Complete Poems (56 page)
Authors: C.P. Cavafy
These excerpts suggest the degree to which Cavafy sought to re-create the rhythms and the rather stilted feel of the original. The text of the Enuma Elish was discovered in 1849 and published in 1876.
The inspiration for this poem is an episode from the youth of Julian the Apostate. At the age of twenty, Julian was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, the secret ancient rites associated with the goddesses Demeter and Persephone which were supposed to have held out to true believers a promise of eternal life. Because of the strict secrecy enjoined on initiates, little is known about what actually happened during the ceremonies themselves, although (as will be seen from the following passage from Gibbon, who is the source of Cavafy’s information for the episode on which this poem is based) flashing lights of some kind seem to have been involved. According to Gibbon, who derives the story from Gregory of Nazianzus, these lights (and whatever special effects might have accompanied them) so terrified the young Julian during the
ceremonies that he reflexively made the sign of the cross when he saw them:
He obtained the privilege of a solemn initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis, which, amidst the general decay of the Grecian worship, still retained some vestiges of their primaeval sanctity; and such was the zeal of Julian, that he afterwards invited the Eleusinian pontiff to the court of Gaul, for the sole purpose of consummating, by mystic rites and sacrifices, the great work of his sanctification. As these ceremonies were performed in the depth of caverns, and in the silence of the night, and as the inviolable secret of the mysteries was preserved by the discretion of the initiated, I shall not presume to describe the horrid sounds, and fiery apparitions, which were presented to the senses, or the imagination, of the credulous aspirant, till the visions of comfort and knowledge broke upon him in a blaze of celestial light.
It is at this point that Gibbon inserts the note that is the kernel of Cavafy’s poem:
When Julian, in a momentary panic, made the sign of the cross the daemons instantly disappeared (Greg. Naz. Orat. iii. p. 71), Gregory supposes that they were frightened, but the priests declared that they were indignant. The reader, according to the measure of his faith, will determine this profound question.
What interests Cavafy, here as elsewhere in his Julian cycle (particularly in the Unfinished Poem “The Rescue of Julian”), is less the correct interpretation of the demons’ flight than the suggestion of a deep hypocrisy on the part of Julian, who would go on to treat so contemptuously the Christians and their faith—one that, as this episode makes clear, was more deeply ingrained in him than he cared to acknowledge. One strongly feels, indeed, that the hint of a resistance to self-knowledge on Julian’s part is what irritates Cavafy so greatly.
To appreciate the extent of the emperor’s hypocrisy, as Cavafy saw it,
it is worth reading Gibbon’s further comments on the Christian upbringing Julian received “from his Christian preceptors,” as the historian noted: “the education, not of a hero, but of a saint.” Gibbon’s account is colored, as so often, by an ingrained hostility to religious fervor; but its attempt to fashion a psychological explanation for Julian’s apostasy is nonetheless fascinating:
… Julian publicly read the Holy Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. The study of religion, which they assiduously cultivated, appeared to produce the fairest fruits of faith and devotion. They [Julian and his elder brother, Gallus] prayed, they fasted, they distributed alms to the poor, gifts to the clergy, and oblations to the tombs of the martyrs; and the splendid monument of St. Mamas, at Caesarea, was erected, or at least was undertaken, by the joint labor of Gallus and Julian. They respectfully conversed with the bishops, who were eminent for superior sanctity, and solicited the benediction of the monks and hermits, who had introduced into Cappadocia the voluntary hardships of the ascetic life. As the two princes advanced towards the years of manhood, they discovered, in their religious sentiments, the difference of their characters. The dull and obstinate understanding of Gallus embraced, with implicit zeal, the doctrines of Christianity; which never influenced his conduct, or moderated his passions. The mild disposition of the younger brother was less repugnant to the precepts of the gospel; and his active curiosity might have been gratified by a theological system, which explains the mysterious essence of the Deity, and opens the boundless prospect of invisible and future worlds. But the independent spirit of Julian refused to yield the passive and unresisting obedience which was required, in the name of religion, by the haughty ministers of the church.
