Cavafy Read online

  The Preacher in exhortation sometimes prescribes and at others proscribes, using a tone like that of the speaker in Cavafy’s “Ithaca,” both of them preaching rules for a good life. The Preacher says for instance at Eccl. 9:7: “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved what you do.” Cavafy in his preacher’s voice tells his readers:

  Stop at Phoenician exchanges,

  acquire their fair, worked pieces, and

  diamonds and coral, electrum and ebony,

  and voluptuous scents of every kind,

  voluptuous scents, as many as you can.

  Go to many Egyptian cities.

  Learn and learn from their scholars.

  The Preacher says eat drink and be merry: all else is vanity. Cavafy says try it all and at the end you will come to know the value of what you have done, no matter what you thought when you started. In “Two Young Men” Cavafy does not preach but he does particularize the Preacher’s prescription:

  and when they were through the costly drinks

  and when it was now near four o’clock

  they surrender, happy, to love.

  Throughout Cavafy’s poems, both those he chose to publish in his lifetime and those he did not, “dignity” is a notable characteristic, especially in its sense, “an appreciation of value and its weight.” The word is cognate with Latin dignus, an adjective that labels what is right, appropriate, proper, valued. The Latin sentence non sum dignus means “I am not the appropriate person.” The sense of dignus is expressed in Greek by the adjective axios (ἄξιος) and in the following pages my aim is to show where Cavafy instructs his readers by various means, sometimes by exhortation but at other times indirectly, as to what is proper, what is appropriate and therefore valuable in life.

  Cavafy’s own low evaluation of most worldly things is a positive and rational position, not negative and not cynical, but at the same time not always congruent with his appetites. His assignments of high value are plain to see. Consider “courage” and “wisdom” for example in his two poems about Kratesikleia. They are both unambiguous exaltations of that queen mother, if not of her son. In both poems, Kleomenes, a fierce warrior and noble leader as represented by Plutarch in his Life of Kleomenes, is in thrall to his potent mother. She, Kratesikleia, was to be surrendered to Ptolemy as a hostage, and Kleomenes, party to the agreement from the start, could not bear to open the subject. But she found him out and easily said yes: there was no way she could be demeaned (“In Sparta”).

  Could she know that in due course she and her son’s children would be put to death by a Ptolemy, the children before her eyes? Perhaps not, but in that world, she had to know it was a possibility. Cavafy knew: the closing of “Come O King of the Lacedaemonians,” is pregnant:

  “Changes of fortune apply

  as God provides.” And she went aboard

  proceeding to what “God provides.”

  Her dignity and humanity and self-discipline are of a regal nature, a loftiness of spirit that a whole world might well wish to emulate. Chief among her excellences are “courage” and “wisdom.” Her look down the nose at a parvenu may be a shading taken from contemporary attitudes of society in Alexandria.

  An indirect word of advice closes “Anna Dalassini”: There Alexios Komnenos praises his mother, Anna, for various good qualities and especially because she never felt the need to ask or specify what was hers and what was her son’s. The last line of the poem is a quotation from Anna Komnena’s citation of the bull by which Alexios made his mother in effect empress (Alexiad 3.6): “ ‘mine or yours,’ this cold expression was not said.” The question, “What’s mine and what’s not mine” has a long philosophical lineage antedating Alexios by a thousand years and more: Socrates in Plato’s Republic 462c wonders if an integral state would have as citizens all who agreed on “what is mine” and “what is not mine,” while Aristotle questioned the integrity of the sense of “all” in such a formulation (Politics 1261 b 18). Alexios found his answer in total submission. Cavafy approves.

