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Cavafy, Tennyson and the Overcoming of Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Gregory Jusdanis
Gregory Jusdanis*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

One of the striking features of Constantine Cavafy’s poetry is his apparent and pronounced originality. It seems to have an existence independent of poetry preceding it. Thus when studying Cavafy one has difficulties in detecting influences of earlier poetry. Indeed, in his mature years Cavafy was often able to appropriate his inherited tradition in such a revisionary manner that the old texts were transformed in his poetry almost beyond recognition and thus beyond the authority of their authors. The new poems proclaimed their originality and denied any indebtedness to their possible precursors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 8 , 1983 , pp. 123 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1983

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References

1. The texts of Cavafy’s poems are taken from: Cavafy, C. P., ed. Savidis, G. P., 2 vols. (Athens, 1963), and Cavafy, C. P., 1882–1923, ed. Savidis, G. P. (Athens, 1968)Google Scholar. The text of’St Simeon Stylites’ appears in: Tennyson, A., The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Ricks, C. (London, 1969).Google Scholar

2. Cavafy, C. P., , ed. Pendis, M. (Athens, 1963), p. 72.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., p. 74.

4. Ibid., p. 70.

5. Bloom, H., The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford, 1973), p. 31.Google Scholar

6. Savidis, G. P., no. 6 (Jan.-Feb. 1974), p. 20.Google Scholar

7. Bloom, H., op. cit., p. 30.Google Scholar

8. For the purpose of this paper I am only making use of the kernel of Bloom’s theory of influence — without applying his revisionary ratios and his psychoanalytic criticism of poems — which I think is not only appropriate to the texts under discussion but serves as a useful tool for understanding the relationship between poems and the mechanisms of tradition.

9. Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of lhe Roman Empire, IV (3rd ed., London, 1908), p. 74.Google Scholar

10. Fredeman, W., ‘A Sign betwixt the Meadow and the Clouds: the Ironic Apotheosis of Tennyson’s “St Simeon Stylites’”, University of Toronto Quarterly, XXXVIII (Oct. 1968), 74.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 80.

12. Cavafy, C. P., nc. 5 (Jan.-Feb. 1974), 16.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., 16.

14. Ibid., 14.

15. Cavafy, C. P., Passions and Ancient Days, translated by Keeley, E. and Savidis, G. (New York, 1971), p. xviii.Google Scholar

16. Keeley, E., Cavafy’s Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), p. 127.Google Scholar

17. Cavafy, , op. cit., p. 58.

18. Ibid., p. 62.

19. Seferis in his interpretation of the poem concludes that the young man is actually attacking Aeschylus’ verse. Losing patience, Seferis then moves (in a naive and, one would add, ridiculous attempt) to defend the tragedian against the irreverence of the ‘mosquito’s’ assault by imagining Aeschylus’ possible response. Seferis, G., I (Athens, 1974), p. 443.Google Scholar

20. Cavafy, , Passions and Ancient Days, p. xviii.Google Scholar