Photos On Cavafy

: Photos On Cavafy; 24 June 2009; Hits: 1717

Cafafy1

"Dimitri Yeros's Cavafy-inspired images offer us both food for thought as well as a moving aesthetic experience. Each photograph is a carefully composed beautifully crisp black and white rendering, filled with details. The images are varied-some celebrate the nude male body, others a chance erotic encounter, still others the interior of a workshop, a sensuous landscape, or a moving view of a country village and its men. The viewer is invited to contemplate the links between poetry and art, to question why each image was selected, and to consider how the two artistic forms intertwine and resonate. Cavafy once wrote that "Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty, / almost imperceptibly, completing life ". Dimitris Yeros has indeed brought us an art that helps complete life."

Lauren E. Talalay
Acting Director and Associate Curator,
Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan.

GORE VIDAL

CHE FECE… IL GRAN RIFIUTO

For some people there comes a day
when they are obliged to say either Yes
or No. It is immediately clear who has
the Yes ready within, and saying it proceeds

along his path of honor and conviction.
Refusing, the other has no regrets. If asked again,
he would still say no. And yet he is beset
by that no - the right one - throughout his life.

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Albee

EDWARD ALBEE

I BROUGHT TO ART

I sit and muse. Desires and senses
I brought to Art- things half-seen,
faces or lines; of unfulfilled loves
uncertain memories. I’ll give myself to it.
It knows how to shape Beauty’s Form;
almost imperceptibly completing life
combining impressions, combining the days.

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Machfuz

NAQUIB MAHFUZ

IN THE SAME PLACE

Home, cafes, neighborhood, surroundings
I’ve seen and walked through; year in year out.

I created you amid joy and sorrows:
out of so many events, so many things.

And for me you’ve become pure feeling.

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Howard

RICHARD HOWARD

VOICES

I sit and muse. Desires and senses
I brought to Art- things half-seen,
faces or lines; of unfulfilled loves
uncertain memories. I’ll give myself to it.
It knows how to shape Beauty’s Form;
almost imperceptibly completing life
combining impressions, combining the days.

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Arman

ARMAN

SCULPTOR OF TYANA

As you will have heard, I’m no novice.
A good bit of stone passes through my hands.
And in my hometown of Tyana, I’m known
to all; and here too I’ve had many statues
commissioned by senators.

Let me show you
some without more ado. Observe this Rhea;
august, full of forbearance, age-old.
Observe Pompey. Marius,
Aemilius Paulus, Scipio Africanus.
To the best of my ability, faithful likenesses.
Patroclus (I’ve still a few touches to add).
Next to those blocks of yellowy marble
over there, that’s Caesarion.

And for some time now I’ve been busy
working on a Poseidon. I’ve given much thought
to his steeds in particular, how I might fashion them.
They have to be sufficiently light that
their bodies and legs might clearly show them
not treading on the ground, but racing over the waters.

Yet this is by far my favorite work
which I wrought with emotion and utmost care;
this one, on a warm day in summer
when my mind soared toward the ideal,
this one here I envisioned this young Hermes.

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Tournier

MICHEL TOURNIER

CANDLES

Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles-
golden, warm, and vivid candles.

Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
The nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.

I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.

I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark lines gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliterate.

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Ford

CHARLES HENRI FORD

TO CALL UP THE PHANTOM SHADES

One candle suffices. Its soft flame
fits things better they will be more gentle
when they come when Love’s Phantom come.

One candle suffices. This room tonight
must not have too much light. All fallen in reverie,
in perfect control, and with the dim light,
just so, in reverie I will form visions for them
to come, the Phantom Shades of Love to come.

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Weslow

WILLIAM WESLOW

BODY, REMEMBER...

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
Not only the beds upon which you lay,
But those desires too that glowed for you
openly in their eyes
and their voices that trembled for you-that only
some chance obstacle cancelled them.
Now that all is safely in the past,
it almost feels as if you gave yourself
fully to those desires-as they glowed,
remember, the eyes that devoured you;
the voices, trembling for you, remember, body.