Gibbon goes on to describe the intensity of the adult Julian’s devotion to the pagan gods, which as usual excites the Enlightenment historian’s disdain; what is noteworthy in this description, and what may well be yet another reason for Cavafy’s complicated lifelong fascination with
this emperor, is the reference to the nocturnal apparitions of the pagan gods, with whom, according to Julian, he would regularly discourse:
Notwithstanding the modest silence of Julian himself, we may learn from his faithful friend, the orator Libanius, that he lived in a perpetual intercourse with the gods and goddesses; that they descended upon earth to enjoy the conversation of their favorite hero; that they gently interrupted his slumbers by touching his hand or his hair; that they warned him of every impending danger, and conducted him, by their infallible wisdom, in every action of his life; and that he had acquired such an intimate knowledge of his heavenly guests, as readily to distinguish the voice of Jupiter from that of Minerva, and the form of Apollo from the figure of Hercules. These sleeping or waking visions, the ordinary effects of abstinence and fanaticism, would almost degrade the emperor to the level of an Egyptian monk. But the useless lives of Antony or Pachomius were consumed in these vain occupations. Julian could break from the dream of superstition to arm himself for battle; and after vanquishing in the field the enemies of Rome, he calmly retired into his tent, to dictate the wise and salutary laws of an empire, or to indulge his genius in the elegant pursuits of literature and philosophy.
The motif of nighttime visions was one that exerted a powerful allure for Cavafy throughout his life: see the note on “Since Nine—,”
here
.
Cavafy himself gave a date of “1897 or before” to this poem. On stylistic grounds (the use of strict katharevousa), Savidis placed the date of composition before 1894, and possibly even before 1891. He notes that the likely inspiration for this odd poem was the publication, in 1893, of Roidis’s “History of a Cat,” although there is a strong influence exerted by the symbolic cats of Baudelaire, who was so important to Cavafy during the years when his tastes were being formed. In his comment on this poem (in “Offering of Three New Poems to K. Th. Dimaras,”
1985), Savidis particularly noted the following passage from Baudelaire’s
Fusées
(19), first published in 1887:
Pourquoi les démocrates n’aiment pas les chats, il est facile de le deviner. Le chat est beau; il révèle des idées de luxe, de propreté, de volupté, etc.…
Why democrats don’t like cats is easy to guess. The cat is beautiful; it displays ideas of luxury, of cleanliness, of pleasure, etc.…
We might also note another text of Baudelaire’s, “Chat” (“Cat”), from
Spleen et Idéal,
with its evocation of the “sleek and proud” cat, “so discreet / in making known his will,” and its “uncanny voice / —seraphic, alien— …”:
Familiar spirit, genius, judge,
the cat presides—inspires
events that he seems to spurn
half goblin and half god!
Cavafy (who owned a dearly loved cat from 1898 to 1908) attempted to rewrite this poem in 1901; and as late as 1917, in a fanciful description of what an earthly paradise might look like, wrote the following lines:
Seven cats at the least—or two jet-black,
and two as white as snow, for contrast’s sake.
B
UBASTIS
was a city in the Nile delta named for the ancient Egyptian cat deity, Bastet.
The poet to whom Cavafy here refers is Keats, on whose
Lamia
he had written an article in 1892 (see the note on “But Wise Men Apprehend
What Is Imminent,”
here
). In the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats writes that “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter …”
Cavafy classified this poem, along with “Walls,” “The Windows,” “Lohengrin,” and “Suspicion,” as being about “difficulty.”
This is one of the poems that Cavafy’s brother John translated, and the poet’s reaction to his brother’s rendering sheds light on his understanding of its meaning. The extant translation by John of the first two and a half lines of this poem reads as follows:
Whether I am happy or unhappy, it is not my care
to examine. But of this have I the joy to be aware
that in their immense addition …
Evidently, John’s original translation of the first line went something like
Whether I am happy or unhappy I have not the smallest care
because Cavafy takes his brother to task for using the dismissive phrase “smallest care”:
On all accounts the “
smallest
care” must come out. It’s a thing I didn’t say in my poem, a thing I had no intention of saying and that I don’t believe I shall ever write. It’s a dangerous “statement” … and is opposed to the spirit of previous poems already translated (“The Walls,” “The Windows,” “Lohengrin,” “The Suspicion,” which are a complaint against unhappiness), and it will perhaps be opposed to the spirit of other poems that will be translated. Finally, it’s a
profession
which I in no way want to make.
