Cavafy rediscovered

My thoughts recently went back to C.P. Cavafy, a poet whose sense of history I’ve long appreciated. For me, Cavafy’s writing has a timeless quality, thanks to a simple style and often ancient setting that removes us from ourselves to focus us on something more important. His familiar riff on Homer, “Ithaka," is just one example. I could cite others.

Some of my latest reading on Cavafy includes Joseph Epstein’s article in The New Criterion, which describes Cavafy as having an abundance of the tragic sense – the sense that all created things pass away. Cavafy loves what the world has to offer but he also reminds us that the world is always in transition, that something more to reckon with exists than simply what is. The point seems too often lost in a world caught up in its own business. For me, Cavafy encourages us to see that which lies beyond ourselves.

Alas, I am dealing with what is this week: A host of stories with an end-of-week deadline, and a double-headed congestion mixing allergies with cold. Pass the Kleenex. Or, maybe not.