Cavafy: ‘Mourning the Memory, the Aura of Our Days’

Certain poems are seized upon in times of crisis. Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” with its damningly comprehensive indictment of the best and the worst, springs to mind at certain dark moments, as does Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” with its declaration of last-ditch desperation, “We must love one another or die.”

A bust of Cavafy, in his former apartment in Alexandria (now the Cavafy Museum). "Cavafy Museum, Alexandria. Bust of Cavafy" by mark muehlhaeusler is licensed under CC BY 2.0

But at our current juncture, which may be less characterized by a fear of imminent apocalypse than by anxiety in the face of the approach of fully visible, slow-moving disasters like global warming and incipient authoritarianism, I think Cavafy’s “Trojans,” in its clear and resonant translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, might do a better job of echoing our current dread.

Today, in that light, I was struck by the line, “They’re mourning the memory, the aura of our days.” Cavafy (1863-1933) himself is known for his rueful contemplation of what he saw as the tragic, millennia-long erosion of Hellenic culture and civilization. But the unavoidable fatalism of this stanza is both sad and terrifying when applied to our situation—and our cowardice—as of January 9, 2022:

But when the great crisis comes,
our boldness and resolution vanish;
our spirit falters, paralyzed,
and we scurry around the walls
trying to save ourselves by running away.

“[T]rying to save ourselves by running away,” indeed. Here’s “Trojans”:

Trojans

By C.P. Cavafy

translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Our efforts are those of men prone to disaster;
our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We just begin to get somewhere,
gain a little confidence,
grow almost bold and hopeful,

when something always comes up to stop us:
Achilles leaps out of the trench in front of us
and terrifies us with his violent shouting.

Our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We think we’ll change our luck
by being resolute and daring,
so we move outside ready to fight.

But when the great crisis comes,
our boldness and resolution vanish;
our spirit falters, paralyzed,
and we scurry around the walls
trying to save ourselves by running away.

Yet we’re sure to fail. Up there,
high on the walls, the dirge has already begun.
They’re mourning the memory, the aura of our days.
Priam and Hecuba mourn for us bitterly. 

Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press.