A Cavafy Translation
But first, some reflections on brushing up ones' languages
AT CHURCH I love the six-winged fans the silver vessels and the candle-sticks, icons and lights, pulpits, all hers there, as I enter into the Greek church, where the lovely smells of fragrant incense and harmonies of liturgy abound amongst the priests, majestic, rhythmic in their every motion, brilliantly enshroud, my mind grasps at the great glory, Byzantium, our people’s past, renowned
And the original for comparison:
ΣΤΗΝ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑ
Την εκκλησίαν αγαπώ - τα εξαπτέρυγά της
τ' ασήμια των σκευών, τα κηροπήγιά της,
τα φώτα, τες εικόνες της, τον άμβωνά της.
Εκεί σαν μπω, μες σ' εκκλησία των Γραικών.
με των θυμιαμάτων της τες ευωδίες,
μες τες λειτουργικές φωνές και συμφωνίες,
τες μεγαλοπρεπείς των ιερέων παρουσίες
και κάθε των κινήσεως τον σοβαρό ρυθμό -
λαμπρότατοι μες στων αμφίων τον στολισμό -
ο νους μου πηαίνει σε τιμές μεγάλες της φυλής μας,
στον ένδοξό μας Βυζαντινισμό.
For the curious, here are the metrical notes for each line:
1-4 (2 iambs + trochee)
5-6 (trochaic pentameter)
7-9 (iambic pentameter)
10 ( 2 trochees + spondee + trochee)
11 (iambic pentameter)
Might as well publish this too, an attempt on Martial from Epigrams 1.47:
Nuper erat medicus, nunc est vispillo Diaulus:
Quod vispillo facit, fecerat et medicus.
Diaulus, I hear them crow Switched from his old line of toil It differs little for his patients though Quiet as ever, but now under the soil
The first semester of my second year is coming to a close. I am now acquainted with the greater, or at least most useful, part of Attic grammar, and am practicing reading via Steadman’s edition of the Anabasis, extracts from the New Testament, and both volumes of Athenaze. Inevitably I started comparing my knowledge of Greek (by which I shall be meaning Demotic) with that of Attic, led by curiosity regarding how the languages differ, and agree, and the process of their historical divergence, and after realising, to my own amusement and slight alarm, that I had a substantially more articulate knowledge of the latter’s grammar, thought that it would behove me to correct this discrepancy if I wanted to get a grip on these questions.
It is unsurprising that this is the case, given that I have been reciting optatives regularly at breakfast and haven’t been in Greek school for almost a decade, and have spent relatively little effort in self-study. The time spent in Attic has even introduced some archaisms into my Greek, for I am starting to pronounce all vowels in the Attic fashion. This habit has a practical purpose in helping me write Greek, for some vowels (ει, η, υ, οι) are homophones, leading to spelling troubles in everyday usage. This habit makes me wonder whether there exists a linguistic pattern of vowels reverting to their earlier forms when the written form of words preserve their old pronunciation. I know language is primarily a spoken phenomenon, so I doubt phonological changes are often causally influenced by orthography of a language, as in my case, but it’s interesting enough a question to investigate.
My efforts in Dutch have also been reinvigorated by a recent trip to Delft. I had no issues making myself understood, and was surprised to find myself employing words which, though I could passively recognise in texts and speech, had been so little used that I’d supposed them to have become dormant. Thankfully, I’ve some conversation partners with whom to practice over the holidays, and want not for physical books.
Why go through all this effort? Because I want to effortlessly think in languages besides English. I am sick of English. I strongly doubt that it’s healthy to think or imbibe too much of one language only. You hear too much of the thoughts of one portion of humanity. The extent of the Overton window is defined by the discourse of a people, so how can you inhabit, potentially literally, a space beyond it if you only know that people’s speech? But that’s a thought for another day.
These things have motivated me to write more μεσα στην Δημοτικη γλωσσα, en in het taal van de laage landen, and to this end I’ve picked up a habit of writing daily diary entries in each, and practice my Latin and Attic in this way as well. I have also taken up translating poetry, mostly into English for now, for I have found it more difficult to produce than other kinds of text, often requiring the exercise of every linguistic faculty to its utmost, yet the length of most poems is congenial to the maintenance of this habit. HIIT training for the aspiring philologist indeed.
It miffs me that I have not spent more time ensuring that my Dutch and Greek will possess the suppleness of my English. I want to read Joost van der Vondel and Καζαντζακης, Grotius (Yes, I know his weightiest works are in Latin, but the correspondences, and some minor works are what I’m after) and Σεφερης, as easily as I do Milton and Boswell, Pope and Swift. The foundations are there, a maximum of two years consistent exertion should be sufficient, and these translations are a step towards achieving this.
So here’s the mark of one such step, presented for your pleasure. Cavafy is quite amenable to English translation, in large part because he grew up in England, and because he makes frequent use of free iambics. What is less adaptable is his erudition, which makes it difficult to convincingly translate his poems unless one has a familiarity with the sources he used to craft his miniature romances, a familiarity with the characters and events from which he so skilfully extracted their lively drama. As for his philosophical and aesthetic poems, I find those rather tricky to do well for now. Being only mildly acquainted with Byzantium and late antiquity, I chose to translate one whose theme and setting was reminiscent of my childhood, and of many Greeks I am sure, and whose sentiment remains vivid.