't be silly,

try not to talk such rubbish.

You have written one very proper poem

and should be thankful and proud.

To have got so far is a fine accomplishment.

This first step

lifts you above the prosaic world,

and standing on this new height

you're admitted to the great City of Thought.

Only by hard work and exceptional talent

can one be enrolled in that distinguished company;

the requirements are so stringent

no fool could ever enter.

You have achieved a most wonderful thing.'

The pupil blushed;

but his downcast eyes were ablaze.

duration 02:21 minutes

( please using the right click of your mouse, and Open Link in Next Private Window, )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APAuYDZC8KM

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5. Καβάφης - '' Η Πόλις '' (The City)

ek ko

Published on Feb 19, 2011

Μουσική: Εκλεκτός Κωνσταντίνος

"...σ' όλη τη γη τη χάλασες...."

The City

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.

Another city will be found, better than this.

Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;

and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.

How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.

Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look

I see the black ruins of my life here,

where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.

The city will follow you. You will roam the same

streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;

in these same houses you will grow gray.

Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope --

there is no ship for you, there is no road.

As you have ruined your life here

in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

..........................................Constantine P. Cavafy (1910)

Η Πόλις

Είπες· «Θα πάγω σ' άλλη γή, θα πάγω σ' άλλη θάλασσα,

Μια πόλις άλλη θα βρεθεί καλλίτερη από αυτή.

Κάθε προσπάθεια μου μια καταδίκη είναι γραφτή·

κ' είν' η καρδιά μου -- σαν νεκρός -- θαμένη.

Ο νους μου ως πότε μες στον μαρασμό αυτόν θα μένει.

Οπου το μάτι μου γυρίσω, όπου κι αν δω

ερείπια μαύρα της ζωής μου βλέπω εδώ,

που τόσα χρόνια πέρασα και ρήμαξα και χάλασα».

Καινούριους τόπους δεν θα βρεις, δεν θάβρεις άλλες θάλασσες.

Η πόλις θα σε ακολουθεί. Στους δρόμους θα γυρνάς

τους ίδιους. Και στες γειτονιές τες ίδιες θα γερνάς·

και μες στα ίδια σπίτια αυτά θ' ασπρίζεις.

Πάντα στην πόλι αυτή θα φθάνεις. Για τα αλλού -- μη ελπίζεις --

δεν έχει πλοίο για σε, δεν έχει οδό.

Ετσι που τη ζωή σου ρήμαξες εδώ

στην κώχη τούτη την μικρή, σ' όλην την γή την χάλασες.

.....................................Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (1910)

duration 04:57 minutes

( please using the right click of your mouse, and Open Link in Next Private Window, )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn8gdyOV8No

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A Tribute to C.P. Cavafy

PEN America

Published on Jan 24, 2014

With André Aciman, Michael Cunningham, Mark Doty, Olympia Dukakis, Craig Dykers (of Snøhetta), Edmund Keeley, Daniel Mendelsohn, Orhan Pamuk, Dimitris Papaioannou, Kathleen Turner

In celebration of the 150th Anniversary of his birth, PEN brought together a stellar line-up of writers, actors, performers, translators and artists to celebrate one of the most original and influential Greek poets, his work, and his legacy. Described by E. M. Forster as "standing at a slight angle to the universe," Cavafy has been widely admired for his contemporary use of language, charged with irony, homoeroticism, longing, and deep reflections on history and philosophy. The highly theatrical evening will combine performances, personal and scholarly reflections, onstage interviews, "live translations," musical numbers, and a live dance performance and video works by Greek choreographer/stage director Dimitris Papaioannou, based on Cavafy's signature poems.

The event is made possible through a sponsorship from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, in conjunction with the Onassis Foundation and PEN American Center.

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Cavafy wrote Ithaca, inspired by the Homeric return journey of Odysseus to his home island, as depicted in the Odyssey. The poem's theme is that enjoyment of the journey of life, and the increasing maturity of the soul as that journey continues, are all the traveler can ask.

Almost all of Konstantinos Kavafis' work was in Greek; yet, his poetry remained unrecognized in Greece until after the publication of his first anthology in 1935. He is known for his prosaic use of metaphors, his brilliant use of historical imagery, and his aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst others, have assured him an enduring place in the literary pantheon of the Western World.

Constantine P. Cavafy (April 29, 1863 -- April 29, 1933) was a renowned Greek poet who lived in Alexandria and worked as a journalist and civil servant. In his poetry he examined critically some aspects of Christianity, patriotism, and homosexuality, though he was not always comfortable with his role as a nonconformist. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. His most important poetry was written after his fortieth birthday. Cavafis is considered as possibly the greatest modern Greek poet

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WHAT MADE CAVAFY?

Cavafy told friends that he was not born a poet but became one with age. He distinguished between “pre-Cavafic” and genuinely “Cavafy” poems. What are some “Cavafy” characteristics, according to Cavafy? A voice that distances itself from immediate impressions, interest in human dramas that have aged, curiosity about “past things,” the desire to bring to life lesser-known historical periods, daring to speak of “hidden things.” Recurring themes are:

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The Art of Living

Without sentimentality, Cavafy studied human emotions. His poetry explores the art of living on the edge: the pursuit of illicit desires or submission to defeat. In either case, it suggests that the worst error is to allow oneself to be fooled. There is dignity in meeting one’s fate and playing one’s part to the end.

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Alexandria

Cavafy did not take to his birthplace easily. He found Alexandria dull and backward. In a note dated 28 April 1907, he confessed: “I’m used to Alexandria now, and odds are I’d stay here even if I were rich . . . (still I’m not absolutely certain I’d stay here) because it’s like a homeland, it connects me to my life’s memories. But oh! how a person like me, someone so different, needs a big city! London, for example. . . .” Yet Cavafy’s poetry gradually finds its place in the old port city. He gives character to Alexandria: the character of decline and oppressive limits but also of learning, exotica, and people following important developments from the sidelines.

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constantine cavafy

surviving immortality

THE GREEKS

Leaving Europe’s forests behind them, they head towards the coasts and islands on the outskirts of the great empires on the banks of Euphrate, Tigris and Nile, found a chain of city-states, unite against the Persians under Alexander, crush Darius, subdue nearly the entire then civilised world and spread their civilisation from the Nile to the Indus: the Greeks – about whose descendants Cavafy sings (In the year 200 B.C.)*:

And out of the remarkable Pan-Hellenic campaign,

victorious, brilliant in every way,

celebrated far and wide, glorious

as no other had ever been, glorified,

the incomparable: we are born;

a vast new Greek World, a great new Greek world.

