WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.590 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.590 --> 00:00:06.380 align:middle line:84% I can't read Greek, but I've always 00:00:06.380 --> 00:00:08.600 align:middle line:84% admired in translation, immensely, 00:00:08.600 --> 00:00:13.010 align:middle line:90% the poems of Constantine Cavafy. 00:00:13.010 --> 00:00:18.860 align:middle line:84% And Cavafy, I'm told, did a wonderful thing. 00:00:18.860 --> 00:00:21.350 align:middle line:84% I guess he's a rough contemporary of Yeats, 00:00:21.350 --> 00:00:25.640 align:middle line:84% older than Hardy, probably rough contemporary of Yeats. 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:31.280 align:middle line:84% When Cavafy began to write there were two kinds of modern Greek-- 00:00:31.280 --> 00:00:36.260 align:middle line:84% literary Greek, which one wrote poems, and demotic 00:00:36.260 --> 00:00:38.780 align:middle line:84% Greek, or street Greek, in which one did 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:42.770 align:middle line:90% the ordinary things of life. 00:00:42.770 --> 00:00:44.617 align:middle line:84% I'm told that some Asian languages are still 00:00:44.617 --> 00:00:45.200 align:middle line:90% in this state. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:47.330 align:middle line:84% I have a friend who's a Chinese poet, who 00:00:47.330 --> 00:00:48.950 align:middle line:90% writes his poems in English. 00:00:48.950 --> 00:00:51.950 align:middle line:84% He says, his ambition would be someday to write demotic-- 00:00:51.950 --> 00:00:54.440 align:middle line:84% to write poems in demotic Chinese, 00:00:54.440 --> 00:00:56.060 align:middle line:90% but he hasn't managed it yet. 00:00:56.060 --> 00:00:58.370 align:middle line:84% I can't even imagine what that's like. 00:00:58.370 --> 00:01:01.430 align:middle line:84% What Cavafy did is something that seems to me, 00:01:01.430 --> 00:01:04.129 align:middle line:84% even greater than say, well, he wrote poems 00:01:04.129 --> 00:01:06.590 align:middle line:84% in demotic Greek and street Greek. 00:01:06.590 --> 00:01:09.650 align:middle line:84% He wrote poems in which they were 00:01:09.650 --> 00:01:14.930 align:middle line:84% mixed in proportions that you could not easily identify, 00:01:14.930 --> 00:01:19.400 align:middle line:84% so that the demotic Greek and literary Greek coruscated 00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:24.540 align:middle line:84% and segued and blended and collided. 00:01:24.540 --> 00:01:26.820 align:middle line:84% And see what a thing to do in a language. 00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:29.190 align:middle line:90% What an ambition for an artist. 00:01:29.190 --> 00:01:31.680 align:middle line:90% It seems to me-- 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:35.090 align:middle line:84% I thought he was a great poet before I read about that. 00:01:35.090 --> 00:01:36.630 align:middle line:84% It seems to make him even greater. 00:01:36.630 --> 00:01:39.280 align:middle line:84% Anyway, there are poems of his that I've loved for years. 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:42.270 align:middle line:84% And I knew that he wrote in strict measures, 00:01:42.270 --> 00:01:44.250 align:middle line:90% very complicated rhyme stanzas. 00:01:44.250 --> 00:01:46.170 align:middle line:84% There's a kind of a young American 00:01:46.170 --> 00:01:49.770 align:middle line:84% who's amazed when they find out that Rilke and Cavafy wrote 00:01:49.770 --> 00:01:52.350 align:middle line:90% in very tight forms. 00:01:52.350 --> 00:01:54.270 align:middle line:84% And there's this one poem I just got a notion 00:01:54.270 --> 00:01:56.880 align:middle line:84% that I knew the rhyme scheme from the notes 00:01:56.880 --> 00:02:00.270 align:middle line:90% in the Rae Dalven translation. 00:02:00.270 --> 00:02:02.880 align:middle line:84% And using the Rae Dalven and the Sherrard and Keeley, 00:02:02.880 --> 00:02:06.960 align:middle line:84% I sort of created my conception of what the poem would be like. 00:02:06.960 --> 00:02:10.020 align:middle line:84% It's called "An Old Man After Cavafy," 00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:12.750 align:middle line:84% though it's pretty close to Cavafy, I call it "After Cavafy" 00:02:12.750 --> 00:02:17.490 align:middle line:84% partly to convey that I know that this is can't exactly be 00:02:17.490 --> 00:02:20.322 align:middle line:90% called the translation. 