A Dose of Cavafy, After Overindulgence in Kant, Gay Political Correctness, and other Austerities

This morning, after several days of obnoxiously rigorous and dower intellectual activity, I went to the beach with an old friend, a well worn volume of Cavafy’s poems. It is one of the last glorious days of summer (Such splendorous crystalline perfection can’t last much longer.), and I could think of no one better to guide me along the brilliantly lit strand decorated with the languorous forms of those sun bronzed, fine muscled young men Italy seems to produce in prodigious abundance. Venice isn’t, after all, so far from Alexandria.

Cavafy is arguably our greatest homosexual poet. There are, of course, other great poets who happened to be homosexual (Auden, García Lorca, Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, just to name a few), but I can’t think of any other great poet for whom the transformation of homosexual love into poetry played nearly as important a role. But how can I extol the pleasures of Cavafy after even partially ascribing to the austerities of Kantian ethics, beating the drum for monogamy, and urging us all to be out, proud and comfortable with our sexual orientation?

Cavafy’s voice comes from a world totally outside such considerations. As Auden says in his introduction to the major English language translation of Cavafy’s collected poems, “The erotic world he depicts is one of casual pick ups and short- lived affairs….At the same time he refuses to pretend that his memories of moments of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.” So much for Kant. And for Cavafy, homosexual pleasure almost always has an undertaste of shame and the savour of forbidden fruit. So much for our liberated gay sensibilities and political correctness.

But who can resist lines such as:

The fulfillment of their deviate, sensual delight
Is done. They rose from the mattress,
And they dress hurriedly without speaking.
They leave the house separately, furtively; and as
They walk somewhat uneasily on the street, it seems
as if they suspect that something about them betrays
into what kind of bed they fell a little while back.

(From “Their Beginning,” trans. Rae Dalven)

It seems that no matter how Kantian or post- Stonewallian we are, Cavafy’s lines go straight to our innermost souls. He speaks to the part of us that exists outside (or perhaps prior to) our sense of morality or social awareness. He is direct and honest about his feelings, his longings, his shame, and he asks, demands, the same of the reader. If the reader denies he ever had such feelings, the poetry has nothing to say to him. In that sense, Cavafy is supremely Kantian. There is no manipulation, no seduction of the reader. He speaks of shame, but is not ashamed to do so. He speaks to and evokes our deepest humanity. (But somehow, I still don’t think he would be Kant’s favorite poet.)

This sense of humanity goes beyond our sexual orientation. Cavafy’s honesty and comfort with who he is speaks not just to gay men but rather to a much wider public. Despite their directness and sensuality, his homosexual poems don’t seem to evoke any embarrassment on the part of straights. Like the case of the Barbarini Faun I discussed in an earlier blog, Cavafy provides another lesson in the power of being comfortable in one’s own skin.