Read From the Elephant's Back Online
Authors: Lawrence Durrell
ii. The road of the sun,
iii. A lyre at my back
iv. From one shoulder hangs down
v.  From where daylight broke
vi. To where darkness came on.
[24]
The scattered mass of notes and chapter-headings which compose this, the last of Solomos's works, was only given to the public in 1927.
It was impossible that the new spirit of Greece should not press other poets also into its service as vehicles of expression. With the name of Solomos should be bracketed that of a lesser poet, but one whose taut metaphysical verses also breathed a European spirit. Calvos, like Solomos, owed much to his education in Italy, and perhaps more to a long residence in England, where he twice married, and where he was buried. His great
Ode to Death
has been translated and published among the papers of that gifted young Greek poet Capetanakis, whose own untimely death in 1944 was a serious loss both to English and Greek letters, since he wrote in both languages with equal felicity.
[25]
Greek poetry between 1890 and 1920 was dominated by the voice of two other poets of European stature. Perhaps only the difficulty of the language has kept the English-speaking peoples unaware of Palamas and Kavaphis
[26]
as poets of magnitude and force. It may be that neither poet has yet inspired a translator brave and accomplished enough to render him in English, though a number of essayists, Professor Bowra, Mr. E.M. Forster, and Mr. Robert Liddell,
[27]
have drawn attention to the powers and beauties of Kavaphis, and Mr. Liddell has also published more than one translation distinguished by lucidity and feeling. But it is doubtful whether an English translator will ever quite manage to capture the wry, almost banal exactness of Kavaphis's poems, many of which are constructed like short stories and depend on situation as much as poetic accent.
His most famous pieces like
Ithaca, The Coming of the Barbarians
, and
The City
,
[28]
have been attempted by numerous hands but so far without the full measure of success that these remarkable productions deserve. Kavaphis himself was an Alexandrian and his work has some of that calm grace, that exhausted repose which suggest the refinements of the Museum, with more than a touch of orientalism. But to this eastern note of licence, of richness (which appears most markedly in his magnificent love-poems) he adds the more sophisticated preoccupations of a twentieth-century man. Some of his work would be considered displeasing by puritans, for much of the subject-matter belongs to the untranslated portions of the Greek anthology.
[29]
But in no other Greek writer does passionate experience contribute so finely to the structure, the shape, the very grain of what he expresses. In him we find experience completely digested and transmuted. He is not a painter of emotions merely, but a great ironic critic of life. His simplest poems are deceptive in the way that all really profound writings are deceptive; the fabric of the writing is painfully simple. Everything is in the flavour and taste of the word chosen, and the experience recorded. How will it ever be possible to render him in English?
FAR AWAY
I would like to put a memory on recordâ¦
It has faded by this timeâ¦as if nothing remains of itâ¦
It lies far away back in my salad days.
Skin as if made from the petals of jasmineâ¦
That remembered Augustâ(was it August?)â
One evening it wasâ¦I can scarcely recall the eyesâ¦
They were blue I thinkâ¦yes blue, a sapphire blue
.
[30]
His death in 1933, and the death of Palamas late in the war, set a term to the Greek poetry of the early twentieth century; though Palamas enjoyed a priority in reputation due perhaps to a longer working life.
Of those poets who are still living and producing the undoubted senior is Mr. Anghelos Sikelianos,
[31]
whose passionate and flamboyant writing marks him as a national poet in the direct line of descent from Solomos and Palamas. In 1942 his little group of
Akritan Songs
, which were widely circulated by the underground movement, struck a chord that is still echoing in Greece, and set a seal upon his reputation as Greece's greatest living poet.
Mr. George Seferis, born in 1900, occupies a position which, at the risk of over-simplification, might be described as analogous to that of Mr. T.S. Eliot in England.
[32]
The publication of his
The Turning Point
in 1931 brought a new influence and a new voice to Greek verse. The reception of this poem was marked by criticism reminiscent of that which greeted
The Waste Land
in 1922. Critics complained of obscurity. But Palamas, the old poet, himself described this first fruit of a new talent as a real turning-point in Greek literature. Since then Mr. Seferis has added to his reputation with further volumes of verse and has achieved the well merited distinction of translation into both French and English. His technique derives from the same French sources as those of Mr. Eliot,
[33]
and this accounts for a superficial resemblance in manner; but by temperament Mr. Seferis is contemplative rather than mystical, and sensual instead of puritanical. His poems render admirably the taste and touch of common things, the warmth of sunlight, the perfume of flowers. The ambience of his poetry is the ambience of the Greek landscape, with its warm ringing tones or light, its islands like primitive sculptures, its statues and cypresses. Mr. Seferis is a national poet only in the sense that he is absolutely Greek.
Sleep like the green leaves of a tree wrapped you round.
Like a tree you breathed in the calm light,
In the lucent source I discovered your form:
Eyelids shut, eyelashes brushing the water.
My fingers in the smooth grass found your fingers,
For an instant lay on the pulse,
Sensible of the heart's pain in another place.
