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XXIX. ONE OF THEIR GODS. CAVAFY'S POEMS Nos. 57 - 62 REWRITTEN
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I find 'One of Their Gods' the most pleasing and satisfactory of Cavafy's poems for a number of reasons. People have in the past spoken as if Cavafy was a member of that school of anti-religious and satirical-flippant rationalists which appeared, especially in England, at the time of and closely following his death, the period of the twenties and thirties of the last century. But as we read this poem we become aware that Cavafy writes with no satirical, no comic intent - not even, to use that ghastly buzzword of the 50s and 60s, with a sense of irony. We have the impression that he was serious about the possibilities contained within the framework of the poem. It was quite possible for the 'ephebophilic' Cavafy to see the handsome youth as entirely godlike.
So what is it about the poem that I find so satisfying? Firstly, this is the living air of the Greek myth as it must have seemed in its heyday when perhaps to our forbears' mind there was not such a wide gulf between actuality and myth as there seems to be for us. Myth perhaps for them had something of the reality of a compelling dream. (Anyone who has had what is today described as a 'lucid' dream will understand how entirely plausible it can seem, even when we are fully conscious.) The magic of the poem leads us to believe that the event it describes could actually have taken place, that one of the Olympians could have come down from the heights to visit us in our everyday places, even our market towns and their more squalid quarters.
After all, there are many fairly rational people in the world today who believe in all sincerity that they have been abducted by aliens - and this, as Jung would have described it, is one of our modern myths which to those concerned are not at all unreal but have the sense of concreteness which appertains to most of their daily lives. They did not dream it, no not at all: it happened.
In Greek myth the gods are much like us, having the same bodies and the same desires; only immortality makes them different - but not so very much different since they are almost childlike in their pleasures and their inability to learn from their mistakes and their near total amorality. They are violent and wicked and jealous children, the same as our own human offspring. But they live forever, or so it was supposed. In any case, they certainly live again in Cavafy's verse, and if you are very quick and very perceptive you may catch a glimpse of them in the sky of an August dawn upon the coast of Asia Minor. (Poem 28.)
Secondly, who of us in real life has not witnessed exactly what the people of Seleukia saw, some more than earthly figure at a certain time of day (dawn and twilight are always movingly magical, the in-between time) here or abroad, when we are at our most receptive and perceptive, our senses and mind cleansed and ready to receive extramundane impressions? These things occur on the rinsed borderlands between actuality and creative imagination, are never forgotten and are invariably stored as unrusting treasure to be approached with ritually anointed hands. ('Weave a circle round him thrice and cross yourselves with holy dread.')
The epheboi in Cavafy's verse have always something more than human about them and he has obviously subjected these figures in memory and imagination to an intense and long period of maturation. The original encounter is often little more than a one night stand of twenty or more years ago but during the interval he has fed the experience from his own needfulness. After a while the figure takes on the attributes of a demigod surrounded by a halo of mystery and intensity that reaches a high pitch of adoration: the deity is here among us, assumes human form, comes down from the mountain top, his natural home, and walks through the streets of Seleukia.
In these borderlands the archetype is made manifest, the word becomes flesh, as in the Gospels. Our longing and devotion have conjured up the actual form of our deeper dreams. But is it real? we are bound to ask. Well, real in a different sense from the usual reality, and therein lies its infinite appeal. We are surrounded on all sides by the usual reality; it can even become oppressive, as exemplified by the kitchen sink dramas of a previous generation which were capable of inducing spiritual nausea. But the reality I am thinking of is primarily creative, not accepted and suffered. (We suffer only by its absence, in the valley of dry bones, the 'tota terra torrida' to quote a modern Latin poet.)
We have not yet managed to chart in any scientifically valid measure this mysterious inner landscape - even the great Jung reached something like failure in his impressive attempts - and I don't know if we ever shall. But we can certainly approach a result in imagination, in literature, in music, and in the poetry of Cavafy. He does not so much explain it as reveal it, and one showing is worth a thousand tellings. Read the poem (I hope my rewriting is adequate to convey both Cavafy's and my own feeling and experience) and you will surely be able to visualise the living god as he walks through the streets of Seleukia going towards the red-light district on his dubious errand. There! it is one of them! And if there is any irony it must dwell entirely in that last sentence.
- Charles Bryant, 29 April 2005.
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57. IN THE STREET
his handsome face is pale;
his brown eyes blinking, dazzled;
looks twenty but is really twenty-five;
something theatrical about his clothes,
the colour of his tie, the shape of his collar -
shambling bemusedly along the street
mindlessly dazed by illegal pleasure
the delightful sin in which he’s just engaged.
58. AS THEY AWAKE
hang on to them, trembling poet,
your dreams of erotic fulfilment,
those hot and silky visions
that haunt your imagination.
half bury them in incantation;
embalm them in your verses;
they live between your lines and rhythms.
retain them, excited poet,
as they awake again and stir
whether at night or noon.
59. THE STATUE OF ENDYMION
it was a white chariot
drawn by four white mules
with jingling silver harness
that brought us to Latmos
from Miletos. before that
a proud imperial purple trireme
carried me across the lapis sea
from Alexandria.
i have come here to enact
the sacred secret rites
of Endymion, with sacrifice
and pouring out of wine.
there’s the statue of the transfigured youth,
the shapely form and vision i adore.
slaves bring baskets jammed with fragrant jasmine.
our cries of supplication here revive
the ancient cults and worship of the gods.
60. GREY
the half-grey opal called to mind
the memory of beautiful grey eyes
seen twenty years ago.
our brief affair lasted for a month.
he went away to Smyrna for a job.
after that we never met again.
the sparkle of his grey eyes,
if he’s still alive, will now be dulled;
his handsome features grown heavy with age.
but memory, memory where he lives again
in youthful beauty, brings back love;
night retains his image resurrected.
61.IN A FRONTIER TOWN
beaten in a drunken brawl
last night, our mate Remon
was carried home.
in the heat we laid him on the bed,
windows wide open,
bright moonlight streaming in
across his half-naked body
we’re all mongrels here,
a rough racial mix:
Syrians Greeks Armenians;
so is our mate Remon.
but lying there last night
enhanced by moonlight
he made me think of the athlete Charmides -
Charmides whose beauty sent a shiver
of loving-lust through Socrates,
the starving lion who sights the slim gazelle.
62. ONE OF THEIR GODS
in the luminous twilight
in the market at Seleukia
the people saw a tall and shapely youth
walking quickly and with determination
toward the red-light district.
he was unbelievably handsome;
seemingly incorruptible and pure;
the light of immortality in his eyes,
a radiant ageless blue.
his long black hair was perfumed;
as he passed he left behind him
the scent of roses in the mountain air.
the people gazed and gossiped
and asked each other
did they know him? was he native here?
or from Syria? or a stranger?
the wise ones understood and stepped aside
as the divine form melted between the pillars
among arcaded shadows.
the wise ones understood and crossed themselves
and wondered which of the gods had wandered down
from the holy mansions on the mountain top?
what was his purpose? what questionable pleasure
drew to the sordid stations of Seleukia
one of the ever-living?
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