A book has been newly acquired by the Thammasat University Library of interest to students of history, law, and world literature. Poems by C.P. Cavafy was generously donated to the TU Library by Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri. It is currently shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus. Constantine Peter Cavafy (1863–1933) was an Egyptian Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant. He is considered one of the most significant 20th century world poets, although his writing career was unusual. His talent developed slowly, and most of the poems for which he is remembered were written after he was forty years old. He worked for many years in the civil service in Alexandria, Egypt, which left him time to write relatively few complete poems. He preferred to send these poems to small local journals and did not seek fame or recognition as a poet. The poems in the edition donated by Ajarn Charnvit were translated into English by the poet’s brother, John Constantine Cavafy (1861-1923).
One of the reasons that historians take an interest in Cavafy is that he was a student of history himself. He was inspired by ancient civilizations, and wrote poems about the Greek and Roman empires. The English novelist E.M. Forster wrote an essay about Cavafy in a collection which is not available at the TU Library but may be requested by interlibrary loan. The essay praises Cavafy’s poems for being
intensely subjective; scenery, cities and legends all re-emerge in terms of the mind.. Such a writer can never be popular. He flies both too slowly and too high … He has the strength … of the recluse, who, though not afraid of the world, always stands at a slight angle to it.
In an essay which is available in the TU Library, shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic analysed Cavafy’s treatment of the Greek past:
Cavafy used neither Greek nor Western European models. Still less did he owe anything to the East. His manner was his own invention, the reflection of his temperament and his circumstances, guided by a natural instinct for words. Even in his language he went his own way.
One of Cavafy’s most appreciated historical poems is known as Waiting for the Barbarians. It describes how leaders in ancient Greece were worried about an invasion. They planned how to make their country ready for social changes that might occur after the expected invastion. Then they discovered that the much worried-about invastion would not occur. Instead of feeling happy or relieved, they were disappointed because the barbarians were a form of solution:
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Waiting for the Barbarians
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
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.
===================================================The poem mentions praetors. This term refers to two ancient Roman judges who ranked below consuls, the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic. While students may need to Google such terms, it is worth learning them as historical references, especially for students who plan to do academic research or a thesis involving traditions of Roman law or history. As a journalist and employee of the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works, Cavafy experienced Egypt when it was a British protectorate. Cavafy himself wrote a short note about his life:
I am from Constantinople by descent, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; I left very young, and spent much of my childhood in England. Subsequently I visited this country as an adult, but for a short period of time. I have also lived in France. During my adolescence I lived over two years in Constantinople. It has been many years since I last visited Greece. My last employment was as a clerk at a government office under the Ministry of Public Works of Egypt. I know English, French, and a little Italian.
Some of the messages in his poems about history and literature can apply to everyday life. So the poem Ithaca is about the return home of Odysseus, the traveller celebrated by the ancient Greek poet Homer in The Odyssey. Translations of Homer’s Odyssey are available in the TU Library collection. Cavafy argues that in any voyage, enjoying the journey is more important than the final destination. Whether or not we achieve all our goals, we may have found delight in the process of traveling and what we have learned along the way. This idea follows the tradition of Michel de Montaigne, the French philosopher who wrote Of Vanity, an essay from the 1500s, available in the TU Library collection. When Montaigne’s friends commented that he was planning a long trip, and at his age he might not return from it alive, he replied:
What care I for that? I neither undertake it to return, nor to finish it my business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk’s sake.
In the same spirit, Cavafy’s Ithaca is about appreciating the process of travel, rather than worrying about the destination.
(All images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)