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Walls

WALLS

Without a care, or pity, or shame
they built these walls around me, deep and high
And now I sit here, hopeless and wait;
empty of thought: this fate eats away my mind;
so much, so many things I had to do out there
Ah, did I not see what they were doing
when they were building these walls?
But I never heard them, never a sound from the builders.
Imperceptibly I was shut away from the world out there.

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The Next Table

DUANE MICHALS

THE NEXT TABLE

He can’t be more than twenty-two.
And yet I’m sure that almost as many years ago,
I enjoyed that selfsame body.
It has nothing to do with passion’s fervor.
And I’ve only just arrived at the casino;
I’ve not had time to drink too much.
I enjoyed I did that selfsame body.
And even if I can’t recall where
my memory lapse means nothing.
There, now that he’s sitting at the next table
I recognize his every movement
and beneath his clothes I can see again
the naked limbs I loved.

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Chandelier

PIERRE AND GILLES

CHANDELIER

In a small bare room, four walls no more,
and draped with plain green cloth,
a lovely chandelier burns and blazes;
and in its every flame kindlesa lustful passion, a lustful urge.
In the small room that glows,
lit by the chandelier’s strong fire,
by no means common is the light emitted.
Not intended for timid bodies is this warmth’s sensual delight.

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Since Nine O' Clock

LEONIDAS DE PIAN AND VLADIMIR MALAKOV

SINCE NINE O’CLOCK

Half past twelve. The time has passed quickly
since nine o’ clock when I lit the lamp, and sat down here.
I’ve been sitting without reading, and without talking.
Who would I talk to all alone as I am in this house.
At nine o’clock when I lit the lamp,
the image of my youthful body came and found me
and reminded me of locked perfumed rooms,
and pleasure long past - what salacious pleasure!
And it also conjured up before my eyes,
streets no longer recognizable, busy clubs now closed,
and theatres and caf?s that are no more.
The image of my youthful body came and brought me sorrows too;
family bereavements, separations, feelings of those dear to me,
feelings of the dead so little appreciated.
Half-past twelve. How the time has passed.
Half-past twelve. How the years have passed.

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I' 've Looked So Much

I’VE LOOKED SO MUCH

I’ve looked so much upon beauty
that my vision is replete with it.
The body’s contours. Red lips. Sensual limbs.
Hair as though taken from Greek statues;
always lovely, even when disheveled,
and falling, slightly, over white brows.
Faces of love, just as my poetry wanted them …
in the nights of my youth, in those nights of mine,
secretly encountered...

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Days Of 1908

DAYS OF 1908

That year he found himself out of work;
and so was living by playing cards,
or backgammon, and by borrowing.
He’d been offered a job, in a small stationer’s,
at three pounds a month.
But he turned it down, without any hesitation.
It wouldn’t do. That was no salary for him,
a rather literate young man of twenty-five.
He won two or three shillings a day, if that.
What could the lad make from cards and backgammon,
in the common caf?s of his kind,
however cleverly he played,
however gullible the opponents he chose.
As for the borrowing, it was neither here nor there.
He’d rarely come up with a crown,
more usually only half that,
sometimes he even settled for a shilling.
For a week or so, sometimes longer,
when he got away from the awful late nights,
he’d refresh himself by bathing, by a morning swim.
His clothes were in a terrible state.
He always wore the same suit,
a suit the color of very faded cinnamon.
O summer days of nineteen hundred and eight,
missing from your aspect, tastefully so,
was the faded cinnamon-colored suit.
Your aspect has preserved him
as he was whenever he removed,
whenever he threw off those unbecoming clothes,
and that patched underwear.
And he remained stark naked;
flawlessly beautiful; a sight to behold.
His hair uncombed, swept back;
his limbs slightly suntanned from his morning nakedness
when bathing, when on the beach.

