a decorous life

In the introduction to his 2001 translation of the poems of Constantine Cavafy (Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, Harcourt Brace), Theoharis Theoharis uses the phrase “decorous intensity” to describe the restraint that tempers the powerful emotion found in so many of the Alexandrian’s poems. One thinks immediately of the erotic poems as examples of this restraint. Though it is obvious that the speaker is discussing sexual encounters, he never reveals the sweaty details of these moments. We also don’t know the idiosyncrasies of the lover’s body—each lover is an idealized youth. The youths are anonymous and alike in their beauty, and thus their modesty is preserved, though there is no doubt about their immodest activities. Here is an example of this gentle reserve:

One Night

The room was poor and shabby,
hidden above the shady tavern.
From the window the view was an alley,
dirty and narrow. From below
came the voices of some workers
playing cards, having a good time.

And there on the common, the humble bed
I had passion’s body, intoxicating joy
from sensual, rose lips—
rose lips of such an ecstasy
that writing now, after so many years,
in my solitary house, I’m drunk that way again.


Through the narrator’s spare description, we have an idea of his past lovemaking, though not the specifics. We also know nothing of the lover except for the speaker’s impression of his body. The omission of detail reproduces the effect of memory, which often reduces activities of the past to their essential characteristics. We can imagine that, to the solitary speaker of the poem, sex is now more an idea than it is a physical reality, and so the distance from the physicality of sex is appropriate here.
Cavafy also shows a certain reserve in expressing the intensity of emotion felt by the speaker in his poems, whether in yearning for a lover or in sorrow over some calamity. This reticence is communicated in part by Cavafy’s choice of words. His poems are devoid of exaggerated adjectives and uncommon nouns. Edmund Keeley notes that Cavafy was one of the earliest poets among his contemporaries to use colloquial Greek in his poetry (1). One would think that Cavafy’s practice of expressing great emotion in a handful of everyday words would make these emotions seem cliché, and therefore less real or intense. However, in his best work, Cavafy’s word choice has the opposite effect.
Cavafy’s plain language and quiet reticence infuse his poems with just the sort of vivid emotion that this type of diction usually fails to achieve. Each spare adjective, each quiet admission of happiness or sorrow vibrates with extravagant feeling. This effect is particularly evident in Theoharis’ translation of “The Satrapy.”

The Satrapy

What a calamity, given how ready you are
for fine, distinguished tasks,
that this unjust fate of yours
always denies you encouragement and success;
that mean habits block you,
both pettiness and indifference.
And how horrible the day you give way
(the day you allow it all and give way)
and tramp off to Susa,
and go to King Artaxerxes,
who places you, favorably, in his court,
who makes you gifts of satrapies and such.
And you accept them with despair,
those situations which you do not want.
Your soul demands other things, cries for them;
commendation from the city’s Rulers and the Sophists;
contested, priceless, clamorous Approval—
the Agora, the Theater, and the Laurels.
How can Artaxerxes give you these,
where will you find these in the satrapy,
and what life will you lead without them.


This poem’s language seems uncomplicated. The tone is matter-of-fact; even the use of “calamity” is more a statement of fact than a shout of grief. The speaker is confident of the subject’s “despair,” and of the impossibility of finding fulfillment with Artaxerxes. The speaker’s plain assurance makes these statements inescapably true to the reader, too, particularly the line “your soul demands other things, cries for them.” There is hardly any description of the unhappy addressee besides this essential statement of his or her true desire, and so the reader’s attention concentrates on the idea of a tormented soul. This depressing thought trembles with the entire weight of the reader’s imagination and sympathy. The speaker’s confidence reaches a dreadful conclusion in the final line, which positions the addressee’s situation as a statement, not a question. There is no opportunity for other possibilities. The speaker thus convinces the reader of the addressee’s justified despair without having recourse to verbal fireworks.
Daniel Mendelsohn suggests that Cavafy’s daily life was similarly plain, and states that Cavafy’s “flesh-and-blood existence was, after all, fairly unremarkable (2).” Mendelsohn, E. M. Forster, and George Seferis see a contrast between Cavafy’s marvelous poems and his humdrum daily existence. From the age of fourteen, Cavafy lived mostly in Alexandria, sharing a house with his mother until her death. (Cavafy seems also to have been his mother’s primary caretaker during her last illness.) Despite his Greek ancestry and his interest in the ancient world, Cavafy did not visit Greece until 1901, when he was thirty-eight. His principal employment for many years was in a mid-level government office. Cavafy also was not eager to publish his poems. He distributed them mainly in folders to a chosen audience, and as a result his work achieved predominately local recognition during his lifetime, and many of his poems were never published until after his death (3). On the surface, then, Cavafy’s life would not seem to be conducive to the creation of some of the finest poems in modern Greek literature. But what kinds of events are required for the development of a poet? After all, one would argue that the intellectual life of the poet matters more than the facts of his physical existence. Still, a writer’s intellectual life cannot be lived apart from his or her physical needs and circumstances (4). Cavafy must have found a way to integrate his identity as a poet into his daily routine. Cavafy did not write poems in spite of his daily life, which must in fact have fed his poetic output—and not only by means of his much-discussed amorous adventures. One would expect some signs of distress otherwise, either in Cavafy’s letters, or in the record of his daily activities. However, Cavafy seems to have been content in his government post until his retirement, after which he died from throat cancer at the age of seventy. Whatever one believes the life of a poet ought to be, Cavafy’s work shows that he lived it.


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Works

1. Edmund Keeley, Cavafy’s Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

2. “As Good as Great Poetry Gets,” by Daniel Mendelsohn. The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2008. (vol. 55, no. 18.)

3. Cavafy: A Critical Biography, by Robert Liddell. Duckworth Publishers, 2000. First published in 1974.

4. See A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf.