Comments on: In Praise of Cavafy

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:35:12 +0000

When I talk about a poet’s identity, ethnic or sexual, I inevitably get one hater or another telling me, “What does it matter what they are! They’re writers and that should be enough!” This bothers me, because it shows the disconnection and disregard to that experience I had in adolescence, feeling lonely and isolated, seeking solace in the words of writers whose identities validated mine, whose mere existence on the page made me less invisible, less vulnerable. That’s why I declare, loud and proud, that I’m a gay Chicano writer.
I feel exactly the same way, Rigoberto. Thanks for posting this beautiful Cavafy. I grew up poor in rural New Jersey, halfway between New York and Philadelphia. I had my great moment of solace and revelation around 1973, when I found Jill Johnston in The Village Voice. I managed to get my hot little hands on Johnston’s book, Lesbian Nation, but one book wasn’t enough to sustain my whole life. I slogged through college and graduate school, lesbianless in the poetry department, for all I knew. I’ll never forget the feeling of literary isolation and loneliness. Sure, things are much better now, but there are a still so many books and poems that need to be written – we have a lot of catching up to do!
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By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:51:23 +0000

Thanks, Rigoberto, for this. My real response is in my new post! But I wanted to answer Reginald’s comment on diction here:
I also understand that much of the verbal power of his poems comes from his mingling of the refined and stilted Greek called Katharevusa, inherited from the Byzantines, which was the standard literary language of his time, with Demotic, vernacular, spoken Greek, which was not considered acceptable for literature.
It is true that literary Greek has two distinct registers–the demotic, or spoken Greek, and Katherevousa, Purified Greek, which is a purely invented and literary language. It has not only its own vocabulary, derived from ancient Greek, but is different even grammatically. There is some great literature written in it, though Katherevousa was never actually spoken. Nor was Katherevousa handed down from Byzantine Greeks–it was a later invention by diaspora Greeks to purge the Greek language of Turkish “borrowings”, so that the new independent Greek State would not have a “corrupt” language. To give you an idea of how different it is from spoken modern Greek, literary works written in Katherevousa (such as Papadiamantis) are actually translated now into modern Greek.
Greek poets thus do have access to at least two highly distinct registers (not to mention ancient Greek), which is a huge problem for translators.. But the idea that Cavafy writes in a mix of the two has been greatly exaggerated in my opinion. His words and word forms are occasionally slightly archaic by modern standards (as Victorian poets may seem in English), but this is arguably as much a quaint Alexandrian flavor as anything else. Cavafy writes in the Demotic.
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By: Hansa Bergwall

Hansa Bergwall — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:31:16 +0000

Rigoberto,
I didn’t know about Cavafy before. Thank you for recommending his work.
I also think it is beautiful that one poet’s work can give another the courage to be authentic. This is a story of poetry at its most personal.
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By: scott hightower

scott hightower — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:46:51 +0000

Mr. Gonzalez, You blog artfully about the lives and contributions of others. You consistently blog pointing the way to things of interest that I, for one, am grateful pleased to be lead to. It is refreshing in a field of self-serving bloggers… even some on Harriet who are only self referential and sel-advertising! Thanks for your intelligent and generous restraint. Thanks for all.
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By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:08:38 +0000

Dear Rigoberto,
Cavafy was very important to me too in high school and college (in the Dalven and later the Keeley and Sherrard translations), though his furtive, doom-laden sense of homosexuality was rather alien to me–from a fairly young age, for me being gay, choosing to be gay, was a psychological way out of the Bronx ghetto (and, later, of the stifling racism and conservatism of Macon, Georgia), an opportunity to escape. But the sense of loneliness, longing, and the near-impossibility of connection in his work was vividly familiar.
I think, though, that it’s possible to distinguish between personal interest and poetic interest. All the translations I’ve read make Cavafy sound like prose broken into lines–well-written, sensitive, insightful prose, but prose nonetheless. Reading the introductions to the translations and other work about Cavafy, I understand that Cavafy was an obsessive poetic craftsman, obsessively revising and refining each line. I also understand that much of the verbal power of his poems comes from his mingling of the refined and stilted Greek called Katharevusa, inherited from the Byzantines, which was the standard literary language of his time, with Demotic, vernacular, spoken Greek, which was not considered acceptable for literature. None of this comes across in any of the translations I have read. This absence, combined with the relative paucity of figurative language–as I recall, Cavafy has vivid imagery, but few metaphors and similes–contributes to the prosaic feel of his poetry in the translations I’ve read.
A writer’s social identity is far from irrelevant (poems are written and read by people, after all), and can certainly matter hugely in terms of the identifications (and repudiations) readers make and the impact that the work has on them. But that identity is irrelevant to the quality of the poetry as poetry, and with Cavafy in translation, I get no sense of that quality.
Take good care, and thanks for this post.
all best,
Reginald
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