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In The Boring Village

IN THE BORING VILLAGE

In the boring village where he works
- an assistant in a general store; still very young
- and where he’s waiting for two or three months more to pass,
two or three months more, for work to slacken,
so he can go into town and fling himself
without delay into the activity and fun;
in the boring village where he waits
- he went to bed tonight beset by passion,
all his youth aflame with desires of the flesh
all his exquisite youth in exquisite intensity.
And in his sleep sensual pleasure came;
in sleep he sees and possesses the figure,
the flesh he so desired...

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Days Of 1901

DAYS OF 1901

What set him apart was,
that amidst all his depravity
and his extensive amorous experience,
despite all his habitual
accord of attitude and age,
there were moments
- though naturally very rare -
when he gave the impression
of virtually untouched flesh.
The beauty of his twenty-nine years,
beauty so seasoned by wanton pleasure,
at times strangely recalled a youth who
- rather awkwardly - surrenders
his chaste body to love for the first time.

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In Despair

IN DESPAIR

He lost him completely.
And now he seeks on the lips
of each new lover his lips;
in the union with each new lover
he seeks to deceive himself
that it’s the same youth,
that he’s surrendering to him.
He lost him completely,
as though he never existed.
For he wanted - the youth said -
he wanted to save himself
from the tainted, unwholesome pleasure;
from the tainted, shameful pleasure.
There was still time - so he said -
to save himself.
He lost him completely,
as though he never existed.
Through imagination, through delusions
on the lips of other youths he seeks his lips;
trying to feel his passionate love once more.

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In A Town Of Osroini

IN A TOWN OF OSROINI

Wounded in a tavern brawl
our friend Remon was brought to us
last night around midnight.
Through the window that we left wide open,
the moon lit his handsome body on the bed.
We’re a mixture here;
Syrians, Greeks, Armenians, Medes.
Such is Remon too.
But yesterday when the moon lit his sensuous face,
our thoughts went to Plato’s Charmides.

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Craftsman Of Craters

CRAFTSMAN OF CRATERS

I sit and muse. Desires and senses
In this crater of pure silver
- made for the household of Heracleides,
in which good taste prevails in abundance -
note the elegant flowers, and streams,
and thyme, and at the centre I have set a fair youth,
naked, seductive; one of his legs still in the water.
- I begged you, o memory,
to be my prized assistant that I might fashion
just as it was the face of the youth I loved.
The task proved considerable
for some fifteen years have passed
since the day he fell, a soldier,
in the defeat at Magnesia.

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September Of 1903

SEPTEMBER 1903

Let me at least fill myself with delusion now;
that I might not feel my life empty.
So many times I was so close.
Yet how paralyzed, how fainthearted I was;
why was it I remained with lips sealed;
my empty life weeping within me,
and my desires dressing themselves in black.
So many times to be so close to those eyes,
to those sensuous lips, to that perfect, beloved body.
So many times to be so close.

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Days Of 1896

DAYS OF 1896

He was utterly disgraced.
A sexual inclination of his strictly forbidden and scorned
(innate nonetheless) was the reason:
society was exceedingly prudish.
He gradually lost what little money he had;
then his standing, and his good name.
He was nearly thirty without ever a whole year spent in work
at least not work anyone knew.
Sometimes he earned his living from mediations
that were deemed shameful.
He ended up the type with whom if seen too often,
no doubt you’d be seriously compromised.
But this isn’t everything. It wouldn’t be fair.
The memory of his beautyis deserving of much more.
For there’s another side and if seen from this
he appears an amiable sort;
he appears a simple and genuine child of love,
who above honor and good name
unquestioningly placed the pure pleasure of his pure flesh.
Above his good name?
For society which was exceedingly prudish
made foolish connections.

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On Hearing Of Love

ON HEARING OF LOVE

On hearing of overpowering love
tremble and be moved like an aesthete.
But, content, recall what your imagination
fashioned for you; this first;
and then the rest - lesser things -
that in your life you experienced and enjoyed,
things more real and tangible.
- Of such loves you were not deprived.

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