Book review: C.P. Cavafy Collected Poems

Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Earlier this year I submitted a review for Cavafy’s collected poems to the Astral Codex book review contest. Sadly I didn’t make the cut, but I thought I might as well publish the review here for anyone who might be interested.

If after reading this review you decide to read Cavafy’s poems, please use Bertie to order them from an independent bookshop! And if you liked this review, take a look at my 2024 reading recap.

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When I told my wife I intended to enter this competition with a review of poetry, she told me it’s a bold move (she turned out to be right!): I’m not a poet, haven’t had any formal education in the field, and I don’t even like reading poetry in general. But it is exactly because of this that I think it’s worth reviewing Cavafy: I find most poems a little affected, a little fussy, a little… intellectually snobbish. In contrast, Cavafy’s writing stands out for its lack of ostentation.

(The idea that beauty through plainess is all the more impressive is best-expressed by Kazuo Ishiguro in The Remains of the Day:

I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. [...] It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

)

This is a layman’s effort to introduce you to Cavafy’s works.

Cavafy’s writing is rich in imagery without melodrama and exaggeration. He treats serious subjects with humour. And he writes in simple, unadorned, yet evocative language. There is a moderation and balance in his style that, as we will see, complements his philosophy: seek pleasure, he says, as well as wisdom. For example, in Ithaca, his most famous poem, Cavafy says that the journey matters more than the destination, but not only because it leads to enlightenment; rather, it’s a journey of sensual discovery:

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

There are echos of Hesse’s Siddhartha here: like Siddhartha, Cavafy’s traveller is urged to explore life fully before they reach the island in old age; and like Hesse, Cavafy makes judicious use of humour. There’s subtle humour, for example, in Young Men of Sidon and Alexandrian Kings. Sensual pleasure is good: it’s to be sought and preserved; but it must not be confused with, and elevated above, substance and meaning.

In the Young Men of Sidon, youths are being entertained by an actor who quotes the epigram Aeschylus chose for his own grave. One of the young men criticises Aeschylus’s choice: instead of celebrating his life’s work, the tragedian chose to be remembered for his valour in the battle of Marathon. Cavafy’s description of the youth is subtly patronising and dismissive (even more so in the original Greek): it is obvious Cavafy approves of Aeschylus’s choice to celebrate courage over art, and ridicules the perfumed youth who speaks so passionately of literature.

In Alexandrian Kings, Cavafy describes the splendid crowning of Cleopatra’s sons, and Kaisarion’s magnificent dress, before concluding that

The Alexandrians knew of course

that this was all mere words, all theatre.

But the day was warm and poetic,

the sky a pale blue,

the Alexandrian Gymnasium

a complete artistic triumph,

the courtiers wonderfully sumptuous,

Kaisarion all grace and beauty

(Cleopatra’s son, blood of the Lagids);

and the Alexandrians thronged to the festival

full of enthusiasm, and shouted acclamations

in Greek, and Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,

charmed by the lovely spectacle—

though they knew of course what all this was worth,

what empty words they really were, these kingships.

Cavafy mocks but recognises beauty’s seduction, and its ability to fool even people who know better.

Cavafy’s humour reaches its zenith in Waiting for the Barbarians. Here, the citizens of a Roman Empire-like state are waiting to surrender to barbaric invaders. The whole poem pokes fun at the civilised polity’s decadence, but most of all at its silliness: the praetors wear their finery and sparkling jewellery because ‘things like that dazzle the barbarians’; but clearly, they dazzle those refined and sophisticated praetors themselves – otherwise, why would they have them in the first place? The poem’s ending is hilarious as much as it is tragic: the state is plunged into despair because

night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.

And some who have just returned from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?

They were, those people, a kind of solution. 

(By the way, this is a strange choice the translators made: there’s no question mark in the original. Grammatically, question marks work in Greek exactly the same way they work in English – its absence from a phrase that is question-like is therefore deliberate. So why did the translators choose to overlook Cavafy’s choice? In my view, ‘And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians.’ removes the questions’ open-endedness; it suggests that this is less of a question and more of a statement. The narrator knows what’s going to happen – nothing good.)

But if beauty and sensual pleasure are not true substance, then what is? Cavafy’s old-fashioned response is duty and stoicism (especially in the face of ruin).

Why is a sense of duty a virtue to which we ought to aspire? Cavafy portrays duty as noble –

Honor to those who in the life they lead

define and guard a Thermopylae.

Never betraying what is right,

consistent and just in all they do

– but doesn’t tell us why, though he obliquely suggests two reasons. The first is implicit in ‘never betraying what is right’. In a highly politicised and divided world, you might think that unhappiness stems from conflicting definitions of ‘right’: group A is oppressed by group B’s imposition of its own morality. Of course this happens; but I strongly believe that (outside of actual war &c), most harm and unhappiness we inflict or experience in our lives is not from the clash of opposing moral systems between us and the people around us, but from our betrayals of our own moral codes. And we’re so good at doing that: it’s easy to rationalise our sense of right away, to philosophise and to find arguments in support of what we want to do instead of what we ought to do.

(Cafavy has something to say on this too: in Dangerous Thoughts Myrtias claims he’s free to give in to his passions because

when I wish, at critical moments I will recover

my spirit, ascetic as it was before.

But the title of the poem shows us what Cavay thinks of this line of reasoning!

