evident fact requiring no explanation, he breathes the spirit of the Greek Anthology. Yet he, living in this century, knew, as the poets of the anthology could not, that the world he is celebrating is doomed regardless of how the gods are bribed, and it is this that informs his work with an overpowering melancholy. Melancholy, yes, but never maudlin sentimentality, rather an irony, which, once removed, would be cynicism.

Rex Warner, in an introduction to an English translation used here (The Poems of D.P. Cavafy, John Mavrogordato, trans., Hogarth Press, London, 1952), describes Cavafy's private world as one "which most English schoolmasters would describe as 'decadent'. It is a world without any of the obvious epic, lyric or tragic grandeurs. Yet it is a world that existed and exists. It can be examined minutely and dispassionately. And to this examination Cavafy brings a peculiar point of view together with a singular integrity."

The acid pen of a contemporary, Nikos Kazandzakis, the recently deceased author of Zorba the Greek and The Greek Passion (Christ Recrucified), meeting Cavafy during a trip to Alexandria, characterizes Cavafy as "one of the last flowers of a civilization, with double faded leaves, with a long, asthenic stem, without seed. Cavafy has all the typical characteristics of a distinguished man of decadencewise, ironic, hedonist, proud, full of memories. He lives like one 'without a care', as one who is 'bold'. He gazes, stretched out on a 'couch, out of his window and awaits the 'Barbarians' to invade".

Given his realization that states, their cultures and values are transitory, it is not difficult to see why Cavafy holds to his "peculiar point of view." Warner calls this "the inversion of the heroic," and, quite rightly, points out that Cavafy "loves to insist not on some great completed accomplishment or successful quest, but on the importance of first steps or of incidents by the way. In the end the effect is often one of heroism, but it is the quiet heroism of the individual rather than of the heroism of cause or state or professional strong men." A valuable viewpoint indeed, in this century of behemoth states, fanatical causes and rampant anti-individualism!

In this he invites comparison, by way of contrast, with the giant of modern Greek poetry, Kostes Palamas, who used the Hellenic past for epic displays of heroic volksgeist, as in The King's Flute and Dodecalogue of the Gypsy.

What, for instance, says Cavafy of the epic resistance at Thermopyle? Only this:

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"And again greater honor becomes them

When they foresee (and many do foresee) That Ephialtes, will be there in the end,

And that the Medes, at last, they will get through.”

mattachine REVIEW

He sees ends merely as incentives, dream-symbols never real in themselves. The Odyssey is such a symbol, with Ithaka as its end.

"You must always have Ithaka in your mind,

Arrival there is your predestination.

But do not hurry the journey at all. Better that it should last many years;

Be quite old when you anchor at the island, Rich with all you have gained on the way, Not expecting Ithaka to give you riches. Ithaka has given you your lovely journey. Without Ithaka you would not have set out. Ithaka has no more to give you now."

"Poor though you find it, Ithaka has not cheated you. Wise as you will have become, with all your experience, You will have understood the meaning of an Ithaka."

Yet, despite his classic allusions and world-weary historic irony, there is the man Cavafy-a man, moreover, who exposes the innermost part of himself to full view.

What sort of man, then, was Cavafy, and how had his life informed his poetry? The geographical data seem prosaic enough. This brief notice was given by him in a Greek periodical publishing poems of his: "I am a Constantinopolitan by origin, but born in Alexandria--in a house on the Rue Cherif. I left young and spent a great part of my childhood in England. Afterwards I visited this country as an adult, but for very short duration. I resided in France. In my adolescence I lived for more than two years in Constantinople. I haven't been to Greece for many years.

"My last job was in a government office connected with the Department of Public Works of Egypt. I know English, French and a little Italian."

His own statement that he was born in 1868 has long been accepted, although several researchers found records in the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria stating the correct date to be April 17, 1863. The son of a prominent family, he had no financial worries until a series of reverses in the family business, capped by his mother's death in 1899 caused him, in 1903, to return to Alexandria to a modest and immobile life. From 1903 to his death of throat cancer on April 29, 1933, he scarcely left his second-story apartment at number 10 Rue Lepsius, an apartment, according to literary visitors, cluttered with an ill-gathered assortment of furniture and bricabrac that reflected the character of the occupant. The character, perhaps, but not the outer man. Habits of English punctuality were with him to the end, and there was meticulous method evident in both his public life and in the laconic verse he produced in driblets and circulated among a close circle of litterati. A solitary figure even while relatives lived 11