|
Comment 1 of 1, added on September 9th, 2005 at 4:46 PM.
E M Forster said that Cavafy was "a man in a straw hat standing at a slight angle to the universe". His brilliance lay in the quite personal use he made of his classicism, turning the ancients into his familiars, like someone he once met in the streets of Alexandria. One of his poems, "And he lounged and lay on their beds" makes his homosex explicit by revealing what pride he clearly took from it. It is, after all, an ancient practice, made furtive and unspeakable today. I sometimes balk at some of his imagery, since, as Spinoza claimed, "sex is the feeling of pleasure accompanied by our knowledge of its cause." Knowing the cause of Cavafy's pleasure makes me uncomfortable at times. But his maginificent evocation of a sensual experience now lost is timeless and universal.
Dan from Philippines
|
Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
E M Forster said that Cavafy was "a man in a straw hat standing at a slight angle to the universe". His brilliance lay in the quite personal use he made of his classicism, turning the ancients into his familiars, like someone he once met in the streets of Alexandria. One of his poems, "And he lounged and lay on their beds" makes his homosex explicit by revealing what pride he clearly took from it. It is, after all, an ancient practice, made furtive and unspeakable today. I sometimes balk at some of his imagery, since, as Spinoza claimed, "sex is the feeling of pleasure accompanied by our knowledge of its cause." Knowing the cause of Cavafy's pleasure makes me uncomfortable at times. But his maginificent evocation of a sensual experience now lost is timeless and universal.
Dan from Philippines