00:02:20.322 --> 00:02:22.530 align:middle line:84% Anyway, it's the first thing I'll read to you tonight 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:24.630 align:middle line:90% that is in rhyme. 00:02:24.630 --> 00:02:27.480 align:middle line:90% "An Old Man, after Cavafy. 00:02:27.480 --> 00:02:31.270 align:middle line:90% 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:34.960 align:middle line:84% Back in a corner, alone in the clatter and debapple , 00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:38.470 align:middle line:84% an old man sits with his head bent over a table, 00:02:38.470 --> 00:02:41.380 align:middle line:84% and his newspaper in front of him in the cafe. 00:02:41.380 --> 00:02:44.030 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.030 --> 00:02:49.370 align:middle line:84% Sour with old age, he ponders a dreary truth, 00:02:49.370 --> 00:02:51.710 align:middle line:84% how little he enjoyed the years when 00:02:51.710 --> 00:02:55.400 align:middle line:84% he had youth, good looks, and strength, 00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:58.840 align:middle line:90% and clever things to say. 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.620 align:middle line:90% He knows he's quite old now. 00:03:01.620 --> 00:03:02.940 align:middle line:90% He feels it. 00:03:02.940 --> 00:03:07.140 align:middle line:84% He sees it, and yet, the time when he was young seems 00:03:07.140 --> 00:03:09.900 align:middle line:90% was it, yesterday? 00:03:09.900 --> 00:03:11.370 align:middle line:90% How quickly. 00:03:11.370 --> 00:03:14.010 align:middle line:90% How quickly it slipped away. 00:03:14.010 --> 00:03:17.340 align:middle line:84% Now, he sees how discretion has betrayed him, 00:03:17.340 --> 00:03:23.240 align:middle line:84% and how stupidly he let the liar persuade him with phrases. 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:27.580 align:middle line:84% Tomorrow, there's plenty of time. 00:03:27.580 --> 00:03:28.080 align:middle line:90% Sunday. 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:31.170 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.170 --> 00:03:35.280 align:middle line:84% He recalls the pull of impulses he suppressed. 00:03:35.280 --> 00:03:38.280 align:middle line:90% The joy he sacrificed. 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:41.820 align:middle line:84% Every chance he lost, ridicules his brainless 00:03:41.820 --> 00:03:45.390 align:middle line:90% prudence a different way. 00:03:45.390 --> 00:03:47.760 align:middle line:84% But all these thoughts and memories 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:50.730 align:middle line:90% have made the old man dizzy. 00:03:50.730 --> 00:03:52.620 align:middle line:90% He falls asleep. 00:03:52.620 --> 00:03:56.445 align:middle line:84% His head resting on the table in the noisy cafe." 00:03:56.445 --> 00:04:02.010 align:middle line:90% 00:04:02.010 --> 00:04:04.890 align:middle line:90% Very much a young man's poem. 00:04:04.890 --> 00:04:06.840 align:middle line:84% A young man's conception of old age. 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:08.670 align:middle line:84% Cavafy in his 20s when he wrote it. 00:04:08.670 --> 00:04:11.320 align:middle line:90% 00:04:11.320 --> 00:04:17.930 align:middle line:84% Gay, probably terrified of spending his life in the closet. 00:04:17.930 --> 00:04:20.209 align:middle line:84% And he sees the old man-- old man is probably thinking 00:04:20.209 --> 00:04:23.510 align:middle line:90% about his lottery ticket. 00:04:23.510 --> 00:04:25.130 align:middle line:90% But that's what art is. 00:04:25.130 --> 00:04:27.800 align:middle line:90% He makes it his instrument. 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:34.360 align:middle line:84% The old man is there, and then he, Cavafy, puts it to his uses. 00:04:34.360 --> 00:04:37.000 align:middle line:90%