We, the Alexandrians, the Antiocheans,

the Seleucians, and the innumerable

rest of the Greeks of Egypt and of Syria,

and of Media, and Persia, and the many others,

with our extensive empire,

with the varied action of our thoughtful adaptations,

and our common Greek, our spoken Language,

we carried it into the heart of Bactria, to the Indians.

Alexander’s empire fell apart and the rulers of the rivalling dynasties became a plaything in the hands of the next superpower looming up from the periphery, still further westwards: Rome. When also this empire collapses under the sway of the barbarians, this time pushing from the north, Greek civilisation resurges in Constantinople, under Christian augurs. In its turn, this Byzantine Empire is threatened by nomads united under the banner of Islam, coming form the south, until finally Turks invade the empire from the east and rename its capital Istanbul in 1453.

Of all the cities founded by Alexander, no doubt the most glorious was Alexandria: it harboured not only the lighthouse – one of the seven wonders of the world – but also the legendary library, and: Alexander's tomb! Of all this glory, nothing remains: everything has been destroyed, burned or did just perish. Echoing the fate of Atlantis, the formerly glorious capital of Alexander’s empire has disappeared in the delta of the Nile, a city lost forever.

In one of the scattered remains of Alexander’s Empire, crumbled into a veritable Greek Diaspora, from 1873 to 1933 – the year Hitler founded the thousand-year reign that lasted for some mere twelve years - lived: the poet Cavafy. Of his life nothing more is left than of Alexander’s glory: 154 poems scribbled on leaflets, most of them sent as ‘feuilles volantes’ to a handful of friends, and some unedited poems and sins of his youth, destined to the wastebasket by the poet. In his youth he had to witness how the Egyptians raged against the Greeks: the former conquerors were driven back to the mainland. And, as an old man, he lived to see the Greeks expelled from Turkey: the proud Hellenes, the very people that bestowed onto the non-Greeks the label that never passed into disuse since: barbarians.

Without consideration, without pity, without shame

they have built big and high walls around me.

And now I sit here despairing.

I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.

Ah, why didn’t I observe them when they were building the walls?

But I never heard the noise or the sound of the builders.

Imperceptible they shut me out of the world.

So sounds Cavafy’s complaint in ‘The Walls’. It seems as if he lives through the fate of the once victorious Hellenism in his own life. The four walls surrounding his person are an echo of the four gates, guarded by angels, surrounding the world in its four quarters in the youth-poem ‘Indian Image’.

THE ROMANS

Cavafy understands himself as a Hellene. What he considers to be a Hellene is revealed in his comments on the enemies that destroyed Hellenism.

The Romans in the first place. Even though, in Cavafy’s work, they are relegated to the background, it is they who hey pull the strings. Alexander’s heirs, fighting their struggle for power in the foreground, are merely their puppets. The oracle continues to speak in Delphi, but the dies are cast in Rome ('Envoys from Alexandria'). Which does not alter the fact that the power of Rome is merely a military one: the Romans are only out at mere plunder, as in ‘By an Italian Shore’, were the booty is brought on land after the conquest of Corinth. On the cultural level, Hellas continues to predominate. If Cavafy stages Romans at all, then as devotees of the ‘Greek principles’. Up to two times Nero is conjured up. In ‘Footsteps’ he is staged, not as a mighty emperor, but as a somewhat overgrown ephebus:

On an ebony bed, ornamented

with coral eagles, sound asleep, lies

Nero – unconscious, quiet and blissful,

flourishing in the vigour of the flesh

and in the splendid strength of youth’

and in ‘Nero’s Term’ this divine child imagines to have plenty of time left:

… days of pleasure

at the theatres, the gardens, the athletic fields…

evenings spent in the cities of Greece…

Ah, the voluptuous delight of nude bodies, above all…

Until death does him find.

THE CHRISTIANS

A far more dangerous enemy was Christendom. When, under Constantine, it is declared the religion of the state, the Greek gods are relegated to the realm of the ghosts in the underworld. The victorious Christos Pantokrator lends the Grecian part of the empire a renewed radiance, the afterglow of which continues to shimmer through the solemn gestures and attire of the Byzantine rite (In Church):

When I enter a church of the Greeks,

With its fragrances of incense,

with its voices and liturgical choirs,

the stately presence of the priests

and the solemn rhythm of each of their movements -

most resplendent in the adornment of their vestments

my mind goes to the high honours of our race,

to the glory of our Byzantine tradition…

Which does not alter the fact that Cavafy never was ready to stomach the concomitant dawn of the Gods. Time and again he opens up the old sore. Not less than twelve poems, six of which belonging to the ekdota, are dedicated to the emperor Julian Apostata (361 - 363 A.D.), educated as a Christian but nevertheless trying to restore the glory of the ancient Gods.

Merely two of them are about the heathen in Julian the Apostat. In ‘In the suburbs of Antioch’, the Christians describe how Julian has the relics of Saint Babyl removed from the outskirts of the temple of Apollo. Whereupon ‘a great fire’ destroys temple and statue of Apollo alike. With more than a hint of sarcasm Cavafy lets them say ('Understood not’):

Concerning our religious belief –

the empty headed Julian said: ‘I read, I understood,

I condemned.’ As if the most ludicrous man

had annihilated us, with his ‘I condemned’. Was it ever possible that hey should renounce

their lovely way of life; the variety of their

daily amusement; their magnificent theatre

where a union of the Arts was taking place

with the amorous tendencies of the flesh!

The same theme can be heard in ‘Julian seeing indifference’, where he says of Julian’s friends:

They were Greeks after all...

THE ASIANS

To the other inhabitants of Alexander’s bygone empire - Medes and Persians, Arabs and Turks, not to mention the Egyptian civilisation and Islam - Cavafy remained completely indifferent. For him, it is all one mess, swept together into one pile as ‘Asians’. Even though he spent his whole life in Egypt, he was not able to speak Arab and did not waste a single word on the Egyptian civilisation and its treasures. One of his scarce utterances on occasion of the Arab saying ‘Silence is golden and the word is silver’ ('The Word and Silence’) speaks volumes:

What profane one pronounced such blasphemy?

What sluggish Asian blind and mute resigned to

blind mute destiny?… The Word is truth, life, immortality!

And the latter is only lent its full weight against the background of the concluding verse from ‘Distinguishing Marks’, in which Cavafy characterises different cultures:

But as its distinguishing marks Athens

has Man and the Word.