  Anna Dalassini was strong, courageous and wise, and her son, Alexios, yearned to have her take command. So at least Anna Komnena represents their relationship. As you read Cavafy on Kratesikleia and on Anna Dalassini, you might easily turn to thoughts of his mother, Harikleia, widowed mother of seven boys, all of whom she loved and doted on, most perhaps Constantinos, her seventh and last. She called him “Thin One” using English, and he called her “Fat One,” likewise in English. In greatly reduced finances and a correspondingly lower level of living arrangements, she maintained her dignity and a place in Alexandrian society. This is not to say that Kratesikleia and Anna Dalassini were composed as conscious tributes to a particular mother or to motherhood in general, but it is notable that the prominent women in Cavafy’s poems are mothers, and they are sympathetic figures.

  There are in addition to those regal women the grieving mothers: In “Faithless,” Thetis cries in bewilderment at a god’s manifest injustice. Apollo himself had promised her son, Achilles, life, and it was that god who killed him. In “Prayer,” a drowned sailor’s mother prays in vain for his safe return, and in “Aristoboulos,” Alexandra grieves and rages and despairs at the murder of her beautiful son.

  Harikleia died in 1899, by which time she had lost two sons, one to death and one to prolonged absence. A loving son could share her grief as well as grieve for himself and his own loss.

  “Dignity” comprehends the gravity, the importance of propriety. Its enactment requires abnegation over and over again. “Che Fece . . . il Gran Rifiuto” ratifies the decision of a poor soul, thought to be Crispinus, who once was made pope, but who after a few short months renounced that elevation and demoted himself. Dante, in Inferno 3.60 has been led by his guide, Vergil, to the place of punishment. There he recognizes a person whom he judges guilty of cowardice. He describes the man’s travails as follows (here in Longfellow’s translation):

  I looked and I beheld the shade of him

  Who made through cowardice the great refusal.

  Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain

  That this the sect was of caitiff wretches

  Hateful to God and to his enemies.

  These miscreants, who never were alive,

  Were naked and were stung exceedingly

  By gadflies and by hornets that were there.

  These did their faces irrigate with blood,

  Which with their tears commingled at their feet

  By the disgusting worms were gathered up.

  Why did the man say no? Because of cowardice, says Dante. But Cavafy says it is because he had an accurate sense of who he was. He knew himself and what was appropriate for himself. He had to suffer for his choice, but it was the right choice. And so for Cavafy he is a model for courage and wisdom. The evaluation is made clear in the title of the poem: Cavafy deleted from Dante’s formulation the damning judgment, per vilta.

  In “Greek from Old,” the city of Antioch personified boasts of having all the things a city might want:

  Antioch is very proud of her splendid buildings,

  pleasant streets, and all around her

  wonderful countryside and the great numbers

  resident there; she is proud to be the seat

  of glorious kings; proud she has artists

  and wise men and the deeply rich

  and prudent merchants . . .

  Antioch, Cavafy says at the close, is proud beyond all else of being related to Greece. But what exactly is the connection? Argive colonists from Greece founded Ione once upon a time in honor of Io, Inachos’s daughter. But Io is a myth: Zeus fancied her. Hera was jealous. Zeus turned the beautiful girl into a heifer. Hera created a gadfly to drive the poor cow over two continents, until finally she was released and died, possibly somewhere near the Antioch that was to be.This story, not told but introduced as context by the names in the last line, is an ancient illustration of what justice is no
t. It is as well a mythic expression of the psychological lability of pagan gods. One such adventure out from many of Zeus’s forays does not constitute a substantive basis for an ancestral connection. The irony is compounded: Antioch is proud of things that are in sum vanity, and to top that, the thing they are proudest of is a myth.

  Here is an instance of Cavafy’s “pedestal without a statue,” as George Seferis amplified an earlier critic’s metaphor (On the Greek Style, “Cavafy and Eliot” 147–149). The poem also shows an aspect of Cavafy’s vision of Hellenism. These outlying communities in their need will seize what they can. Compare “Philhellene,” “In Church,” “On an Italian Shore,” and “People of Poseidonia.”

  An analogous example is “To Antiochos Epiphanes,” where a young man would gladly offer as thanksgiving for a Macedonian triumph:

  the lion, and the horses, the Pan made of coral,

  the elegant palace, the garden in Tyre,

  and all else you gave me, Antiochos Epiphanes.

