The saucy serpent symbolizes A hundred Freudian surprises; With mine, I do the Indian trick Though it’s become a shade too thick To stand up like an actual rope — I leave that to the Band of Hope.
Nor can I manage kundalini And play on it like Paganini …
Mere beanstalk with a tower atop I’m just like Jack, I cannot stop, Hand over curious hand I climb Until I hear the belfries chime And some companionable she Asks is there honey still for tea?
* * * Perhaps it would be better just to start rewriting La Rochefoucauld, beginning with some such aphorism as ‘Jouir c’est pourrir un peu?’
* * * You must put yourself into deep soak, psychologically speaking.
* * * A phrase from Bacon: ‘Prize bulls made fierce by dark keeping.’
* * * Ah, my compatriots! What shall it profit a man to become a utilitarian jujube — to go thrilling off each morning in his electric brougham to the offices of the Spectator? How low can you rise?
* * * To become a poet is to take the whole field of human knowledge and human desire for one’s province; yes but, this field can only be covered by continual inner abdications.
* * * The more I read of those artists who have reached the bounds of human knowledge — and there is a permissible bound to the humanly knowable — the more it becomes apparent to me that statement becomes simpler as it becomes profounder.
Finally it becomes platitude. At this point one begins to understand the religious claim that only initiates can communicate with each other because they use, not concept but symbol.
For them all speech based on concept becomes an indiscretion; one can only really exchange what is mutually understood. In this sense every work of art is an indiscretion — but a calculated indiscretion.
* * * Death is a metaphor; nobody dies to himself.
* * * There must always be a breath of hope if you are to fully enjoy the quality of our despair; yes, and also remember that where there is faith there is doubt.
* * * Art is as unimportant as banking, unless it comes from a spirit in free play — then it really is banking.
* * * Vision is exorcism.
NOTES IN THE TEXT
* Page 680 the afternoon sun This little room, how well I know it!
Now they’ve rented this and the next door one As business premises, the whole house Has been swallowed up by merchants’ offices, By limited companies and shipping agents …
O how familiar it is, this little room!
Once here, by the door, stood a sofa, And before it a little Turkish carpet, Exactly here. Then the shelf with the two Yellow vases, and on the right of them: No. Wait. Opposite them (how time passes) The shabby wardrobe and the little mirror.
And here in the middle the table Where he always used to sit and write, And round it the three cane chairs.
How many years … And by the window over there The bed we made love on so very often.
Somewhere all these old sticks of furniture Must still be knocking about …
And beside the window, yes, that bed.
The afternoon sun climbed half way up it.
We parted at four o’clock one afternoon, Just for a week, on just such an afternoon.
I would have never Believed those seven days could last forever. free translation from C. P. Cavafy
* Page 681 far away This fugitive memory … I should so much Like to record it, but it’s dwindled …
Hardly a print of it remaining …
It lies so far back, back in my earliest youth, Before my gifts had kindled.
A skin made of jasmine-petals on a night …
An August evening … but was it August?
I can barely reach it now, barely remember …
Those eyes, the magnificent eyes …
Or was it perhaps in September … in the dog days …
Irrevocably blue, yes, bluer than A sapphire’s mineral gaze. free translation from C. P. Cavafy
* Page 704 one of their gods Moving through the market-place of Seleukeia Towards the hour of dusk there came one, A tall, rare and perfectly fashioned youth With the rapt joy of absolute incorruptibility Written in his glance; and whose dark Perfumed head of hair uncombed attracted The curious glances of the passers-by.
They paused to ask each other who he was, A Greek of Syria perhaps or some other stranger?
But a few who saw a little deeper drew aside, Thoughtfully, to follow him with their eyes, To watch him gliding through the dark arcades, Through the shadow-light of evening silently Going towards those quarters of the town Which only wake at night in shameless orgies And pitiless debaucheries of flesh and mind.
And these few who knew wondered which of Them he was, And for what terrible sensualities he hunted Through the crooked streets of Seleukeia, A shadow-visitant from those divine and hallowed Mansions where They dwell. free translation from C. P. Cavafyё
* Page 761 che fece … il gran rifiuto To some among us comes that implacable day Demanding that we stand our ground and utter By choice of will the great Yea or Nay.
And whosoever has in him the affirming word Will straightway then be heard.
The pathways of his life will clear at once And all rewards will crown his way.
But he, the other who denies, No-one can say he lies; he would repeat His Nay in louder tones if pressed again.
It is his right — yet by such little trifles, A ‘No’ instead of ‘Yes’ his whole life sinks and stifles. free translation from C. P. Cavafy
* Page 812 The incidents recorded in Capodistria’s letter have been borrowed and expanded from a footnote in Franz Hartmann’s Life of Paracelsus.