[34]
Enough has been said to indicate that not only has our Philhellenism undergone a radical change for the better but that the modern Greek has become more than worthy of the admiration that was too often in the past reserved for his ancestors. The poetic tradition indicates clearly that Greek literature is struggling out of the swaddling-clothes of purely political or national aspiration towards a universal validity, a European significance. The span from Solomos to Mr. Seferis is a little over one hundred years; yet those who measure the growth of a national consciousness not in terms of politics or economics but in terms of literature will be able to see, even within this small span, the evolution of a national temperament through the influence of its poets, Greece has turned her face towards Europe; and in the darker moments when political affairs and misunderstandings appear to separate us and make us despondent about the future of Greece, we do well to remember how nobly the Greek poets have carried the flame lit for them by the English poets of 1820. It would gladden the boyish heart of Shelley, and the sad heart of Byron, if they could return to witness it.
A Cavafy Find
1956
AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY
of three hitherto unknown poems by the Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy has recently been discussed in the pages of
Cyprus Letters
by the scholar A. Indianos.
[1]
These poems were unearthed from an old scrapbook in the possession of the Countess Chariclea Jerome Valieri, who lives in Cyprus, and who is the daughter of Cavafy's brother, Aristides.
[2]
They are the earliest known work of the Alexandrian master, and while they are not equal to the work of his maturity, they show, despite the conventional lyrical form in which they are written, touches of the true Cavafian irony and actuality: the way, for instance, in which he discusses emotions in terms of simple humble objects “the cheap cretonne dress” and the “cheap bracelets on her arms.” The word “cheap” he always uses with emotion to offset the values these shopworn objects, bodies, ears, hands, eyes, etc., represent in the eyes of the lover who invests them with his own feelings. Indeed all the grandeur of Cavafy lies in this patient, loving, miserly way of looking at objects
[3]
and eventsâreinfecting memory time and time again with the passionate actuality of something that has disturbed himâso that the resulting vibration in words become significant and powerful, and the poem as a whole comes over. Lovers of his verse will be interested in these early examples. Even though, perhaps, in their English versions, they lose something of their natural strength.
MY FRIENDS, WHEN I WAS IN LOVE
[4]
My friends, when I was in love,
It was many years ago
I did not share the same earth
With other mortal beings.
Lyrical was my turn of mind
And though so often deceptive
It gave me happiness
Abounding life and warmth
Whatever the eye took in
Was rich in beauty,
The palace of my love
A nest appeared to me
A cheap cretonne dress
The one she used to wear
I swear when first I saw it
Seemed of the finest silk
The two cheap bracelets
She wore on her wrists
Seemed to me precious stones
Adorning some great lady
On her head she wore
Mountain flowersâ
The loveliest of all bouquets
They seemed to me.
Smooth the walks we took
Together arm in arm,
Nor thorn or brambles there,
Or if there were earth hid them
Today the orator and the sage
Cannot move me half as much
As a single sign from her did
In those old days
My friends when I was in love
It was many years ago
I did not share the same earth
With other mortal beings.
FLOWERS OF MAY
All the Year's flowers blossom in May,
But of them all Youth is the loveliest,
But how soon it fades, never to come back;
Only the flowers always adorn the ground.
All the Year's flowers blossom in May,
The same ones, but my eyes don't see them,
And other hands put them in other bosoms,
Spring comes and ebbs, but no two springs alike
The sweets of each are different.
All the Year's flowers blossom in May,
But they do not always wait upon our happiness,
The same flowers give joy and bitterness,
Growing on graves we mourn for,
Adorning the scented fields.
Again May comes, and the flowers rise,
But it is difficult to see her from the window,
And the pane dwindles, diminishes, disappears.
The mournful eye grows dim and cannot see,
Our tired limbs can no longer hold us up.
This year the flowers are not for us,
Other springs now crown us with their blossoms;
The past comes surging back,
Beloved shades stoop down and beckon us
Lull the starved heart asleep.
DOUNYA GOUZELI
(
The loveliest woman in the world
)
The mirror does not lie: what I see is true
There is no one lovelier anywhere than I.
Glittering diamonds of eyes,
Lips verging on corals,
A double line of pearls for teeth,
My body is graceful, my legs admired,
Hands and neck of milk, and hair of spun silk,
But alas what is the good of it all?
Inside this loathed enclosed harem
Who on earth can look upon my beauty?
Only hostile rivals or horrible eunuchs
Poisoning me with looks, my blood freezes
When my terrible husband comes to me.
My prophet, my Lord forgive me if
My sad heart cries “If only I were a Christian.”
If I became a Christian I should be free
Show myself freely to one and all,
For men to admire and girls to envy.
All would agree that Nature could not make
Another like me; passing in my coach
The streets of Istanbul would fill
With crowds admiring me.
A Real Heart Transplant into English
1973
THE ARRIVAL OF
Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
[1]
on the Modern Greek translation scene marks quite a definite and definitive stage of a process; the excellence of their work is really worthy of recognition by the Greek Government. Thanks to them we can now say that we “have” Seferis and Cavafy in English, and in versions not likely to be superseded; one hopes that they will continue this triumphal work and give us a Sikelianos and an Elytis.
[2]
The volume under review is, as might be expected, thoughtful, respectful to the great poet and felicitous in its choice of phrasingâwith perhaps one small reservation about a few Americanisms like “to show up” and “show business,” which the old poet himself might have found too slangy. But then this is an American book for American readers, and this observation may not be worth raising.