The First Neo-Pagan Poet?

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Cynthia L. Haven reviews the latest translation of the poems of Constantine P. Cavafy by Aliki Barnstone. Haven sees Barnstone’s translation and analysis as dipping too often into “New Age mush” and that she has a “misleading ax to grind” in relation to Cavafy’s attitude towards Christianity.

C.P. Cavafy circa 1900

“In her three pages of opening notes on “Julian at the Mysteries,” and her fascination with Julian the Apostate, who embraced paganism and repudiated Christianity, Barnstone would seem to make Julian into a personal hero, perhaps a forerunner of Wiccans. But she rejects the likelier notion that Cavafy saw the emperor as a figure of fun. Perhaps Julian, an able ruler and a somewhat confused individual, aroused the contempt of the Alexandrian poet, himself able to master so many contradictory worlds within his one city. Or perhaps Cavafy projected his own ambiguities on the emperor, slyly mocking his own absurdities.” – Cynthia L. Haven

Was Cavafy (considered one of the finest modern Greek poets) some sort of proto-Pagan humanist with sympathies for the ancient world? His poems have certainly been critical of Christianity, and he did allude to and reference the Hellenic period quite often in his writing. Many feel he lived his life on the borderlands of faith, not quite Christian and not quite a Pagan. Even his final actions leave room for doubt.

“He continued to live in Alexandria until his death, from cancer of the larynx, in 1933. It is recorded that he received the holy communion of the Orthodox Church [after much resistance it should be noted] shortly before dying, and that his last motion was to draw a circle on a blank sheet of paper and then place a period in the middle of the circle.”

The blessing of the son and of the sun? The question will never be truly answered without the poet to answer himself. But perhaps this translation (and the criticism of it) is yet another ode to the greatness of all poets. The reviewer reads his work and finds a “claustrophobic and mysterious” homosexual too clever to ever define himself, while the translator sees him as a “tender humanist” in the mode of the Emperor Julian. While neither may be the full truth, they both provide a way to approach the work.

Tags: Paganism