Cavafian Catoptromancy

Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης (1863 – 1933)
α. όλα β. έργα γ. μελέτες / άρθρα δ. ξενόγλωσσα

 

Καβάφης

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Cavafian Catoptromancy
by Dr. Peter Jeffreys

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The mirror is not deceiving me, the image is true, no other girl on earth is as beautiful as I. “Dünya Güzeli”
The vain remarks uttered by Cavafy’s folklori c Odalisque Dünya Güzeli as she gazes into her mirror surely resonate with Cavafy sc holars who at times find themselves wonderingabout their own academic reflection. I theref ore take some comfort in Mr. Savidis’s injunction to gaze into the Cavafian mirror since I have been engaged in this very act of scholarly scrying for some time. To be sure, the very notion of approaching Cavafy through Alice’s capricious looking- glass is at once a mischievous tease and a sobering
corrective for literary critics. Mr. Savidis very shrewdly throws down the gauntlet in hisessay “Cavafy Through the Looking-Glass” by challenging critical assumptions and reminding us how much more there is to learn about Cavafy—both the man and the poet.
Cavafy, we are told, is deceptively simple yet infinitely complex: in short, a paradox. Mr. Savidis equates Cavafy’s poetry to a l ooking-glass in which, it is assumed, we maysee what we wish to see or, in keeping with the tradition of magical catoptromancy (mirror divination), divine what we wish to know.,,

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There is much truth in this assertion,