To Cavafy, those Asian barbarians are only worth mentioning when they conform to the Hellenistic ideal. In ‘Orophernes’, Cavafy says of this son of a king who was sent away to grow up in Ionia and there came to know ‘the fullness of pleasure’ ‘entirely à la grecque’ :

in his heart, always an Asiatic;

but in his manners and in his speech Greek…

Also in ‘Return form Greece’ Cavafy sneers at the Hellenised kings

who beneath their showy Hellenised exterior

and (what word!) Macedonian

a bit of Arabia nosed out every so often

a bit of Media which cannot be restrained

whereas they themselves take the view:

Let us not be ashamed of the Syrian and Egyptian

blood that flows in our veins.

In Athens man and the word. Barbarians: no more than speechless animals. And, given the equation of man with the beautiful but infertile youngster: sheer animals devoted to mere reproduction…

THE BRITISH

Cavafy is, if possible, still more reticent about the British. According to Warren en Molegraaf (p. 84) he would have compared the Pax Britannica with the Pax Romana. According to Yourcenar, his cultivation of a Cambridge accent would testify to his Anglophilia. But that certainly does not reflect his real stance. Between 1890 and 1894 he exchanged the British for the Greek nationality. We also know that he devoted himself to the cause of the restitution of the Elgin marbles: the stolen freezes of the Parthenon. We can only surmise that through the Romans, who in ‘By an Italian Shore’ are bringing the booty from Greece ashore, actually the British are hinted at. Also ’June 27, 1906, 2:00 p.m.’ is an explicit reference to the misdeeds of the British – among others the hanging of an innocent young boy. But the evildoers are called ‘Christians’….

Also the British, then: no more than plunderers and murderers. Of sculptures and beautiful boys…

THE JEWS

Equally ambivalent as on the Christians is Cavafy’s stance on the Jews. Just like other barbarians he only can bear them when Hellenised, as in the marvellous ‘Alexander Jannaius and Alexandra’. Behind the laudatory tone of this this poem, a nearly concealed irony goes hidden. Not so much because the Jews gained their kingdom from the Hellenistic Seleucids, but above all because, with Cavafy, the Jews - who after all also set down their own enamoured couples of fighters - invariantly are staged as stubbornly scorning every infertile love. Not to be Hellenised in principle. Hence the prominence of the couple in this poem, the only one in which Cavafy brings a heterosexual couple into the limelight. The irony is all the more mordant, because both halves of this couple are named after Alexander….

How Cavafy really thought about the Hellenising of the Jews is made clear in ‘Of the Hebrews’. There he lets a young boy speak:

‘My proudest days are those

when I leave off the aesthetic quest,

when I abandon the beautiful, hard Hellenism,

with its sovereign absorption

in perfectly wrought and perishable white limbs.

And I become the one I would always

want to remain: of the Hebrews,

of the holy Hebrews, the son.

That the Jews consider themselves to be the people of the book must also have been a thorn in his flesh. We have seen how Cavafy saw Athens as the city of ‘man and the word’. If we read ‘man’ as the human par excellence – the beautiful body of the young man – then two opposite poles are united that never have been compatible in Judaism. With them, contempt for infertile love joins contempt for the image – Moses’ taboo on mimesis. We cannot conceive of something more alien to Hellenism.

And, last but not least, it must fiercely have hurt Cavafy thatthe Jews considered Jerusalem to be the centre of the world, not Alexandria or Constantinople.

NO

We have described how Cavafy, in ‘The Walls’, embodies the fate of triumphant Hellenism. Of course, an opposite movement preceded this embodiment in his personal life.

To begin with, Cavafy’s self-conception, blown up into historical dimensions, is the enlargement of the fate of his family. Cavafy was the youngest son of a merchant on the decline who died early and left his wife and her seven children in an Alexandria where the Greeks were harassed by the ‘Asians’. In such desperate situation, Cavafy leans on the stories of the former wealth of his family, which he tries to reconstruct by speculating at the stock market. But, precisely because that wealth has gone, the fate of his family is magnified into the fate of a civilisation doomed to perish. Thus, the son of a former prosperous merchant becomes the heir of Alexander: the conqueror that once dominated the world.

But also in the historical dimension Cavafy does not revel in the faded glory. Rather is he fascinated by the inexorable decline, above all during the period after the death of Alexander, but also during the period of the Christianising of the ancient world. In de nadir of this decline, where Cavafy finds himself living, would even the most high-spirited soul not lose its thirst for action? No longer are adventurous young men looking forward to glorious deeds. Instead of participating in legendary conquests – or taking over the business of his father – Cavafy has to accept an inglorious job as a clerk in the office of irrigation. As had Kafka in Prague. Through the words of the young man in the wonderful ‘They should have cared’, Cavafy tells us how he experienced this situation:

So I consider myself fully qualified

and just the man to serve this nation,

my own beloved land of Syria.

In whatever position they place me

I will try to be useful to my land. This is my intention.

But if on the other hand they thwart me with their methods -

we know them, the diligent ones – need we talk about it now?

if they do thwart me, I am not to blame.

First I shall apply to Zabinas.

And if that dolt does not appreciate me,

I will go to his opponent, to Gypros.

And if that idiot does not engage me, I will go directly to Hyrcanos.

At any rate, one of the three will want me.

As for my conscience, it is undisturbed

by the indifference of my choice.

All three of them are equally harmful to Syria.

But, a ruined man, why is it my fault?

Unfortunate me, I am trying to pull through.

The almighty gods should have cared

about creating a fourth man who was honest,

I would gladly have gone over to him.

Zabinas was a heir to the throne, first pushed by Ptolemy VIII and then murdered with the help of Antioch VIII ‘Grypos’; and Hyrkanos I was the king and high priest of the Jewish kingdom, a barbarian re against the Hellenes. Not more then than intriguers squandering Alexander’s legacy. A fourth one – a striking personality like Alexander – should have been sent by the Gods. But these, through Zeus, bemoan his immortal horses in ‘The horses of Achilles’: ‘What are you doing down there, among woebegone humanity, the plaything of fate?’ Fate, curtailing every human endeavour, is a theme that dominates Cavafy’s poetry. It is spinned out in the magnificent ‘When the watchmen saw the light’.

But Cavafy’s commentators should have been warned when they hold that ‘the vision of the Ancients on the relation between man and fate’ is at stake here (Yourcenar). Did we not hear from Cavafy’s own mouth that only ‘sluggish Asians’ subdue to ‘blind mute destiny'? Cavafy is not at all concerned with fate as such. In ‘The Trojans’ (p. 14) the spade is called a spade:

However, our fall is certain. Above,

On the walls, the dirge has already begun.

