What would the wanderings in Alexandria be without Constantin Cavafy? A Greek language poet, so deeply rooted in this somewhat mythical city of the Mediterranean, he never ceased to roam it, to tell the story of this city - Poli, according to the title of one of his emblematic poems:
You will not find other lands, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will haunt the same
Streets. In the same neighborhoods you will grow old
And in the same houses you will wither away.
You will always arrive in this city. Do not hope for other places. (…)
Alexandria is like its destiny. It murmurs the distant echo, memory of an ancient Greek city that it transfigures through the sovereign elegance of its language. It is in a cosmopolitan Alexandria, in the 19th century, that Cavafy evolves. A city under European influence, a city shaken by the Urabi revolt, a city harshly bombarded and set on fire by the British fleet in 1882. He was born there in 1863, stayed in England with his father, a merchant, then in Istanbul/Constantinople, from which he returned in 1885 to settle in his hometown, which he would never leave again.
In the Mirror of Alexandria
There is like a mirror, with multiple facets, that is established between the city of Alexandria, which claims to be the "Queen of the Mediterranean," on the eve of World War I, and the poetry of Cavafy, the anachronistic. He plays with eras, traverses time, and reconfigures a world from the city of all his desires, of all his disgusts too...
His city is obviously not that of all Alexandrians, the majority forgotten in a city celebrated for its cosmopolitanism, assembled from notables who often hold several passports and who govern the City, in full expansion, until the 1930s.
Cavafy passed away in 1933, as another world was emerging, with the rise of nationalisms and particularisms, the war that was coming, at the gates of Alexandria, and the assertion of a sovereign, independent Egypt, which does not always look favorably upon these Alexandrians from around the world.
Cavafy is like an aesthete who seeks to escape the grip of his time, to play with time, to find correspondences with the universe of the ancient world, which speaks to him in a familiar language.
Invitation to Travel
He is the poet of a place, of a city, but he is also the one who teaches us the art of traveling, of setting out on a journey, of seeking the unknown. He has a taste, at least literary, for crossings, to discover, in distant journeys, the profound meaning of existence. He is not a poet of the return to Ithaca, of ineffable nostalgia, but one of a temptation for elsewhere, who senses and sketches this tireless part that gives rise to an invitation to travel...
Ithaca has given you this beautiful journey.
Without it, you would not have taken the road.
It has nothing more to give you.
Let us enter with him into this legendary poem, Ithaca, which takes up the thread of the Odyssey in another way:
Ithaca
When you set out for Ithaca,
Wish that the road be long,
Rich in adventures and experiences.
Do not fear the Lestrygonians,
The Cyclopes or the wrath of Poseidon.
You will never encounter anything like that on your way
If your thoughts remain lofty, if your soul and body
Are not touched except by chosen emotions.
You will not meet the Lestrygonians,
The Cyclopes or the raging Poseidon
If you do not carry them within you,
If your soul does not raise them before you.
Wish that the road be long,
May there be many summer mornings,
When you will enter - with what delight,
With what joy - into the unknown ports.
Stay a while in the Phoenician trading posts,
And buy beautiful things:
Murex and coral, amber and ebony,
Voluptuous perfumes of all sorts,
Always more of voluptuous perfumes.
Go to many cities of Egypt,
Learn still and yet more from their scholars.
Keep Ithaca always in your mind,
It is to her that you are going.
But do not hurry your journey:
Better if it lasts many years,
So you are old by the time you reach your island,
Wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
And not expecting that Ithaca will give you riches.
Ithaca has given you this beautiful journey.
Without her, you would not have taken the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
Even if she seems poor, Ithaca did not deceive you:
Now that you have become wise with so much experience,
You will have understood what Ithacas mean.
Thierry Fabre
Founder of the Rencontres d’Averroès, in Marseille.
Writer, researcher, and exhibition curator. He has directed the magazine La pensée de midi, the BLEU collection at Actes-Sud, and the programming of the Mucem. He created the Mediterranean program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Aix-Marseille University.
He takes on the editorial responsibility.
Cover Photo ©Peggychoucair - Pixabay