Introduction to Cavafys poems

Tuesday 12 November 2002 Ever since I was first introduced to his poetry by the late Professor !"! #aw$ins over thirty years a%o& C!P! Cavafy has remained an influence on my own writin%' that is to say& I can thin$ of poems which& if Cavafy were un$nown to me& I should have written (uite differently or perhaps not written at all! )et I do not $now a word of "odern *ree$& so that my only access to Cavafy+s poetry has been throu%h En%lish and ,rench translations!

This perple-es and a little disturbs me! .i$e everybody else& I thin$& who writes poetry& I have always believed the essential difference between prose and poetry to be that prose can be translated into another ton%ue but poetry cannot!

/ut if it is possible to be poetically influenced by wor$ which one can read only in translation& this belief must be (ualified!

There must be some elements in poetry which are separable from their ori%inal verbal e-pression and some which are inseparable! It is obvious& for e-ample& that any association of ideas created by homophones is restricted to the lan%ua%e in which these homophones occur! 0nly in *erman does 1elt rhyme with *eld & and only in En%lish is 2ilaire /elloc+s pun possible!

1hen I am dead& I hope it may be said3

42is sins were scarlet& but his boo$s were read+!

1hen& as in pure lyric& a poet 5sin%s6 rather than 5spea$s6& he is rarely& if ever& translatable! The 5meanin%6 of a son% by Campion is inseparable from the sound and the rhythmical values of the actual words he employs! It is conceivable that a %enuine bilin%ual poet mi%ht write what& to him& was the same lyric in two lan%ua%es& but if someone else were then to ma$e a literal translation of each version into the lan%ua%e of the other& no reader would be able to reco%ni7e their connection!

0n the other hand& the technical conventions and devices of verse can be %rasped in abstraction from the verse itself! I do no have to $now 1elsh to become e-cited about the possibility of applyin% to En%lish verse the internal rhymes and alliterations in which 1elsh verse is so rich! I may very well find that they cannot be copied e-actly in En%lish& yet discover by modifyin% them new and interestin% effects!

8nother element in poetry which often survives translation is the ima%ery of similes and metaphors& for these are derived& not from local verbal habits& but from sensory e-periences common to all men!

I do not have to read Pindar in *ree$ in order to appreciate the beauty and aptness with which he praises the island of #elos!

9motionless miracle of the

wide earth& which mortals call #elos& but the

blessed on 0lympus& the far:shinin% star of

dar$:blue earth!

1hen difficulties in translatin% ima%es do arise& this is usually because the verbal resources of the new lan%ua%e cannot ma$e the meanin% clear without usin% so many words that the force of the ori%inal is lost! Thus ;ha$espeare+s line

The hearts that spanielled me at heels

cannot be translated into ,rench without turnin% the metaphor into a less effective simile!

None of the translatable elements in poetry which I have mentioned so far applies& however& to Cavafy! 1ith the free rela-ed iambic verse he %enerally uses& we are already familiar! The most ori%inal aspect of his style& the mi-ture& both in his vocabulary and his synta-& of demotic and purist *ree$& is untranslatable! In En%lish there is nothin% comparable to the rivalry between demotic and purist& a rivalry that has e-cited hi%h passions& both literary and political! 1e have only ;tandard En%lish on the one side and re%ional dialects on the other& and it is impossible for a translator to reproduce this stylistic effect or for an En%lish poet to profit from it!

Nor can one spea$ of Cavafys ima%ery& for simile and metaphor are devices he never uses' whether he is spea$in% of a scene& an event& or an emotion& every line of his is plain factual description without any ornamentation whatsoever!

1hat& then& is it in Cavafy+s poems that survives translation and e-cites< ;omethin% I can only call& most inade(uately& a tone of voice& a personal speech! I have read translations of Cavafy made by many different hands& but every one of them was immediately reco%ni7able as a poem by Cavafy' nobody else could possibly have written it! eadin% any poem of his& I feel3 5This reveals a person with a uni(ue perspective on the world!6 That the speech of self:disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd& but I am convinced that it is! The conclusion I draw is that the only (uality which all human bein%s without e-ception possess is uni(ueness3 any characteristic& on the other hand& which one individual can be reco%ni7ed as havin% in common with another& li$e red hair or the En%lish lan%ua%e& implies the e-istence of other individual (ualities which this classification e-cludes! To the de%ree& therefore& that a poem is the product of a certain culture& it is difficult to translate it into the terms of another culture& but to the de%ree that it is the e-pression of a uni(ue human bein%& it is as easy& or as difficult& for a person from an alien culture to appreciate as for one of the cultural %roup to which the poet happens to belon%!

/ut if the importance of Cavafy+s poetry is his uni(ue tone of voice& there is nothin% for a critic to say& for criticism can only ma$e comparisons! 8 uni(ue tone of voice cannot be described' it can only be imitated& that is to say& either parodied or (uoted!

= 2arcourt& /race and 1orld& Inc!& New )or$ ,rom3 The Complete Poems of Cavafy& 1>?1 Publisher3 2arcourt& /race and 1orld& Inc!& New )or$

= 1!2! 8uden