And, on a closer look, it also becomes apparent what kind of fall is meant: the dethroning of kings and emperors through their sons or competitors - their ’brothers’. This is the case in ‘The Ides of March’, the two poems dedicated to Nero (‘Footsteps’ and ‘Nero’s Term’), where the crowned heads are trying to escape their fate. Others do not fall blindly into the trap: as in the beautiful pair of poems ‘King Demetrios’ and ‘Manuel Komnenos’. They have their answer ready: they willingly exchange the king’s mantle for the monk’s habit. Thus, via history and fate, we leave the impersonal world behind us and find ourselves back in the personal sphere: from fate, via decline and fall, to parricide. We will develop this theme below. Here, we concentrate on the answer given by those who are not ‘blind and stupid’. In ‘As much as you can’ Cavafy praises a Schopenhauerian distancing from the goings-on. In ‘Satrapy’ it is recommended that man – and especially the poet – should resign the throne. In ‘Dionysos and his Crew’ Cavafy heavily sneers at the artist that regards his success as a mere leg up to a political career. And in the masterly ‘Che fece..; il gran rifiuto’ he has it poignantly:

To certain people there comes a day

when they must say the great Yes or the great No.

He who has the Yes ready within him

reveals himself at once, and saying it he crosses over

to the path of honour and his own conviction.

He who refuses does not repent. Should he be asked again,

he would say No again. And yet that No –

the right No – crushes him for the rest of his life.

The underlying formula sounds: he who does not want to be dropped, drops. Or, to phrase it with Anthony in ‘The God forsakes Anthony’:

‘Bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing

To bid farewell what leaves you behind…

YES

No work, merely a job. Why, then, children? So, without country, in a world where it only matters to save the skin of one’s teeth: why marry and procreate? One of Cavafy’s brothers became a homosexual and three more declined marriage. Not otherwise did Cavafy fare. In the very midnight of Hellenism reduced to bare survival, he takes up the position of the last of the Alexandrians: as an ephebus amidst the Christian contempt for the flesh. It must have been a thorn in his flesh that in his dearly loved Alexandria, the last refuge of Hellenism, the very kernel of Greek civilisation was belied: the cult of the young boy. Thus, in ‘Days of 1909, 1910, 1911’ he bemoans the fate of an ephebus, squandering his life in a forge:

I ask myself if in the days of antiquity

glorious Alexandria possessed a more superb-looking youth,

a lad more perfect than he – who had been wasted:

Of course, no statue or painting was ever done of him;

cast into the filthy old ironmonger’s,

quickly, by heavy labour,

and by common debauchery, so wretched, he was destroyed.

Far more appealing than an inglorious job in an inglorious world is the share of the beautiful body: glory, such as the one enjoyed by the young man who, in ‘Favour of Alexander Balas’, boasts:

Antioch belongs to me,

I am the young man most glorified

I am Balas’s weakness, his adored one.

In ‘From the school of the renowned Philosopher’, Cavafy describes another young man, educated as a philosopher, disillusioned as a politician and averse to a career in the church, who, for a long ten years, was endowed with a ‘rarely handsome face’ and ‘delighted in the divine gift’, only to finally be obliged to devote himself to philosophy again, and even to return to politics.

Hence: no offspring, but rebirth. As an ephebus!

ALEXANDRIA RESURRECTED

And also his personal rebirth expands into a world historic perspective. In ‘Hidden Things’ Cavafy hopes:

Later, in the more perfect society,

surely some other person created like me

will appear and act freely.

The heralds of such ‘more perfect society’ amidst the community of orthodox Christians are the hidden chambers in Alexandria and other metropolises of the former empire of Alexander, where the sons of all barbarian nations abandon themselves to Hellenism. Hellenism, after having survived a first time in Christendom, has, in a second phase, to be reborn as the community of ephebi, albeit provisionally in the catacombs of a hostile world: the new Alexandria rising up out of the ruins of the lost city.

Also this world historic perspective is a magnification of Cavafy’s personal development. Initially, his utopia takes a negative shape in the youth poem ‘Terror’, where the moribund Cavafy aches:

‘nameless Creatures and Things

start to walk around me

and their fleshless feet run into my room

and they circle around my bed to see me –

and they look at me as if they know me,

as if they guffaw mutely that now they frighten me’.

Once the call responded, he wants to awake others in his turn. In ‘Of the Hebrews’ it is said of the same Jewish boy that wanted to become ‘of the holy Hebrews, the son’:

But he did not stay such a man at all.

The Hedonism and the Arts of Alexandria

kept him their devoted child.

And also in ‘Orophernes’, an Asian Cappacodocian, educated in Ionia, cannot resist the temptations of Apollo:

In his heart, always an Asiatic;

but in his manners and in his speech Greek,

adorned in turquoise, in Greek dress,

his body scented wit attar of jasmine,

and of the handsome Ionian boys,

he is the handsomest, the most ideal

The community of ephebi turns out to be the sole place where Alexander’s ‘varied action of thoughtful adaptations’ (In the year 200 B.C.) is still at work. Even when the new koinè of beautiful bodies is not for tomorrow. In ‘Myres: Alexandria, A.D. 340’, Cavafy has to conclude with bitterness how the dead body of a beloved member of the community of ephebi is claimed by the Christians:

and I thought how I would see him no more

at our fine, immodest all-night revels

enjoying himself, and laughing, and reciting verses

with his perfect sense of Greek rhythm…

(…)

And suddenly a queer impression

seized me. I had the vague feeling

that Myres was leaving my side;

I felt that he was united, a Christian,

with his own people, and I was becoming

a stranger, a total stranger…

It testifies to a remarkable misapprehension of Cavafy’s work to bluntly put that he seeks refuge in the past. For Cavafy, just like for Heidegger, the past is merely an alibi. His real aim is to establish a midnight of world history: the inglorious twilight of Hellenism. The military conquest of Alexander resuscitates as the proselytism of the ephebus.

NAILED TO THE CROSS OF BEAUTY

unheimliches

In expectance of the advent of the ‘perfect world’, also the community of the ephebi produces its martyrs. We are not alluding to the scorning of homosexuals, but to something far more fundamental.

