Daniel Mendelsohn
Cavafy : The Life of a Poet

Page 6

Cavafy himself dated his mature period to the year 1911—not coincidentally, the year in which he published "Dangerous," the first of his poems that situated homoerotic content in an ancient setting. Nor is it a coincidence that the subject of this poem is a Syrian student living in Alexandria during the uneasy double reign of the sons of Constantine the Great, Constans and Constantius, in the fourth century AD, at the very moment when the Roman Empire was shifting from paganism to Christianity. As if profiting from that uncertain moment, and reflecting it as well, the young man feels emboldened to give bold voice to illicit urges:

Strengthened by contemplation and study, I will not fear my passions like a coward. My body I will give to pleasures, to diversions that I've dreamed of, to the most daring erotic desires, to the lustful impulses of my blood, without any fear at all....

Both the "shady" character and the confusing fourth-century setting (to which he would return in his late masterwork "Myres: Alexandria in 340 A.D.", the longest poem he ever published) are typical of what George Seferis described as the characteristic Cavafian milieu: "the margins of places, men, epochs...where there are many amalgams, fluctuations, transformations, transgressions." As he neared the age of fifty, Cavafy had found, at last, a way to write, without shame, about his desire—a way that suggestively conflated the various "margins" to which Cavafy had always been drawn: erotic, geographical, temporal.

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Cf. Cavafy's poems - Bilingual versions, Green, Cavafy - The supreme modern poet of nostalgia, Cavafy in print, Cavafy resources

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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/modern/cavafy-mendelsohn.asp?pg=6