“The 28-year-old Egyptian man who has confessed to the murder of criminal lawyer Stavros Georgiou is expected to appear before the public prosecutor. According to the information released so far, the 28-year-old confessed during questioning by the authorities. As he allegedly stated, he had met the 73-year-old lawyer through mutual acquaintances, and the two men went to the lawyer’s office, where they drank alcohol. There, according to his account, they argued; the lawyer attacked him, and he beat him to death”.
Constantine P. Cavafy
1.Pleasure
The joy and fragrance of my life are the memories of those hours
when I found and held on to pleasure exactly as I desired it.
The joy and fragrance of my life are mine,
I who turned away from every commonplace delight of love.
2.One Night
The room was poor and vulgar,
hidden above a disreputable tavern.
From the window one could see the alley,
filthy and narrow. Down below
rose the voices of laborers
playing cards and making merry.
And there, upon that humble, common bed,
I possessed the body of love, I possessed the lips,
those lips of pleasure, flushed with intoxication—
so flushed with such a rapture that even now,
as I write, after so many years,
alone within my solitary house,
I grow intoxicated once again.
Our Alexandrian poet was a great one—there is no denying it. Yet would it really be an act of hubris if we were to call him back to the discipline of poetry? Not because he left behind poems celebrating forbidden pleasures. There were only eight of them, after all. And in the end, who truly cares what kind of erotic fulfillment a person seeks, or how one harvests its fruits?
That is not where our disagreement with the poet lies. Poetry itself was born from the primal, overpowering passions of love. No poetry is written without the fierce awakening of the generative instinct of a Paris and a beautiful Helen. So yes, even the poet’s “dark” desires in pursuit of such pleasures have every right to exist and to be sung.
Our reservation is something else, and we have expressed it here before. The strange murder mentioned above simply gives us occasion to raise it once again.
The Alexandrian poet lived through a turbulent age—times stained by the blood of devastating wars, but also by social upheavals the likes of which societies have scarcely witnessed since. Yet Cavafy remained untouched by such lofty ideals of conquering and transforming the world. He stayed grounded in his own passions and personal preoccupations. Even worse, he chose to glorify the desires and impulses of eccentric, vainly ambitious leaders, like Antony.
Constantine Cavafy was, in our view, a conservative poet. Perhaps that is why he never captivated many of us—not only this writer—as profoundly as the life, style, and themes of Yannis Ritsos have done, from our youth until today. Ritsos too had his own passions, certainly. But…
“We do not sing in order to stand apart from the world, my brother. We sing in order to bring the world together.”
There is another aspect to the world of such “dark” sexual choices—choices that refuse to emerge into the light. Those involved often treat them as though they were crimes. Acts burdened by guilt, repression, secrecy, and impulses left unchecked.
Above all, there are the financial transactions that degrade such encounters from the very beginning. Even more so when one participant is a distinguished and respected gentleman—a renowned criminal lawyer—and the other a young economic migrant, a “drifter” and “good-for-nothing,” selling sexual companionship for little more than a plate of food in a country where he came hoping for a better life.
I do not know who, in truth, bore the greater share of responsibility. What is certain is that, at this moment, both men are at once perpetrators and victims.
And one final thought.
“From the window one could see the alley,
filthy and narrow. Down below…”
The alley in Cavafy’s Alexandria is the very same dark street—even if today it has become a broad avenue in the center of Athens.
I have no wish to illuminate it.
Those who have walked through such “alleys” should be the ones to speak.
But let them speak… on their honor.