For Wednesday: Cavafy, Poems 1910

Portrait on the Casket of a Greek Mummy (not Cavafy!) 

For Wednesday, read the section "Poems 1910" from Cavafy's The Collected Poems. There are a small number of poems here, and I don't expect you to read each one thoroughly. But do sample them all, and then go back and re-read the few that most captured you, since I'll want you to discuss at least one or two of those in class. Remember to read primarily at this point for the poetics: consider how the words are used in the terms of an utterance, and how each utterance is controlled by the speaker of the 'text.' Don't worry too much about the actual history or myth surrounding the poems yet--though feel free to look this up if you wish.

Here are some other ideas to consider:

* How do these poems relate to the themes/imagery of Sappho in any way? Though over a thousand years separate their poetry, do both sound "Greek" in their use of themes and language?

* Does the poet-narrator of each poem seem consistent, or do they seem to be coming from different people? If you had to characterize the speaker of several poems, who would he (or she) be?

* Why do you think Cavafy uses historical figures and locations so often in his poetry? Why conjure up the Roman Senate, Thermopylae, Achilles, and Sarpedon? How does the ancient world seem to accentuate his poetry?

* Since Sappho self-consciously wrote about the female side of history/myth, does Cavafy sound more "male"? If so, why? Again, focus more on the poetics than the hermeneutical implications of this question (following Culler's definition of each term in Chapter 4).

* Are these poems lyrics--or lyrical--in the same way as Sappho's fragments? Do you imagine them as songs or actual poems, meant to be written down in a book?