Berghahn Books

Two versions of one city: translating Cavafy

Author(s): MANOS GEORGINIS
Source: Critical Survey, Vol. 2, No. 1, Science and the Nineteenth Century (1990), pp. 89-92
Published by: Berghahn Books
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41555507
Accessed: 29-05-2018 16:34 UTC

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Critical Survey

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Two versions of one city:
translating Cavafy
MANOS GEORGINIS

The idea of the post-industrial nineteenth-century city as a wa

from, but which at the same time is not free from an underpin
and sensuous indulgence, runs in Western European poetry from
ists and T. S. Eliot to the English poets of the thirties.
The best known Greek poem in this tradition is C.P. Cavafy's
(1863-1933) is the Greek exemplar of this tradition not only bec
the whole of his life in Alexandria and was identified with this
he was a Greek poet who came out of a predominantly English
but who was also open to many European influences. He starte
romantic verses and gradually, as the modern Greek poet Byron
without perhaps realising it, Cavafy found himself a prisoner
difficult to escape from as from Alexandria). In a lifetime of w
shed several poetic skins; from his early romanticism he went on t
ism, was more markedly influenced by symbolism, until he d
voice in realism and the particular ironic tone which is most tru
The first version of 'The City' was written in 1894 under th
City', but Cavafy reworked it and did not publish it until 1910
Cavafy wrote and rewrote his poems for years before he consid
publication. Typically, stylistic corrections were followed b
'philosophical correction'. Thus with 'The City'. The two versio
changing attitude towards Alexandria with which he had a love
letter of 1884 written to his friend, Mikes Rallis, Cavafy expr
Alexandria and this disapprobation must have been just as stron
he wrote 'In The Same City'. However, in 1907, three years befo
what is now the standard version, 'The City', Cavafy confesses
he has eventually become used to Alexandria and does not inten
other city, despite its small- town atmosphere and lack of fre
connection with his sexual peccadilloes), although he admits tha
big city (he mentions London) would have been more suitable.
came about because he was maturing as a poet and his poetic ar
strong enough to protect him from the city and its inhabitants. Hi
© C.Q. & S. 1990

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90 Manos Georginis

the city must have been completed by the year 1910, for the two versions reflect this
change. The 1894 version is both more autobiographical and more direct, specific, and
outspoken than the version of 1910, the 'standard' version, with its milder generalisa-
tions. It also has a note of self-pity ('Oh, if your life you've wasted here') which is
excised from the later version, because it was too blatant for the poet's taste.
Two questions should be answered: why did Cavafy hate the people and the city
and why did he feel that his life was wasted? The easy Freudian answer is that he felt
isolated, criticised and rejected because of his homosexual and 'scandalous' life,
which a small town usually frowns upon. The easy Marxian answer is that the poet was
born into one of the leading Greek families which had known better days before the
British occupation of Alexandria. The British brought havoc to all the upper-class
Greek families by the gun-boat promotion of British capital and the expulsion of the
Greek capital, while at the same time they created a new ruling class (with upstart
Greek families) to which the old families like the poet's did not belong. Hence, the
sense of decadence, 'désespérance' (Cavafy's word to describe what he wanted to
convey in 'The City'), and a fin de siècle atmosphere. The truth may lie somewhere in
between these two explanations, as well as in the fact that the poet's indulgence in his
homoerotic tendencies used up his energy to the exclusion of any other activity, apart
from poetry, and left him with a sense of emptiness and waste.
The city in the poem is not necessarily Alexandria (it is not mentioned by name
anyway), but rather an imaginary city, as Cavafy himself explained in a note: 'The
man who has ruined his life will try in vain to live it again better, more ethically- The
city, an imaginary city, will prevent and follow him and wait for him with the same
streets and the same quarters.' It is important to note that by 'ethically' Cavafy means
'positively' rather than 'morally', and he is thinking of the term in connection with
sexual practices. The city, therefore, is a city of the soul, incorporating the failures,
the anxiety, the fears, as well as the social and sexual barriers that society raises. This
is reinforced by a verbal comment made by Cavafy himself in 1929 which is curiously
at odds with the note quoted above. Criticising an illustration an artist had made for
the poem, which showed on the left a man leaving a city and walking in the direction
of an identical city on the right, Cavafy said: 'You carry the city within you; if you
travel, the houses, the streets walk, they don't remain behind. Perhaps modern
painting may be able to depict what I was trying to convey.'
What Cavafy was trying to convey is inevitably subject to the language barrier. In
the translations which follow I have tried to convey the rhythm and the directness of
the Greek original as well as to emphasise the Cavafean 'here', as much a geographi-
cal as a poetic locus. What is impossible to achieve in translation is Cavafy's perfect
rhyming: in this poem (as in many others) Cavafy's rhymes are homophones, which
make for infinite linguistic variety, irony, and a sense of irrevocability. The most
memorable line in this poem, which denotes this sense of irrevocability ('There's no
ship for you, there's no road'), has passed into current Greek usage and along with
numerous other lines and phrases it makes Cavafy the most oft-quoted poet in
modern Greek.

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 Two versions of one city: translating Cavafy 91

In The Same City

You said, 'I'll go to another land, I'll go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
My eye is disgusted, my ear also is;
and- as if dead- my heart is buried.
How much longer will my mind be sullied!
I hate the people here as they hate me,
here, where half my life
I passed, to no avail, I wasted it.'

You'll not find another land, you'll not find another sea.
The city will be after you. In the same streets
you'll stray. And in the same quarters you will age,
and inside the same houses you will grey.
No matter how far you'll go, the farthest you may hope,
again in the same city I'll see you.
Oh! if your life you've wasted here
in this little niche- throughout the world you've wasted it.
(1894)

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92 Manos Georginis

The City
You said, 'I'll go to another land, I'll go to another sea.
Another city will be found better than this.
My every attempt is doomed to go amiss
and- as if dead- my heart is buried.
How much longer will my mind be sullied.
Wherever I look, wherever I turn
black ruins of my life here I discern,
where many a year I passed, and ruined, and wasted.'

You'll not find another land, you'll not find another sea.
The city will be after you. In the same streets
you'll stray. And in the same quarters you will age
and inside these same houses you will grey.
You'll always find this city. Another?- no such hope-
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Just as you've ruined your life here
in this little niche, throughout the world you've wasted it.
(1910)

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