WATANI International
16 May 2010
Konstantin Kavafis once said: “Of the few things one can affirm with certainty, one is that no one is competent to say where art begins and especially where it ends.”
It appeared absolutely fitting that “Kavafis…An Immortal Voice from Alexandria” should be the focus of this year’s Spring of Poets event, honoured by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) Arts Centre, jointly with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture,
The Spring of Poets is an annual poetry festival where poets celebrate poetry with the public. It was first celebrated in France, and was soon adopted by UNESCO and celebrated across the world in all languages. The ancient Greeks used to honour this event in March, with the onset of Spring. Since the ancient Greeks were the first to celebrate the Spring of Poets, it was the right thing to do to commemorate the Alexandrian Greek Poet Konstantin Kavafis in Alexandria.
A banquet for poets
Kavafis—also known as C. P. Cavafy—lived all his life and died in Alexandria, declining all temptations to leave the city. Participating in the BA event were a number of celebrated Egyptian poets, among them Ahmed Abdel-Moeti Higazy, Mohamed Farid Abu-Seada, Fouad Touman, Ahmed Fadl Shabloul, Hemeida Abdallah, Omar Hazeq, Iman al-Sebaei and Jihan Barakat. They recited Kavafis’s poems, among which three were set to music by Sherif Mohieddin and performed by the Arts Centre orchestra.
A very moving speech by Touman set-off the celebration. Touman described the event as a “banquet for poetry”, including a special celebration of Alexandria’s “immortal” Kavafis. “This is the day of poetry… the day of love and joy… the day of art and beauty… Today we celebrate poetry, the first among human arts,” Touman said. It is impossible to celebrate the Spring of Poets in Alexandria, he stressed, without commemorating the great Kavafis.
For his part, Hazeq spoke about The Alexandria Quartet, the exceptional work by Lawrence Durrell who depicted Kavafis as one of the great figures on Alexandria’s cultural arena. Durrell placed Kavafis on the same footing as other Alexandrian cultural pioneers: Sayed Darwish, who made a considerable contribution to authentically Egyptian music and whose Bilady (My Country) is Egypt’s national anthem today; Mahmoud Saïd, who pursued new horizons in Egyptian painting; and the Lumière Brothers, whose first cinematic films were shown in Cairo and Alexandria in the late 19th century. Hazeq spoke passionately about art, saying that through all its forms, art crossed cultural, linguistic, gender and geographical barriers and acted as an ambassador the world over, with nothing to stop it—neither war, economic hardship, nor political crises.
Prophetic
“Spring calls for poetry,” Higazy cheered. And this year’s celebration, he said, marked a revival for Kavafis, especially in that the season coincided with his birth and death (Kavafis was born on 29 April 1863 and died on 29 April 1933).
No poet ever depicted Alexandria in his works better than Kavafis, Higazy insisted. Even when he wrote about Hellenic heritage, Cavafy included Alexandria. His poems The City, Alexandrian Kings, The God Forsakes Antony, The Sea in the Morning, At the Café Door and Envoys from Alexandria all witnessed to his beloved city. Higazy explained that a main topic of Kavafis’s poetry ran along the relationship between a man and his birthplace; the relationship of an Alexandrian with Alexandria.
Once the attending poets had given tribute to Kavafis, a talk followed by Dimitris Daskalopoulos, an expert on the work and life of Kavafis. Dr Daskalopoulos spoke of the ecumenical impact of the poet’s work, focusing on a text written by Kavafis in 1929 for the weekly La Semaine Egyptienne, but never published during his lifetime. This was an untitled text to which the title Applauding Oneself was given after his death. In this text, Kavafis talked about the fame his works would reap after his death, and even went on to describe in a provocative, prophetic manner how, following absolute disregard from literary circles, his work would be recognised and appreciated after his death, not only in Greece but the world over.
Unique tactic
Daskalopoulos reminded that Kavafis grew up in Alexandria in a cosmopolitan milieu that had many connections to Europe, not only to Athens. His first creations, he said, had a historical flair and were written on contemporary and non-contemporary issues. The Greek critic added that his first poetic attempts, as well as his few attempts at translation, reflected a well-cultured young man with a good appreciation of both English and French literature. “During his lifetime,” Daskalopoulos explained, “Kavafis never published his poems in a book. From time to time, he merely reprinted the poems previously published by magazines, in a one-page hand-written publication.” The poems he allowed for print during his lifetime were distributed to a restricted audience. He would pass them out, when they seemed ready, to his trusted friends first in sample pamphlets, then as broadsheets and offprints. These usually gathered into folders that could be supplemented regularly, some of the older poems revised by hand now and then, a few suppressed. And when the clips in the folders could no longer bear the burden of additional poems, the poet would withdraw some and have them sewn into booklets. Daskalopoulos explained that this unique tactic contributed a great deal to the myth that surrounded Kavafis. He added that the international recognition of his creations came after World War II, when his work became more abundant and was systematically published.
More than ready
“Humanity, which came out severely injured from the war and its barbaric practices, was more than any other time ready to listen to the voice of Alexandria’s secluded poet, who conversed with history and related through it many human feelings and miseries. He depicted symbols that were familiar to the whole world. Even passion, which is widely depicted in his works, was not depicted as a romantic or physical experience, but rather as a means to overcome death,” Daskalopoulos said.
KAVAFIS
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or C.P. Cavafy, was born on 29 April 1863 in Alexandria, to Greek parents. He spent time with his family in England, France, and Constantinople, but eventually returned to Alexandria where he remained until his death on 29 April 1933.
Kavafis was a journalist and civil servant.
He wrote poetry, critically tackling aspects of Christianity, patriotism, and homosexuality. Yet he was not always comfortable with his role as nonconformist. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. His most important poetry was written after his fortieth birthday.
Any acclaim he was to receive came mainly from within the Greek community of Alexandria. Eventually, in 1903, he was introduced to mainland-Greek literary circles, but received little recognition because his style differed markedly from the then-mainstream Greek poetry. It was only 20 years later that a new generation of poets would find inspiration in his work. Since his death, Kavafis’s reputation has grown; he is now considered one of the finest European and modern-Greek poets. His poetry is taught across universities around the world.
His poems are, typically, concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieux that have played roles in Greek culture. Besides his subjects, unconventional for the time, his poems also exhibit a skilled and versatile craftsmanship, which is almost completely lost in translation.
The only evidence of some public recognition in Greece during his later years was his receipt, in 1926, of the Order of the Phoenix from the Greek dictator Pangalos, and his appointment, in 1930, to the International Committee for the Rupert Brooke memorial statue that was placed on the island of Skyros. He died at 70 without having published a collected edition of his work, presumably because he did not consider it ready yet for that kind of permanent definition.
The now famous phrase that distinguished Kavafis from his contemporaries: this poet stood “at a slight angle to the universe.”