In fact, it is remarkable that over most of Cavafy’s erotic poems is hovering the spectre of death. In some of them, it is nearly concealed behind sheer absence: the lover is going away (‘Before time changes them’) or does not return (‘The 25th year of his life’). But in other poems the beloved body is dead: they are – following the example of Hellenistic epitaphs - real ‘tombeaus’ for the deceased lover. The titles speak for themselves: ‘The Grave of Eurion’, ‘Tomb of Iases’, ‘In the Month of Athyr’, ‘The Tomb of Lanes’ and the already quoted ‘Myres: Alexandria, A.D. 340’. Still other poems are about the dying body itself: ‘Kleitos’ Illness’ and ‘Cimon, son of Learches’. And behind this looms up the body mutilated in battle: ‘the Funeral of Sarpedon’, ‘An Artisan of Wine-mixing Bowls’. The erotic charge of which is nearly concealed in ‘In a Town of Osroene’ where the wounded Rhemon is laid on a bed: 'through the window which we left wide open/ the moon lighted his handsome body on the bed’; in ‘The bandaged Shoulder’ where the lover licks the wound of his beloved, not to mention the convulsions of the hanged ephebus in ’June 27, 1906, 2:00 p.m.’:

And when they walked him up the gallows steps

and they passed the rope over the seventeen-

year-old innocent youth and strangled him,

and the youthful, handsome formed body

was piteously suspended in space,

with the sobs of his dark anguish…

All this involuntarily made me think of the sculptor Parrhasios, who had a slave martyred in order to realistically portray his suffering in the stone.

This moment in Cavafy’s poetry is left undiscussed. At best, it is recognised as a stylistic attempt to link up with Hellenistic epigrams. It is nevertheless the key to a real understanding of Cavafy’s approach of the body beautiful. It is only because he wants the ephebi to resurrect as an image in the world of art, that Cavafy destines them to death. Sometimes, the image is merely a reminiscence: in ‘Far Off’ or ‘Before Time changes them’, where the separation after the apex of their relation spares them the pain of having to witness how time does change them. In ‘Voices’ it is voices:

Ideal and dearly beloved voices

Of those who are dead, or of those

Who are lost to us like the dead.

But in ‘The Funeral of Sarpedon’ it is the tangible body, laid out by Apollo in person:

Phoebus lifts up the corpse of the hero with respect

and in sorrow and carries it to the river.

He washes him of all the dust and blood;

binds the frightening wounds not leaving

a single trace to show; pours ambrosial

perfumes over him; dresses him

in magnificent Olympian robes.

He whitens his skin; and with a pearl-studded comb

he combs out his jet-black hair.

He straightens and lays out his beautiful limbs.

Then, the laid out corpse of Sarpedon is brought to Lycia by Hypnos and Thanatos, where sculptors contrive the tomb and the stone. The ritual of laying out is telescoped in ‘The Grave of Eurion’, where the corpse is buried in an artful monument, covered with violets and lilies, and in ‘Beautiful Flowers and white that became him well’:

On his very cheap coffin, he placed flowers,

beautiful flowers and white that became him well,

that became his beauty and his twenty-two years

Or in ‘Desire’:

Like the beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old

and the shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,

with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet –

More durable than laying it out is catching the body beautiful in an image, as in ‘The Tomb of Lanes’, ‘Picture of a 23-year-old Youth’, ‘For Ammonis’, ‘An Artisan of wine-mixing Bowls’, ‘On Painting’, or on a coin in ‘Orophernes’:

He who here upon this tetradrachm

has left a charm of his exquisite youth,

a light form his poetic beauty,

an aesthetic memory of an Ionian boy,

he is Orophernes, son of Ariarathes’

But only as flesh transformed into word, as a poem – more precisely: as an epitaph – does the transient body beautiful partake in eternal life: ‘Tomb of Iases', ‘Cimon, son of Learches’, ‘Caesarion’ and ‘Passage’.

SURVIVING IMMORTALITY

All this has to be understood against the background of the harsh fate that is fallen to mankind – a fate if possible harsher still than to be obliged to live in a declining world where every human endeavour is doomed to failure: that man is mortal and susceptible to ageing and death. Again and again, Cavafy evokes the utter distress of this fate: in ‘Melancholy of Jason’, ‘An old Man’ and above all in ‘The souls of old men’:

In their bodies wasted and aged

sit the souls of old men.

How grievous are the poor things

and how bored with the miserable life they endure.

How they tremble lest they lose it and how they dote on it

the confounded and contradictory

souls, that sit – comicotragical –

in their aged worn-out hides.

Decay and death in a world doomed to fall weigh the more heavy, since the body first bloomed in Apollonian beauty. And that sheds a new light on Cavafy’s obsession with the beauty of his young friends: only death at the apogee of life can save the body from its inexorable decay, especially when it is laid out in all its magnificence and transformed into an image.

But Cavafy would not be Cavafy, were he not to remind us of the fact that even images do not last forever. In ‘From the Drawer’ the lover has to content himself with a damaged photograph. And even the word is susceptible to decay: in ‘In the Month of Athyr’ are rendered the nearly readable words of an ancient epitaph carved in stone:

Among the worn-away pieces I see ‘Hi(m)… Alexandrian’.

Then there are three lines that are quite mutilated:

But I make out a few words – as ‘our te(a)rs’, ‘sorrow’,

then again ‘tears’ and ‘w(e) his (f)riends mourn’

Such silent reproach on the word is inspired by the awareness that surviving as an image is deceptive. The desire to be transformed in an image at the apogee of life, is merely the afterglow of the desire to never die at all, and, consequently: to never have been born - to be immortal, like the Gods. Such desire resounds loudly in ‘The horses of Achilles’, where Zeus’ immortal horses, at the sight of Patroclos’ corpse ‘went on shedding their tears/ for the never-ending calamity of death’.

But since we mortals are begotten, death is our inescapable destiny. He who was not so lucky to die in the prime of his life, cannot but survive his own beauty in a decaying body. Many a man tries to escape such fate through begetting a child, so that out of decay new life is born. As opposed to the ‘distressed souls in their worn-out skin’: the radiating infant, in whose eyes many a mortal descries immortality. Only to mention Hölderlin in ‘Hyperions Schicksalslied’:

Schicksallos, wie der schlafende

Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen;

Keusch bewahrt

In bescheidener Knospe,

Blühet ewig

Ihnen der Geist,

Und die seligen Augen

Blicken in stiller

Ewiger Klarheit.

