Konstantinos P. Cavafy Quotes

THE WINDOWS

Within these dark chambers, where I live through oppressive days, I pace up and down, trying to find the windows.-When a window opens, it will be a consolation.
But the windows are not to be found, or I am unable to find them. And perhaps it's better that I don't. Perhaps the light will be a new tyranny. Who knows what novel things it will reveal.

"Desires"

Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet — that is how desires look that have passed
without fulfillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.

The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been; the attraction between them had gradually diminished, the attraction had diminished a great deal. But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted.

When they saw Patroklos dead — so brave and strong, so young — the horses of Achilles began to weep; their immortal nature was upset deeply by this work of death they had to look at.

When you set sail for Ithaca,
wish for the road to be long,
full of adventures, full of knowledge.

On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you’ve been,
remember how much your imagination created for you.
This first, and then the rest — the lesser loves — that you experienced and enjoyed
in your life: the more real and tangible.
Of loves like these you were not deprived — C.P. Cavafy, “Hearing of Love,” Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. (Princeton University Press 1992)

And now, what will become of us without the barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.

And in Spain Galba secretly musters and drills his army — Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year.

One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love.

Hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

The Spartans weren't to be led and ordered around like precious servants. Besides, they wouldn't have thought a pan-Hellenic expedition without a Spartan king in command was to be taken very seriously. Of course, then, "except the Lacedaimonians." <p> That's certainly one point of view. Quite understandable.

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.

VLADAR IZ ZAPADNE LIBIJE

Uglavnom se svideo u Aleksandriji,
za tih deset dana svoga boravka,
Menelajev sin Arispomen,
vladar iz zapadne Libije.
Kao ime, i odeća mu, uljudno, helenska.
Rado je prihvatio počasti,
ali ih nije tražio: bio je skroman.
Kupovao je helenske knjige,
mahom iz istorije i filosofije.
Iznad svega, bio je škrt na rečima.
Mora da je dubokih misli, govorilo se,
a prirodno je što takvi ne pričaju suviše.

Nije bio dubokih misli, niti čega drugog.
Sasvim običan, smešan čovek.
Uzeo je helensko ime, odevao se poput Helena,
a naučio je, manje-više, i da se ponaša kao Heleni.
U duši je strepeo da slučajno
ne pokvari povoljan utisak
ako govori helenski sa strašnim varvarizmima,
a Aleksandrinci bi ga otkrili,
već po svom običaju, nesrećnici.

Stoga se ograničio na malo reči,
pazeći sa strahom na padeže i na izgovor;
i nisu ga malo mučili ti razgovori
koji su se gomilali u njemu.

Below the House Yesterday while strolling through a neighborhood on the edge of town, I passed below the house I used to go in when I was very young. There Eros had taken possession of my body with his exquisite force. And yesterday as I passed along that ancient street, suddenly everything was made beautiful by desire’s spell: the shops, the pavements, the stones, and walls, and balconies, and windows; there was nothing ugly that remained there.