includes translations of the Unfinished Poems based on these “last” forms), she writes that
The well-known caution that Cavafy showed in deciding when and how to entrust his poems to the printer can make the decision to publish these [Unfinished] texts today seem arbitrary—texts that the author considered still incomplete, and which, indeed, must be read in the contexts of the drafts and variants that precede them in order to be fully understood: something that is possible only for those who can read them in the original. But we nonetheless believe that, even granting those reservations, no reader of Cavafy would give up the chance to get to know these new, precious fragments which have been patiently gleaned from the poet’s workshop.fn1
The only poem in this translation that bears visible witness to the textual uncertainties which I have mentioned above is, necessarily, one called “Zenobia,” in which the editor herself was unable to make out the poet’s writing at one point. There I have reproduced, in the appropriate spot in the main text of the translation, the standard notation for illegible characters: a small square cross, each one representing approximately two characters in the original manuscript. It seemed to me that the reader deserves to know where it is simply impossible to make out the poet’s intention—an uncertainty, we must always remember, that haunts all of these beautiful but unfinished works.
But then, as Cavafy himself knew better than most, the meanings, intentions, and ambitions of those who inhabited the past are nearly always smoothed away by the passage of the millennia, the centuries, the years. Time, in the end, is the final arbiter—of literary reputations, as well as other things. In the second of the essays he wrote about Cavafy, in the hopes of alerting English speakers to a poet “whose attitude to the past did not commend him to some of his contemporaries,” E. M. Forster, writing in 1951, recalled a conversation he had with the poet in 1918:
Half humorously, half seriously, he once compared the Greeks and the English. The two peoples are almost exactly alike, he argued; quick-witted, resourceful, adventurous. “But there is one unfortunate difference between us, one little difference. We Greeks have lost our capital—and the results are what you see. Pray, my dear Forster, oh pray, that you never lose your capital.”
“His words made one think,” Forster went on, after ruefully observing that, while British insolvency had seemed impossible in 1918, the passage of three decades and a world war had made “all things possible.” Now, when twice as many decades have passed since Forster wrote those words, there is once more occasion to “think” about the themes—the unexpected faltering of overconfident empires; the uneasy margins where West and East meet, sometimes productively but often not; how easy it is, for polities as well as for people, to “lose one’s capital”—which once again turn out to be not “historical” but, if anything, very contemporary indeed; themes that the “very wise, very civilized man” kept returning to, knowing full well, as historians do, that the backward glance can, in the end, be a glimpse into the future.
fn1 Costantino Kavafis: Poesie, tr. Bruno Lavagnini (Palermo: Edizioni Novecento, 1996), p. 159; translation mine.
A NOTE ON
PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES
The rhythm and assonance of Cavafy’s poetry depends in many cases on the correct pronunciation of proper names; fortunately, a more or less standard pronunciation of Greek and Byzantine names as traditionally spelled in English, which I have chosen to follow, often allows for scansion and sound patterns not dramatically different from the ones produced by the Modern Greek pronunciation of those names.
The consonant combination ch, representing the Greek letter χ, is generally pronounced as a hard c or k whether at the beginning of a word or in the middle; hence the name Charmides is KAHR-mih-deez, not Tchar-mih-deez.
An initial i is consonantal, pronounced as a y: hence the name Iases is pronounced Yah-SEEZ. Otherwise, the vowel i is pronounced ee, and never rhymes with the word eye.
The final -es in masculine nouns and names is invariably voiced, and pronounced eez, like the -es at the end of the name Socrates. Hence the name Mebes is pronounced Meebeez, never Meebs.
In the case of Classical Greek names, the final e in feminine nouns and names is always sounded as ay: hence the name Stratonice is Strah-toe-NEE-kay. In the case of Byzantine names, the final e is pronounced as ee: hence the second part of the empress Anna Dalassene’s name is Dah-lah-see-NEE, never Dah-lah-SEEN.
The City
You said: “I’ll go to some other land, I’ll go to some other sea.
There’s bound to be another city that’s better by far.
My every effort has been illfated from the start;
my heart—like something dead—lies buried away;
How long will my mind endure this slow decay?
Wherever I look, wherever I cast my eyes,
I see all round me the black rubble of my life
where I’ve spent so many ruined and wasted years.”
You’ll find no new places, you won’t find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you’ll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you’ll grow old.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t bother to hope
for a ship, a route, to take you somewhere else; they don’t exist.
Just as you’ve destroyed your life, here in this
small corner, so you’ve wasted it through all the world.
[1894; 1910]
The Satrapy
What a pity, given that you’re made
for deeds that are glorious and great,
that this unjust fate of yours always
leads you on, and denies you your success;
that base habits get in your way,
and pettinesses, and indifference.
How terrible, too, the day when you give in
(the day when you let yourself go and give in),
and leave to undertake the trip to Susa,
and go to the monarch Artaxerxes,
who