  On the bedrock of Cavafy’s evaluation, the boy would give vanities for the Greeks to win a battle. The battle in question, a crushing defeat for Hellenism, was, as Cavafy notes in closing, a “hideous ending.”

  But let us turn to other vanities, to jewels, first those not present in the poem, “Of Colored Glass.” John Kantakouzenos and his bride Irene wore for their coronation at Vlachernai bits and shards of colored glass for jewels. The poem’s speaker finds nothing improper here.

  . . . Nothing

  mean, no disgrace, I would say,

  in these pieces made of colored glass.

  Instead they are like a grievous protest

  against injustice, the wretched destiny

  of the two being crowned.

  They are emblems of what it befit them to have

  of what it was wholly right that they have

  Jewels in Cavafy’s poems elsewhere can signal futility. Think of the two consuls and the praetors in “Waiting for the Barbarians”:

  Why did our two consuls and praetors

  come out today with their red embroidered togas?

  Why the bracelets with so many amethysts

  rings with emeralds that flash and shine?

  They attire themselves for imposing grandeur, to alert their barbarians to their potency. But there are no barbarians.

  Compare “Alexandrian Kings”:

  Caesarion stood in front

  dressed in pink silk

  garland of hyacinths at his breast

  belt a double row of sapphires and amethysts

  shoes tied by white ribbons

  embroidered with rose-colored pearls.

  He was named greater than the little ones.

  He was named King of Kings.

  The children are bejeweled. Jewels are one of the props by which the people are to recognize their royalty. Cavafy presents a fabulous scene: brave titles, grand appointments, and a cheering crowd. Those who make up that crowd, however, know: they don’t believe a word. But it’s a lovely day, and aren’t the figures in the pageant fun to watch.

  and still the Alexandrians ran to the fun

  enthusiastic and cheering

  Greek Egyptian even Hebrew

  enchanted by the beautiful sight

  although Yes, they knew what it was worth,

  what empty words were these kingdoms.

  Cavafy here shows himself to be the historian that he sometimes thought of himself as being. He informs his readers where Herodotus, in an analogous situation, did not. The Greek historian more than two millennia before had wondered (1.60) how on earth Athenians, who were known to be so clever, could ever have fallen for Peisistratus’ trick. Peisistratus had dressed up a big country girl in an Athena costume, put her in a chariot, taught her some moves, and had her proceed through the Attic countryside, urging people to accept Peisistratus on his return from exile. Cavafy’s insight is enlightening, for it lets us see those long ago farmers in the Attic countryside, canny and practical. They assessed what could be done and what could not, and they said yes. They might even have laughed as they did so.

  But to return to that coronation at Vlachernai, Cavafy could be saying,” Since the act of ruling is in itself a vanity, the jewels that advertise it are also a vanity. Why not then false jewels?”

  “The Shop’s” tells of a jeweler who displays some of his wares for sale and keeps safe and secret his own special creations, which are jewels that represent flowers:

  . . . roses made of rubies

  lilies of pearl, violets out of amethysts.

  As a responsible retail merchant, he sells excellent wares, but they are not what he truly loves. His passion, his obsession is for a special tour de force: he takes what is beautiful in nature and turns it into something artificial. A rose, a lily, a violet becomes thereby a stone decoration. Does Cavafy celebrate beauty here? Or does he consign the jeweler’s work to “costume?” Is artifice for Cavafy really superior to nature’s wonders? It is possibly so. When do we ever find him wholly immersed in the beauties of our physical universe?

  Jewels as adornment, while in essence vanity, serve also as costume, and costume can point as signpost to reality. This may happen when Demetrios in “King Demetrios”:

  took off his golden raiment and

  threw his purple shoes away.

