December 13th, 2006
Cavafy
Oh….!
Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet —
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)
December 14th, 2006 at 4:56 am
Ah, Cavafy and his brilliantly expressed existential longing. He has always been one of my favorite poets. I always go back and periodically visit his poem Ithaca like it is an old friend.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
Wow. Just…wow…
I”d never heard of this man before, or if I had, it didn’t take because I never read any of it until last night, when I was following some random links in the web. Somehow I got onto David Ehrenstein’s blog, and this post, where he worries about Egyptian filmmaker Youseff Chahine in the current anti-gay climate sweeping Egypt. At the end of the post he offers up two passages from Cavafy and a link to the others and I was mesmerized. I had to go look. That was where I found the one I posted. Let’s hear it for the web.
My God. Words have never touched me in that place. Never. Why haven’t I heard of Cavafy before now? Oh…never mind. I know. Same reason they used to change the pronouns in translations of certain ancient Greek love poems, before they let the students see them.
December 14th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I fell in love with Cavafy in college but only found out years later that he was gay. Same with Langston Hughes and Tchaikovsky. Something in their work spoke deeply to me and I think in large part it was their queerness.