Before Time Could Change Them:
The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy (2001)
Translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis
354 pages
We are told that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover; but the beautiful cover and striking title of this book --- Before Time Could Change Them --- immediately stood out to me as I browsed slowly through the bookstore. Although I had never heard of the poet Constantine Cavafy, and haven’t read a lot of poetry, the title struck a chord, speaking in one short phrase to both human frailty and desire. Paging through the book and stopping to read several of the poems in this collection of Cavafy’s work, his mix of personal reflections on life and references to classical European antiquity drew me in.
In his poems, Cavafy does not focus on the beauty and wonder of nature; here instead we read about the mystery and depth of the human spirit: our hopes and our fears, our desires and our vanities. A deep melancholy courses through many of Cavafy’s poems, which explore unrequited love, lost youth and the tenuousness of success.
The title poem captures well Cavafy’s style well. Reflecting on the departure of a lover to a distant city, he concludes with the devastatingly poignant realization that the pain of parting may also contain a silver lining:
It was circumstances. --- Or perhaps Fortune
came on the scene as artist, separating them now,
before their feeling could vanish, before Time could change them;
the one will seem eternally what he was to the other ---
a twenty four year old; a young, handsome man.
Other poems look back on the struggle against declining body and mind from deep in the fall and winter of life --- after time has changed them, as it were. The poem Melancholy of Jason Kleander; Poet in Kommagini; 595 A.D. opens
The aging of my body and my features
is a wound from a savage knife.
There’s no enduring it.
And in another poem, An Old Man sits alone in a café
And he reflects on Temperance, on how it fooled him;
and how he always believed --- what madness! ---
that lying voice which said, “Tomorrow. You have lots of time.”
He remembers passions that he checked; and how much
joy he sacrificed. His brainless wisdom,
each ruined change derides it now.
The poems drawn from history and legend also focus on the human element of the story, the emotional context of the moment: the vanity of rulers and scholars, and their fears as well. In Nero’s Term, the Roman emperor seeks out prophets to reveal his future:
Nero did not worry when he heard
what the Delphic oracle revealed.
“Seventy-three is an age he should fear.”
He still had time to be happy.
He’s thirty years old. The god
has given him a very ample term
in which to prepare for future dangers.
Now he’ll go back to Rome a little tired,
but tired gloriously from that trip,
on which all the days were pleasure---
at theaters, in gardens, in gymnasiums …
Evenings in Achaia’s cities …
Ah the pleasure of naked bodies above all …
That is Nero’s portion. And in Spain Galba
secretly musters and drills his army,
the old man who’s reached his seventy-third year.
But not all is lamentation and disquiet in Cavafy’s poems. He also writes of desire and love, such as in Blue Eyes, which opens
These vibrant spheres of light were not made
for scorn, oh beautiful Circassian girl.
Not wrath’s, but joy’s and passion’s lamps,
pleasure’s lavish donors,
promise of sweetness in fleshly delight.
This wonderful collection of poems includes a Forward by Gore Vidal and an Introduction by the translator, which together present a brief history of Cavafy’s life, and place his work in some historical context and literary style. Many of Cavafy’s poems, as can be seen in several of the selections I’ve included above, are almost prose-like in their structure, making his work very approachable. But the relatively simple structure can be deceiving, because his choice of just the right word and his slight turn of a phrase draw a reader effortlessly into the emotional settings he creates.
Other reviews / information:
I’ve included the complete Cavafy poem Waiting for the Barbarians at the end of my review of the J. M. Coetzee book of the same name.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION and NON-FICTION
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