C.P. Cavafy died in the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt at the age of 70ty in 1933.  You don't have to know anything about poetry or even be interested in it to be fascinated by his story.  He died in almost total obscurity.  Known to very few even in his native Greek, he is now internationally recognized as one of the greatest poets of the 20ty century. 

     His selected prose works translated and annotated by Peter Jeffrey's has been published by Ann Arbor Press--77 years after Cavafy's death.  In the rough and tumble world of poetry, even in our technologically advanced age, that may well be the record.

     Cavafy's prose is not unlike his poetry--spare, direct, and exact.  He stays clear of hyperbole and adjectives the way a ship's captain avoids the rocks.  While his contemporaries were still rattling their cages with metaphor and rhyme for the most part Cavafy eschewed language that wasn't the bare essentials.  The impression is if he can't say it concisely, he'd rather not say it at all.  He invites far more questions than he pretends to have answers--another harbinger of modernity.  Here's a typical fragment written in 1907:

     "Without enthusiasm--and along with enthusiasm I include anger--humanity cannot function.  But human's cannot work well while enthused.  Enthusiam must pass in order for people to work effectively, and even then--in a temperate state--they produce work that draw from the state of enthusiasm.  Whoever becomes over-enthusiastic cannot produce good work; nor can the person who is never enthusiastic.

     The same themes appear in the prose as the poetry: the fascination with little known periods and figures in Greek history, the value of philology, the role of art and poetry in particular, the life of the artist in antiquity and today, the "question" of pleasure and its pursuit--and the place the outsider occupies to the benefit of the common "good"--guiding it consciously towards a more human future.

         He is a master on the life of the artist as an outsider.  He does not disguise his own impulses that are the source of his disaffection but doesn't make them the only source of creativity, thus reaching out to all, which is now more uncommon than common.  Here he is on Shakespeare in a rare piece published during his lifetime:

     I esteem the observations of great men more than I do their conclusions.  Minds possessed of genius observe with exactitude and assurance; indeed, when they outline the pros and cons of a matter for us, we are able to draw conclusions for ourselves.  But why shouldn't they, you ask me?  Simply because I do not have much confidence in the absolute worth of a conclusion...

    As early as 1894 in the later half of the Victorian era, he wrote on pleasure:  

     Do not speak of either guilt or responsibility.  When the pleasure brigade passes by with music and banners, when the senses pulsate and tremble, those who keep their distance and refrain from taking up the good cause and its march toward triumph of pleasure and passion are foolish and vulgar.   

     He was not immune to the agony of so many artists who go unrecognized, but knew full well acceptance doesn't happen by chance, and necessarily demands all a writer has to offer.  He has no doubts poetry was and is the beginning of all written language and put himself into the hands of posterity.  But neither was he without pride and recompense for his efforts.  Three years before he died, he wrote of himself in the third person:

     Rare poets like Cavafy will thus secure a primary position in a world that thinks far more than does the world of today.  Given these facts, I maintain that his work will not remain simply buried inside libraries as an historic document in the development of Greek literature.

    It just took awhile.

    If I did not end with a poem by him I'm afraid my build-up will lead to trolls coming after me with their swinging green tongues and nasty crooked teeth.  Note: even in translation, if any word were removed, the whole would fall, especially the word "virtuously."

     GROWING IN SPIRIT 

      He who hopes to grow in spirit

      will have to transcend obedience and respect.

      He will hold to some laws

      but he will mostly violate

      both law and custom, and go beyond

      the established, inadequate norm.

      Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.

      He will not be afraid of the destructive act:

      half the house will have to come down.

      This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.

       @1903

         My last entry on Cavafy is dated April 14, 2009:  C.P. Cavafy: the Great Awakening.