But Cavafy’s ephebi are not prepared to hand over their beauty to an infant. They are not willing to become fathers. Suffice it that they were born from a mother’s womb! No begetters in Cavafy’s world, as little as in the New Testament. Unbegotten, the ephebi are brought into the world by their mothers, who cherish the bud until it blooms as an ephebus. If he dies or falls in battle before reproducing, only his mother mourns his death – albeit that the loss of their sons saves them their loss to a strange woman. In ‘Supplication’ a mother ‘prays and implores’ the return of her son. In ‘June 27, 1906, 2:00 P.M.’ ‘the mother-martyr rolled on the ground’. In ‘Infidelity’ it is Thetis that ‘tore off her purple garments‘ and ‘kept on tearing off and casting/ upon the ground her bracelets and rings’. No fathers to be seen near the corpse of their sons. Also that reminds of the death of Christ, mourned by his mother at the foot of the cross. ‘Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?’

That should not surprise us. Certainly, at first glance, the fratricidal ephebi seem to dig their own graves: when Patroclos is killed, Cavafy does not blame the Gods. But in other poems the Gods are positively hold responsible for the death of the ephebi – their sons! Zeus stands around watching Patroclos slaying his son (‘The Funeral of Sarpedon’), and so does Apollo when Achilles is killed, although he promised him a long life (‘The horses of Achilles'). In the historical dimension, Herod has his son Aristoboulus killed (‘Aristoboulus’). And the same fate fell on the ‘little caesar’ Caesarion (‘Caesarion'). Behind the struggling ephebi – and by extension behind the ‘Law’ to which Zeus appeals, ‘fate’ that tears apart and malady that slays – looms up the magnified father who has destined his sons to death. Or rather: the primeval father Kronos, who strangles his nearly born sons – Hölderlin's celestial infants – in an effort to prevent them from dethroning him. With him, the device no longer sounds: ‘Bid farewell whoever abandons you’, but, to the bottom: ‘Kill or be killed!'

Conversely, no sons killing their fathers are to be found in Cavafy’s oeuvre; only in ‘Priest at the Serapeum’ do we see a mourning son standing at his father’s grave . But it brims over with dethroned kings – to begin with the symbolic betrayal of the immortal Alexander. We already hinted at Caesar (‘The Ides of Mach’), Nero (‘Footsteps’ and ‘Nero’s Term’) King Demetrios en Manuel Komnenos who had to exchange the king’s mantle for the monk’s habit. But there are also Demaratos (‘A Byzantine Noble in Exile writing verses), and so many others.

Would they not have fared better, had they killed their sons well in advance? But smarter still than Kronos is the ephebus: the grown up son that escapes his impending dethroning by altogether resigning from becoming a father and ascending the throne! Rather than murdered or dethroned, he wants to be loved! For his sole beauty's sake!

And who else would love him more than his mirror image? In how many poems are the lovers not peers? This is often explicitly mentioned in the title: ‘Two young men 23 to 24’ and ‘Picture of a 23-year-old youth painted by his friend of the same age, an amateur’. In ‘According to ancient Formula’s of Grecosyrian magi ‘, the lover wants to discover the magic potion that ‘for a day… or even for an hour,/ can evoke me my twenty-three years;/ can evoke again for me my friend when he was twenty-two – his beauty, his love?’ In ‘Cimon, son of Learches’ the lovers not only are peers, but, better still: ‘We grew up together, as close as two brothers’. And in ‘The Mirror in the Hall’ the affinity implodes to identity:

But this time the old mirror was delighted,

and it felt proud that it had received into itself

for a few moments an image of flawless beauty.

What does so inexorably propel the ephebus to his mirror image? The veils around this secret begin to fall when it dawns on us that, precisely through resigning from becoming father and king – by evading womb and throne – the ephebus has become more vulnerable than ever. Is there anything more transient than the very beauty that was meant to protect him from his ‘fate’? Inexorably, the beauty of the ageing ephebus will be eclipsed by the coming of age of a another young man. Albeit it not his son, but just a boy, begotten by a strange father in a strange womb. And to escape even from this danger, there is only one way out: to beget yourself in the womb of your own mother - being reborn by being your own father. Even when you would then recoil in horror from your mother’s womb and your role as a father. And even when an old soul would then still remain in a worn-out skin. What would it badly like to shake off such skin and move into that newborn body!

No solace, hence, in the sublunar world!

THE REALM OF ART

But let us read again the following verses from ‘The Funeral of Sarpedon’:

His dearly loved child – whom he had left

to perish; for such was the Law –

at least he will honour him in death.

Does not such intention of the guilty Zeus seem to be the prologue to Cavafy’s triumph in ‘Very seldom’’:

He is an old man. Worn out and stooped,

maimed by the years, and by abuses,

with slow step he crosses the narrow street,

and yet as he enters his door to hide

his wretchedness and his old age, he meditates

on the share he still has of youth.

Now young people recite his verses.

In their lively eyes his fancies pass.

Their sound, voluptuous minds,

their shapely, firm flesh

are stirred by his expression of beauty.

Only the poet that saves the beautiful but deceased bodies in the image still ‘has his share of youth’. A double share even. On the one hand, the young men speak his words – his ghost lays off its worn-out skin and is reborn in a fresh body. And in this new body it conjures up the image of the beloved ephebus, saved from decay through his poetry. That very image ignites passion in the inhabited body, so that, in ‘Despair’ it seeks

on the lips of every new lover

the lips of his beloved; in the embrace

of every new lover he seeks to be deluded

that he is the same lad, that it is to him he is yielding.

Eventually, also the image resurrected from the death finds a new body. Together, the poet and his creation stay forever young in ever new young bodies.

Thus is founded and perpetuated the risen Alexandria. Without detour around the incestuous womb – which at the same time would degrade to fatherhood – the divine couple hops from young body to young body. The deceased body of the beloved one and the dying body of the poet that survived it, are merely a catalyst in the whole process. No generations here, no sons and fathers, let alone men and women: only clones with words as DNA.

The formula has proven itself ever since Plato. It suffices to read the chapter ‘An Alexandria about an Alexandrian’in Warren and Molegraaf’s book ‘I went to the secret chambers’ to realise how this is done in concreto.

JERUSALEM OR ALEXANDRIA

Even when already in Plato’s time the soul longed for its release from the prison of the body, Cavafy’s resurrection of the body in the image cannot but reminds us of Christ in the first place. Of Jesus, the beautiful young man that had to die nearly thirty three years old. Of Jesus ascending to heaven with body and soul alike, leaving his mother behind in tears. Of Jesus, that will implement the resurrection of the flesh in the end of times.