What I wrote is that “I don’t calculate” whether I’m happy or unhappy. That is, for the moment, the moment of writing, I describe the idea that gives me pleasure, that I’m not a
number in the Addition, and doing this I don’t examine if I am happy or unhappy.
I don’t examine,
not
I don’t care.
The substitution of other words for
smallest care
will, I know, be very difficult, but it must be done. I wonder if the rhyme “share” could be used? “Whether I have or I have not a share of happiness.” Or “Even if I have not a share of happiness.” But these phrases are bosh.
With its connection of beauty to evil (already the subject of the lost 1893 poem “The Beauty of Evil”), this poem’s debt to Baudelaire’s
Fleurs du Mal
is evident. This later poem can be seen as a kind of bridge between Cavafy’s interest in Baudelaire and (with what Diana Haas has called its “spirit of sensual perversity”) his later flirtation with the Decadents.
Cavafy’s library contained an Italian translation of the libretto of Wagner’s 1850 opera
Lohengrin,
a work that may well have been of interest to the poet because its Medieval setting, like so many of the milieus that interested him, juxtaposes pre-Christian worship with Christianity. Given his familiarity with Edouard Schuré’s
Les grands initiés
(see the note on “Eternity,”
here
), moreover, it is tempting to think that the same author’s
Le Drame musical en France,
I:
Richard Wagner, son oeuvre et son idée
(Paris, 1875) played some part in the poet’s use of this opera. Haas has noted that all of the elements to which Cavafy’s poem refers are in fact to be found in Schuré’s summary.
In the opera, King Henry of Germany has come to Antwerp in an attempt to raise an army to defend Germany from the invading Hungarians, only to find that the region is in the grip of a power struggle with a bizarre history. In the absence of the legitimate heir, Godfrey, who disappeared years earlier, the dukedom has been claimed by Frederick of Telramund, whose wife, the darkly beautiful Ortrud, secretly worships the old gods; both Frederick and Ortrud accuse Godfrey’s sister, Elsa,
of having killed her brother in order to seize power for herself. Henry declares that the issue is to be decided by a single combat between Frederick and whoever volunteers to be Elsa’s champion. The Herald is instructed to issue a fanfare calling for a champion to fight for Elsa. Despite Elsa’s confidence that such a champion will materialize—for she has seen him in a vision—at first no one appears. Only after the third sounding of the Herald’s trumpet does a mysterious swan-drawn boat appear, bearing a great knight (who, as we later find out, is Lohengrin). He declares his love for Elsa and agrees to fight for her—but only on the condition that she never ask to know his name or origins. She agrees, and he defeats Telramund, who is sentenced to be exiled. Cavafy’s poem is based on this first act of the opera.
In the latter part of the opera (which provides the inspiration for the poem “Suspicion”) we find Telramund and Ortrud plotting Elsa’s downfall as she prepares to wed her champion. The former attempts to kill the mysterious knight, but instead is slain by him; the latter uses her wiles to plant in Elsa’s mind jealous suspicions about her husband-to-be. Eventually she succeeds, and at the climax of the opera the knight—who, because Elsa has violated her promise, must now leave her and return to the place he came from—reveals that he is Lohengrin, son of Parsifal, the knight of the Holy Grail. Having uncovered his secret, he steps into the swan-drawn boat again and prepares to depart. At this point Ortrud makes a revelation of her own—a malicious one: the swan who draws Lohengrin’s boat is none other than the long-lost Godfrey, Elsa’s brother and the rightful heir to the dukedom, whom long ago she had transformed into a swan using her unholy magic. Had Elsa not violated her promise, Ortrud declares, the swan would have been able to resume human form. Lohengrin, however, is able to use his holy powers to save Godfrey, and at the moment when the young man reassumes human form, Lohengrin departs and Elsa collapses, dead, in her brother’s arms.