April 29: The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy was born on this
day in 1863, and he died on this day in 1933. A career civil servant, Cavafy
wrote only some 150 poems, most of these almost unknown beyond his circle of
friends and writers in Alexandria, Egypt. E. M. Forster, who was part of that
circle for a time, introduced Cavafy to the world in a 1919 essay which
famously described him as a "Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing
absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe":
Yes, it
is Mr. Cavafy, and he is going either from his flat to the office, or from the
office to the flat. If the former, he vanishes when seen, with a slight gesture
of despair. If the latter, he may be prevailed upon to begin a sentence—an
immense complicated yet shapely sentence, full of parentheses that never get
mixed and of reservations that really do reserve; a sentence that moves with
logic to its foreseen end, yet to an end that is always more vivid and
thrilling than one foresaw…. It deals with the tricky behaviour of the Emperor
Alexius Comnenus in 1096, or with olives, their possibilities and price, or
with the fortunes of friends, or George Eliot, or the dialects of the interior
of Asia Minor.
Wendy
Moffat's A Great Unrecorded History: A
New Life of E. M. Forster (2010) emphasizes the impact of Cavafy's unusual
personality and lifestyle: "He was palpably artificial, and palpably
homosexual. And he was utterly intoxicating to Forster." W. H. Auden, also
a fan, helped to spread Cavafy's reputation in the West by introducing one of
the first English editons of his Complete
Poems. Cavafy found new readers recently when Leonard Cohen turned his poem
"The God Abandons Anthony" into "Alexandra's Leaving" (Ten New Songs, 2001); below, excerpts
from both, Cavafy first:
When
suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
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 graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.…
***
Suddenly
the night has grown colder.
Some
deity preparing to depart.
Alexandra
hoisted on his shoulder,
they slip
between the sentries of your heart.
Upheld by
the simplicities of pleasure,
they gain
the light, they formlessly entwine;
and
radiant beyond your widest measure
they fall
among the voices and the wine.
lt's not
a trick, your senses all deceiving,
a fitful
dream the morning will exhaust—
Say
goodbye to Alexandra leaving,
Then say
goodbye to Alexandra lost….
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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