(Incidentally, while writing this review, I’ve been reading Middlemarch, and came across the exact same caution against rationalisation:

I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make everything square by them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty.

[...]

If you go upon arguments, they are never wanting, when a man has no constancy on mind. My father never changed, and he preached plain moral sermons without arguments, and was a good man – few better. When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery-book.)

)

Seeing duty as a virtue, as an obligation to do the right thing, stripped of philosophical questions of ‘what is right’, protects us against this. (Of course, the question of what is right is still valid; I am not suggesting we should never challenge the moral precepts we’ve been handed over. But we should be aware of our motives in questioning our definition of what is right: are we doing it in good faith, because we are trying to become better? Or because our moral intuition clashes with our preference at that moment in time? We should always be suspicious when we come up with rational and philosophical arguments that happen to support our preferences!)

The second reason is perhaps more convoluted, and exemplified in In Sparta. Here, a Spartan king is embarrassed to tell his mother that a rival king has requested her to appear in his court as a hostage. When she finds out,

As for the humiliation—that didn’t touch her at all.

Of course an upstart like the Lagid

couldn’t possibly comprehend the Spartan spirit;

so his demand couldn’t in fact humiliate

a Royal Lady like herself:

mother of a Spartan king.

A sense of duty doesn’t only ensure we try to do the right thing; it also protects us from humiliation (or its less extreme and more common form, insecurity): if we know what the right thing is, and we aspire to it, and make its pursuit our foremost goal, then our duty gives us a sense of purpose, which in turn, solidifies our sense of identity. This is why Ptolemy cannot humiliate the Royal Lady: how could he? Her going as hostage is her duty, and performing that cannot be humiliating.

(In writing this, I realise that in some ways the English translation here is superior to the original Greek: the literal translation is ‘as for the humiliation – but she didn’t care’. But this suggests that it was her decision or attitude on this particular matter to not care; the English makes it even more clear that the supposed humiliation did not, and could not, affect her. In fact, with a sense of identity and duty this strong, no external factor could cause humiliation. The only thing that can humiliate a person like that is if they fall short of their own standards.)

This leads us to Cavafy’s ideal of stoicism, albeit a softer, more humane stoicism than that of the British stiff upper lip: you are allowed – urged, even – to feel and express emotion. You are not allowed to mourn your luck, or to whine:

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

As with sense of duty, so it is with stoicism: it confers dignity (and again, contrast this with the Anglo-Saxon view on dignity: it’s not the absence of emotion, but the acceptance of fate that’s dignified), but also (perhaps paradoxically at first glance) imbues one with a sense of control. Stoicism is about accepting that one can never fully control anything but their own behaviour; the rest lies in the hands of the Gods:

But her strong character struggled through;

regaining her poise, the magnificent woman

said to Kleomenis: “Come, O King of the Lacedaimonians,

when we go outside

let no one see us weeping

or behaving in any way unworthy of Sparta.

At least this is still in our power;

what lies ahead is in the hands of the gods.”

And she boarded the ship, going toward whatever lay “in the

hands of the gods.”

Internalising this means letting go of the stress and sense of helplessness of trying to affect things one cannot influence (c.f. the Serenity Prayer).

But if there’s a severe high-mindedness in Cavafy, there is also kindness. In The First Step, a poet laments his failure in his art, to be gently comforted:

To have come this far is no small achievement:

what you have done already is a glorious thing.

Effort and dignity in defeat matter more than success, and I think this, together with the points made above, mean that these demode ideals of duty and stoicism are often misunderstood. They are seen as overly demanding, dehumanising, harsh values; but while it’s true that they are demanding (as the pursuit of any virtue can be), they are ultimately comforting. Their point is that there is no shame in failure, when that failure is due to factors outside one’s control. Rather than leading to a life of repression and stunted emotion, stoicism properly understood can lead to freedom from stress and insecurity.

I think it is clear from the examples cited so far that Cavafy’s poetry is not complicated. There is depth to it – you can read his poems line by line and ponder what it is in his choice of words that lends harmony and beauty, or examine how each line contributes to the meaning of the whole – but the meaning is there, obvious and explicit (simple is not the same as simplistic; and I think that Cavafy’s ability to express simple truths beautifully is what makes his work worth reading). But there is one poem that is harder to understand, and I’d like to close with it, inviting your own interpretations:

Che Fece ... Il Gran Rifiuto

For some people the day comes

when they have to declare the great Yes

or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes

ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.

He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,

he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—

drags him down all his life.

The first five lines seem hackneyed – they celebrate boldness and courage and risk-taking and adventure and living a life with no regrets: taking the plunge. But the rest three lines also defend those who said No; and that ‘no’ is the right ‘no’, Cavafy tells us – both explicitly in the poem but also in the title: Che Fece … il Gran Rifiuto means ‘He who made the great refusal’; it’s taken from Dante’s Inferno, but Cavafy omits the words ‘per vilta’ (because of cowardice) (so the editor’s notes on the poem inform me!). So, the right ‘no’ does not come from cowardice.

I think more than all his other work, this poem represents Cavafy’s balanced approach to life. We can respect both the firebrands and adventurers who go from honour to honour strong in their conviction; but equally we can recognise their foolishness – the wise response, the right response, is to say no. Cavafy appreciates that the world needs both: it needs those who (rightly) urge caution, but without those who make bad bets (but which, through luck, do pay out sometimes) we’d never progress.