But only unwillingly did Cavafy owe something to a Christendom that despised the Hellenistic values. A pity that with Plato – or rather with Diotima – the cult of the body is merely a phase in the ascendance towards the immaterial world of the Ideas. Cavafy felt far more affinity for a return to the material word, as it is understood in God’s becoming a man and the resurrection of the flesh. That is why he concocted out of the scarce reports on the life of Apollonius of Tyana – a contemporary of Christ – a kind o Greek Messiah. Not a son of David, but of Alexander! Through many a country, Apllonius of Tyana wandered as a prophet and a miracle worker and had a large following. About his gospel not much is known. ‘Apollonius of Tyana in Rhodes’ is about a ‘vulgar statue of clay’ in a huge temple as opposed to a ‘statue made of ivory and gold’ in a modest one. In ‘But wise men perceive approaching thins’ it is said:

People know what is happening now.

The gods know things of the future,

the entire and sole possessors of all the lights.

Of the things in the future, wise men perceive

approaching events.

And from ‘Hidden Things’ we already know what kinds of things are forthcoming there:

Later, in the more perfect society,

surely some other person created like me

will appear and act freely.

Whereas Christ, just like Cavafy’s ephebi, died in the prime of his life and ascended to heaven, Apollonius of Tyana reached a ripe old age, just like Cavafy himself. But – and this again he has in common with Christ – it is not sure whether he really died: he might come back, and, again like Christ, he has been seen in diverse places before his ascension. In ‘If dead indeed’, Cavafy writes in that unequalled way of phrasing of his:

Some spread the rumour that he died at Ephesus.

But Damis did not record it; Damis wrote nothing on the death of Apollonius.

Others said he vanished at Lindus.

Or perhaps that other story

is true, that he was risen in Crete,

at the ancient shrine of Dictynna. –

But still we have his miraculous,

his supernatural apparition

to a young student at Tyana. –

Perhaps the time has not come for him to return

that he may be seen once more in the world;

or transfigured, perhaps, he goes about

among us incognito. – But he will reappear,

as he used to be, teaching the right; and then of course

he will restore the worship of our gods,

and our elegant Grecian ceremonies.

One of those ‘supernatural apparitions’ wherein he ‘goes about among us incognito’ is described in ‘One of their Gods’:

When one of Them passed through Seleucia’s

market place, toward the hour when night comes on,

in the guise of a tall and perfectly handsome youth,

with the joy of incorruptibility in his eyes,

with his black, heavily perfumed hair…

they would wonder which of Them he might be,

and for what questionable enjoyment,

he had descended to the streets of Seleucia

from those Adored, Most Venerable Halls.

And also therein Apollonius of Tyana resembles Cavafy. He survives his immortality in his worn-out skin, but does not die really. Here and there he comes to life again on young lips murmuring his poems, teaching them ‘the right’.

All those beautiful mother’s sons, destined to death by fathers that let them ascend to heaven only as a corpse … The truth about Cavafy’s filling in of Apollonius of Tyana is that the body of Jesus Christ has from the beginning been a magnet that lays bare the inmost secrets of the human soul. And that thereby, not unlike the Byzantine priests and ‘the solemn rhythm of their movements’, has been the vehicle of many an ancient – primeval, all-human – sensitivity. This is poignantly rendered in ‘A great Procession of Priests and Laymen’:

At the head of the impressive, great procession,

A handsome young man, dressed all in white, carries

In hands uplifted the Cross,

The power of our hope, the Holy Cross.

ALEXANDROS SINGOPOULOS

In the meantime, the rumour goes that Alexander Singopoulos, Cavafy’s darling and heir, would haven been his very son (Warren and Molegraaf, p. 63). True or not, this rumour conforms to the spirit that hovers over Cavafy’s poems – even when the intervention of the world of art is thus put in brackets. The suggestion of the double forbidden ‘homosexual incest’ is so strong, that even the way in which it is denied testifies to the opposite. Warren, who has his difficulties with Cavafy’s possible heterosexual bit on the side with a seamstress, thinks that the apparent similarity between Cavafy and Singopoulos means nothing, because, according to his experience ‘there are many Alexandrians whose appearance reminds of Cavafy’ (p. 68). Which then can only be due to the inbreeding of the Alexandrians in a community doomed to extinction. Inbreeding has always been a euphemism for incest...

Perhaps, Cavafy did only sense half of the impending. The desire to be a sun that never dawns and and never sets, is only one of the many manifestations of the retrograde desire, that tries to escape from dying through being reborn again and again – and keeps silent about the fact that the sun in the zenith is always another one. At night, inconspicuously, it glides under the earth. Incest, in its turn, is only one of the figures of the self-love of Hölderlins infant: of man that would so dearly want to be unbegotten and immortal.

Which does not prevent that Cavafy lends us a magnificent view on man’s doings there beneath, on the earth’s surface. Hence this text, with great devotion written for an artist who really deserves this name.

© Stefan Beyst, midsummer 2002.

* the titles are cited from the Rae Dalven translation of Cavafy's poems.

CONSULTED TEXTS:

AUDEN, Wyston Hugh: ‘The Complete poems of Cavafy. Expanded Edition. Translation by Rae Dalven. With an introduction by W.H. Auden, New York /London, 1976.

BLANKEN: ‘K.P. Kavafis. Verzamelde gedichten. Vertaald en ingeleid door G.H.Blanken, Atheneum –Polak&Van Gennep, Amsterdam 1994

BRODSKY, Joseph: ‘Less than one’; Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York 1986.

WARREN, Hans en MOLEGRAAF, Mario: ‘Ik ging naar de geheime Kamers’, Bert Bakker, Amsterdam 1987.

YOURCENAR, Marguerite: ‘Présentation Critique de Constantine Cavafy 1863-1933, suivi d’une traduction intégrale de ses poèmes par Marguerite Yourcenar et Constantine Dimaras’, Gallimard, Paris 1958.

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AND/OR ... VISIT THE FOLLOWING WEBPAGE TO LEARN ... 134 pages !

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Constantine P. Cavafy - poems - [Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn]

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AND/OR ... VISIT THE FOLLOWING WEBPAGE ... containing translations of the original poems

in English.

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Constantine P. Cavafy Poems (English)

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C. P. CAVAFY IN TOKYO animated project

The Project Exhibition Events Artists Contributors Sketches Animations

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The Project

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) the ART/EUROPEAN ANIMATION CENTER and the MUSASHINO ART UNIVERSITY, Tokyo, are organising an animated student project inspired by the Cavafy’s poetry.

