Constantine P. Cavafy (1863 – 1933)
Greek poet who is often ranked among most important literary figures of the 20th century.
Immoral to a degree — and probably more than a degree —
they certainly were. But they had the satisfaction that their life
was the notorious life of Antioch,
delectably sensual, in absolute good taste.
And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition,
triumphant, brilliant in every way,
celebrated on all sides, glorified
incomparable, we emerged:
the great new Hellenic world.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it is a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard
the utterance of the Delphic Oracle:
“Beware the age of seventy-three.”
Plenty of time to enjoy himself still.
He’s thirty. The deadline
the god has given him is quite enough
to cope with future dangers.
Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds you lay on,
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices.
Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing —
from these alone will I be understood.
His friends weren’t Christians; that much was certain.
But even so they couldn’t play
as he could (brought up a Christian)
with a new religious system,
ludicrous in both theory and application.
They were, after all, Greeks. Nothing in excess, Augustus.
Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Someone else indispensable and unique and great
can always be found at a moment's notice.
He wrote consistently but almost never published through traditional means. There is nothing more detrimental to art, he maintained, than succumbing to “how the public thinks and what it likes and what it will buy.” ... Whether Cavafy is describing an ancient political intrigue or an erotic encounter that occurred last week, his topic is the passage of time. ... Earlier translators have, to varying degrees, rightly emphasized the prosaic flatness of Cavafy’s language; the flatness is crucial to the emotional power of the poems, since it prevents their irony from seeming caustic, their longing from seeming nostalgic.
Don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive — don't mourn them uselessly:
as one long prepared, and full of courage,
say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.
When setting out upon your way to Ithaca,
wish always that your course be long,
full of adventure, full of lore.
Try to keep them, poet,
those erotic visions of yours,
however few of them there are that can be stilled.
Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.
The days of the future stand in front of us
Like a line of candles all alight —
Golden and warm and lively little candles.
The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been;
the attraction between them had gradually diminished,
the attraction had diminished a great deal.
But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted.
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The empire is delivered at last.
The vile, the appalling Julian
reigns no longer.
He has the strength (and of course the limitations) of the recluse, who, though not afraid of the world, always stands at a slight angle to it.