From a world in progress to an inclusive society : the case of Cavafy

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My personal idea is that from a certain moment on -I place this moment around 1910 -Cavafy's work must be read and judged not as a series of separate poems, but as a single poem in progress -a 'work in progress', as James Joyce would say -to which death puts the end.
Seferis's methodological approach has been a point of reference for some of the most important studies about Cavafy in the last seventy years.Moreover, his analysis led to the promotion of the so-called aestheticization of Cavafy's poetic thought,⁴ to which the Nobel Prize-winning poet alludes or clearly refers to in several passages of his essay: phrases like Cavafy "senses time", or "Caesarion [...] is a key to the way in which Cavafy feels", or "it is, I think, diffi cult to deny that this is exactly the type of Cavafy's sensibility: a brew of undiluted feeling, learning and thought", or "the question is not which books the poet reads, but whether he can infuse himself in the materials from which his poems are made", undoubtedly draw from the poetic universe of T. S. Eliot and from a poetics that refers to the modernist conception of art and in particular of poetry.⁵Finally, one of the most famous expressions of the bibliography about Cavafy with which Seferis closes his essay should be mentioned: "outside of his poems, Cavafy does not exist".⁶As already mentioned, the aestheticization of the Cavafi an thought by the critic Seferis found important supporters throughout the second half of the 20ᵗh century who delivered excellent studies following this interpretative 'line' and highlighting the work-in-progress character of Cavafy's poetry.ere are many examples, and I will limit myself to mentioning only some of the most well--known and indicative of Cavafy studies today.I will begin with the groundbreaking bibliographic and philological study by G. P. Savidis, Οι καβαφικές εκδόσεις, published in 1966 in Athens.Savidis with his research identifi ed the method with which Cavafy worked on his own texts (as well as the 'bizarre' way in which he printed them), and he revealed the process of a work in progress by organizing the poetic texts of the period 1897-1918 in a thematic order (chosen by Cavafy himself before his death) and ordering the rest of the recognized poems of the period 1919-1933 in a chronological manner.⁷e results of his scientifi c research led to the two-volume standard edition of 1963, which, with some minor corrections and adaptations in later editions, remains insurmountable to this day.Edmund Keeley's seminal study, Cavafy's Alexandria.Study of a Myth in Progress, published by Harvard University Press in 1976,⁸ should also be included in the same context.e American scholar in his book highlights the evolution of the motif of Alexandria within Cavafy's work, distinguishing four diff erent but concentric forms/phases: starting with the "Real City", he moves to the "Metaphorical", then to the "Sensual" to end up in the "Mythical Alexandria".
is course, which aestheticizes the symbol of the city and, by extension, the environment in which Cavafy's poetry and thought move and from which they are inspired, leads, according to Keeley, to a "universal perspective" of his poetic work and to a tragic perception of human life; at the same time it confi rms Seferis's approach according to which Cavafy's work a er 1910 is distinguished by the "unity of the fundamental form" which is in fact its most important characteristic.In other words, it is a work in progress that, in its path, aestheticizes the poet's thought, making it appear a poetic experience or, to use a phrase from Cavafy, "hypothetical".⁹Paola Maria Minucci's study, entitled Costantino Kavafi s, published by the Castoro-Nuova Italia in 1979, is also based on the same approach of Seferis.In her book, the scholar and translator of the Greek poet highlighted the stylistic and narrative development that Cavafy's mature poetry presents and in which romantic, parnassian and symbolistic infl uences of his younger period are progressively 'assimilated' in a completely creative way; however, they now appear fi ltered by the experience of realism leading to a Cavafi an poetry that culminates with the texts of the period 1911-1921.Minucci, referring in particular to the poetic structure of Cavafy's erotic images, observes that "from the evocative-biographical form in which the vague love emotions of the initial period are expressed [we move] to an increasingly objective description of the context in which the emotion is included.In the end, following a process of narrative depersonalization, he reaches a repeated transposition in situations and experiences that Cavafy himself defi nes as 'hypothetical'."¹⁰As it can be easily understood from the above examples, Cavafy's work presents an evolutionary process that bears all the characteristics of a work in progress.However, this approach could be enriched if we take into consideration a series of other elements that are revealed through a global reading of the Alexandrian poet's work: the development of Cavafy's poetry and poetics is therefore not limited, as we will see immediately, to artistic issues (whether 8 Keeley (1976).9 See the famous note of Cavafy, Philosophical Scrutiny, in Pieris (ed.) (2003: 256-260).10 Minucci (1979: 95).they are aesthetic, lexical, philological, or narrative) but it also extends to some aspects closely linked to its content.
An example concerns the gradual expansion of the group of characters found in Cavafy's poetry: a linear, chronological reading of the poems clearly reveals that Cavafy is gradually trying to add or include in his work characters that belong to more and more age groups (from old men who sit alone at the noisy end of the café¹¹ or stand «inside their worn, tattered bodies»¹² and their mind «turns / to the share in youth that still belongs» to them, their verse «is now recited by young men»,¹³ to ambitious young poets who complain to eocritus about their idyll¹⁴ or the ones that remember a phrase of Lucian,¹⁵ most of them very young, 23 to 24 years old «all joy and vitality, feeling and charm»¹⁶), to diff erent historical periods (ancient, Hellenistic, medieval, modern and contemporary) but also to various social classes and groups (from royal and divine mythological heroes, to Roman and Byzantine emperors, up to everyday and anonymous citizens who belong or are placed in the ancient, Hellenistic, medieval, modern and contemporary era), thus creating a poetic 'society' that bears all the characteristics of a process of inclusion.From this development or enrichment, and especially in the more mature period of Cavafy's poetry, neither the question of genders is excluded (since in the poems we meet both men and women of diff erent social backgrounds), but not even gay characters who, in my opinion, complete the mosaic of the society of inclusion that Cavafy tries to create through his work.I believe these elements enrich the interpretative approach of the work-in-progress, launched many decades ago by Seferis, which leads Cavafy to an increasingly objective conception of human life.
In this poetic process of inclusion, I think there are two poems that constitute truly crucial moments: on the one hand, Ithaka of 1911, which also signals the poet's turn towards more universal lyrical experiences, and on the other Myres: Alexandria, A.D. 340 which in my opinion represents the culmination of this Cavafi an trend of inclusion.
Starting from Ithaka, a very important poem for this process of inclusion that develops in the poetry of Cavafy, it should be noted that the journey of this modern Ulysses can be considered only ostensibly as a completely personal development that leads to a solitary individualism.In fact, at the beginning of the journey, our anonymous and modern solitary character is presented in this way: Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι να 'ναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.¹⁷As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.

Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δε σε γέλασε.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.Without her you would not have set out.She has nothing le to give you now.

And if you fi nd her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
e point of arrival, in fact, is also the moment in which the promise of riches that had fueled the drive to the journey is defi nitively denied.is is only part of the interpretation of the closing of Ithaka, because during the poem, which coincides with the journey described in it, an important shi happens that concerns the true meaning and the objective of the journey.I am referring to the evolution that Cavafy marks in his poem passing from the initial singular (Ithaka) to the fi nal plural (Ithakas): 17 Kavafi s, Ιθάκη [Ithaki], in Savidis (ed.) (⁶1999a: 29).
In this way, however, the initial solitary traveler of the poem («as you set out for Ithaka») eventually becomes part of an entire community of travelers who, continuing their journey, arrive at the same place: that of awareness/Ithaka.Furthermore, the journey to Ithaka does not aim simply and only at healing the wound created by the defi nitive loss of Alexandria and the ancient world (which in the corpus is being preceded by the poem e god forsakes Antony) but at the same time it gives the individual the opportunity to realize that she/he belongs to a group, to a community, and to share a common destiny with other people.So, if this is the case, I think that the Cavafi an journey to Ithaka should be read not as a simple landing on a state of personal fulfi lment or the achievement of individual happiness, or whatever else one wants to see behind the Homeric symbol, but as an inclusion of our anonymous character in a group, and therefore in a community, through which the modern Ulysses identifi es himself with all the other solitary travelers.I think that this observation allows us to argue that, from a philosophical point of view, Ithaka is nothing more than the moment in which the individual is transformed into a collective, at the same time realizing a (philosophical) procedure of inclusion of the whole human society: any path one wishes to follow.However individual, solitary and personal it may seem, in the end all travelers arrive at the same and identical collective space in which all humans meet, creating a true poetic society of 'mixture' and inclusion.
e second text that I fi nd important for the evolution of the poetics of inclusion that I am describing here is undoubtedly Myres: Alexandria, A.D. 340, written in April 1929.Unlike the chronologically and geographically abstract Ithaka, in this poem the narrative is placed in a specifi c historical moment and in a specifi c setting (funeral of Myres, Alexandria, 340 A.D.).However, if we think carefully, the plot is placed at a transitive and liminal moment between the world of the living and that of the dead.I believe this 'transition motif ' offers the poem a very particular character also for my argument.
Myres could be considered Cavafy's poetic manifesto for the process of inclusion.is poem is not only the point in which the structural, lexical, stylistic 18 Ibid.and narratological elements of Cavafy's past are assimilated in an exemplary way, but now completely mixed and absorbed, as Minucci shows in her study, but it is also the moment in which Cavafy presents a 'plural' and complete poetic society, rare indeed even for our poet: therefore there are men and women of diff erent ages attending the funeral (besides the young protagonist and the companion of the deceased we meet «Some old women near me spoke in subdued voices / about the last day of his life»); there are priests of the high clergy («four Christian priests»), as well as lay people who belong to diff erent social classes, and relatives of the deceased; there are obviously Christians present but also our 'pagan' narrator who would like to have taken Myres to the Temple of Serapis; fi nally there are heterosexual people, but also a gay one, that is the narrator and Myres's companion.
I believe that this process of inclusion that can be observed through a global reading of the Cavafi an corpus makes the work of the Alexandrian poet current up to our days; and perhaps it could also explain, at least in part, the enormous dissemination of his poetry in various countries of the world.I therefore consider that the constant attention of Cavafy towards this multilateral inclusion procedure constitutes for his poetry one of the most important and current components that have, among other things, helped him to go through the entire twentieth century.On the other hand, Cavafy himself, in one of his famous and ironic autobiographical notes that was published while he was still alive, had declared in the third person: "Cavafy selon mon avis est un poète ultramoderne, un poète des générations futures" ("Cavafy, in my opinion, is an ultramodern poet, a poet of future generations").¹⁹In fact, Cavafy is not simply, or not only, the most important modern poet of the 20ᵗh-century modern Greek literature; and his work is not simply, or not only, a continuous but abstract eff ort to construct a work in progress in exclusively artistic terms.I believe, based on my reading presented in this paper, that it would be more appropriate to speak of a slow, tireless, careful, and complex work in progress that aims at the creation of a 'better society' that is founded, starting from 1910 onwards, specifi cally on the concept of inclusion.