The project is titled C.P. CAVAFY IN TOKYO and includes the results of the workshop that had been in Musashino Art University on previous school year.

The project is under the Auspices of the Embassy of Japan in Greece.

Twenty-one students and his professor Mr SATO Dino are worked on C. P. Cavafy’s poetry, making 21 short animated movies.

The exhibition includes the sketches, the poems and the short animated movies.

This exhibition will be held in BOO! Cafe bar (21, Sarri str., Athens) from 7th until 17th of December 2013 and will be also exposed on next March (13-19, 2014) during the 9th International Animation Festival of Athens (9th Athens ANIMFEST 2014), that be held in Greek Film Archive (48, Iera Odos str., Athens)

VENUE: BOO! Café-bar, 21, Sarri str., Athens, Greece

DATES: December 7-17, 2013

INAUGURATION: Saturday, December 7, 2013, at 20:00 hs

OPEN HOURS: All days open (07:00-24:00)

INFORMATION: 0030 210 32 55 542

Student Workshop of the Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan Head of the workshop: SATO Dino September 2013.

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The List of the animated movies based on C. P. Cavafy’s poetry

1. LONG AGO, 1914, Directed by ANDOU Syouko
2. A PRINCE FROM WESTERN LIBYA, 1928, Directed by ITO Jinichi
3. ITHAKA, 1911, Directed by IWATSUBO Rio
4. IN THE STREET, 1916, Directed by KATO Kai
5. IN AN OLD BOOK, 1922, Directed by KATO Mayu
6. MONOTONY, 1908, Directed by KAWASAKI Takamura
7. SALOME, 1896, Directed by MATSUMURA Sae
8. IN ALEXANDRIA, 31 b.C., 1924, Directed by MATSUOKA Naoki
9. MORNING SEA, 1915, Directed by NAKAZATO Yuki
10. GRAY, 1917, Directed by NARITA Haruka
11. CANDLES, 1899, Directed by ONISHI Chihiro
12. WALLS, 1896, Directed by SHIBATA Oju
13. CANDLES, 1899, Directed by SHIBATA Yuuna
14. CHALDEAN IMAGE, 1896, Directed by SHIRATORI Sawa
15. SIPPING TEA (Based on the poem An Old Man, 1897) Directed by SUZUKI Kenta
16. HALATION, Directed by SUZUKI Miyuu
17. IONIC, 1911, Directed by TOMIYA Miki
18. THE FOOTSTEPS, 1909, Directed by TSURUTA Tastunori
19. NERO’S DEADLINE, 1918, Directed by WAKAI Nanami
20. ΤΗΕ ENEMIES, 1900, Directed by WATABE Yuki
21. LONG AGO, 1914, Directed by YAMAGUCHI Syuzo
22. AND I LOUNGED AND LAY ON THEIR BEDS, 1915, Directed by SATO Dino

We are happy that the young generation of Japan responded with interest and warmths to our call about Cavafy project.

C. P. Cavafy never went in Tokyo, but his fame and poetry did!

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Before the workshop By Dino SATO, head of the workshop at the Musashino Art University, Tokyo This project is the workshop that young Japanese students in Musashino Art University make short animations through Cavafy’s poem. At that time my students and I didn’t know C. P. Cavafy. Many students didn’t know about Greek history very much. First I offered them to search famous ancient Greeks and Romans. They learned ancient Greek and Roman through Cavafy's poem. Then they chose one Cavafy’s poem, and made sketches, storyboards and animations. This project includes the common or difference between Greek and Japan. One student said that ancient Greek have many gods is same as Japan too. How will young Japanese students of today understand Cavafy’s poem about 100 years ago? And how will Greeks of today understand the animations? I think this exchanges of ideas between two countries are very important. Students made better animation works than usual according to display abroad too. But these animations are unskillful or poor representations. I do want to say for my students' prides. These are their first animation. I think they will make better animations soon. I am interested that the origin of their animation are from Cavafy’s poems. In Japan, our works will also show November 18-22th at Musashino Art University. After the workshop Here are 21 animations that students in Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan tried to interpret Cavafy's poems. What can I read from these works? Cavafy's poems have some features. Especially I was interested in sexual expressions strongly. When the workshop started, I expected how the students approached sexual poems. But they avoided expressing sexual expressions. Or no one chose a sexual poem. A sensual boy is written in both poems, "In the Street" and "In an Old Book". Two students chose the poems as a theme. But the both students kept away from sexual words. And they draw as a healthy and innocent boy. The director of "Halation" didn't agree to Cavafy's sexual descriptions. She portrayed her feelings about his poetry, not about each poem. Why did students avoid sexual expressions? In my opinion, this workshop was a study assignment as one of reasons. We Japanese aren’t used to facing sexual expressions in a class. The word "sex" in a class is almost a sexual reproduction as a science. In a literature class too, we have read a love story, or have met the word of "morher's bosom" in a textbook. Our sexual expressions are that level in a class. We have not read a poem as Cavafy's. There may be some opposition we can also regard ancient Greek statues or Renaissance paintings as a one of sexual expression in Japan. This time I heard that Cavafy's poem is very popular in Greece. I noticed that Greek culture is different from Japanese one again. Durex surveyed about the frequency of sex in 41 countries. The frequency of sex in Japan was only 45 times a year. But In Greek, that was 138 times a year. Greek's frequency was the 1st in 41 countries on the other hand Japan was the lowest. I can say the result of this workshop is related to this survey report. (Durex, 2005 Global Sex Survey Report - “Frequency of Sex”) Japanese are apt to hide about sex. So we are embarrassed to express sexuality. And we often regard sexual expressions as inferior, like a porno. Our law prohibits displaying the sex organs in public, even arts and photographs. Law can’t display pornographic woodblock printings about 200 years ago, as well known as erotic Ukiyo-e, unhesitatingly even now. To speak of extremes, I think sexual expressions are divided into two categories, medical and porno, in present Japan. The students tend to avoid sexual expressions against such background. There is not a nudist beach in Japan. Nudism isn't popular too. I think that is very symbolic. I was able to consider about sexual expressions in depth at this time, and I was very interested in the gradation of sexual expression. And almost the students in my class will take a commercial design after graduation. Because the commercial design dislike uncomfortable or too much sexual expressions. So I think the students dislike explicit expressions. I wonder if we narrow the range of our expressions by ourselves with unconsciousness. This workshop had me notice many things. And it is important to think freely without restraints. I want to make the students to break a stereotyped way of thinking. I appreciate to Cavafy and ART / European Animation Center that give us the chance.

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