  He had been a king, and famous for his gorgeous apparel, and beyond that he had been recognized and hymned a few years before as a god at Athens. But a time came when the Macedonians lost faith, and Demetrios understood what it was appropriate for him to do. Plutarch (Life of Demetrios 44) disparagingly sees him as an actor, leaving the stage. Cavafy, however, approves: Demetrios is not only divesting himself of his kingship, he is relinquishing his “divinity” as well.

  To take up a few more of Cavafy’s costumes, there is the awful cinnamon-colored suit that the boy of “Days of 1908” takes off when he goes for a swim. Naked, he appears beautiful, as he truly is. And in “Picture of a 23 Year Old Young Man Done by a Friend of the Same Age, Amateur,” attire is important enough to start the poem.

  He finished the portrait yesterday noon.

  Now he examines details: he did him in gray

  unbuttoned garb, dark gray,

  no waistcoat, no cravat, but with a pink

  shirt, opened, for something to show

  of the beauty of his breast and his throat.

  Compare the notorious boy in the loges (“At the Theater”): His careful dress is a vital element of his allure, as is that of the love-dazed boy in “On the Street.” There is also the young man who was bought for two suits and some silk handkerchiefs in “Flowers White and Pretty, How Very Right They Were.” The poor boy in “Days of 1909, ’10, and ’11” and rich Orophernes have something in common: the boy’s taste for a nice shirt and necktie and Orophernes’ pleasure in turquoises as adornment signal a bad end in both poems.

  The conventional Seleucid Demetrios in “The Seleucid’s Displeasure” provides another example: he lives by the hypocrisies that he feels have helped him to survive, and so he offers Ptolemy, his fellow kinglet, who has come to Rome to beg, what he regards as the requisite costume.

  For this the Seleucid Demetrios was upset

  and offered Ptolemy right off

  scarlet raiment, a shiny crown, precious jewels,

  many servants and attendants,

  his most expensive horses

  for Ptolemy to present himself at Rome

  as he ought, a Greek monarch

  of Alexander’s line.

  But the Lagid Ptolemy perceives what is truly appropriate. He accordingly chooses a costume of his own and presents himself to the Romans in one that proclaims his beggary. This slant, as often, is in contradistinction to that in the poet’s source, in this case, Diodorus Siculus 31.12, where Demetrios’s magnanimity is admired. Again, Manuel Komnenos in the poem named for him, dresses himself as a monk. He has begun to think about the life hereafter. Cavafy closes his poem wi
th a straight-faced blessing, in which he gives Manuel’s costume its due:

  Happy all who believe

  and like Lord King Manuel end

  dressed most simply in their belief

  An honorary decree might be thought of as a costume. Cavafy presents us with a supple official who is directing an associate how to revise the text of an honorary decree. The city’s official praise, full of superlatives, had been cut into stone to celebrate the victor in a battle. The battle was at Actium, and the locals in this town had optimistically styled Antony the victor. Octavian, presumed to be vanquished, was therefore set down in the decree as “pernicious,” and “comic copy of a Caesar” as well. Fortunately, however, each of the two names, Antony and Octavian, took up the same space when inscribed. All that had to be done, in view of the actual outcome of the battle, was to switch names wherever they occurred in the text. (“In A Town in Asia Minor”). The wonderful virtues and achievements ascribed to the honorand receive thereby a proper evaluation. They are mere words that flutter about the shoulders of a man who has won a battle. These like fake jewels are a proper reward for victory in a battle, even a battle by which an empire has been won. “The king is dead, long live the king.” Yes, but Cavafy also gives us an official who understands value. The wellbeing of his town is precious and words of praise for a victory in a battle can be productive.

  The stirring features of church functions, they too can be thought of as “costume.” In “At Church,” Cavafy’s speaker lists as what he loves most about church things that a Hellenistic philosopher might have classified as “indifferent” (ἀδιάφορα).

  I love church, its seraphim

  silver appointments candlesticks

  pulpit icons lights.

  These things are not good. They are not bad. They are simply “indifferent.” And in this, they have, like costume, no value in themselves. Here, assembled as details in a list, they constitute a profile of inappropriate response.