> >[You were thinking of Cavafy as a kind of solution?]
>
> Well, not as a solution, just as a good description of the problem.
> Perhaps, as another illustration of the hypothesis that 9/11
> was a kind of
> collective hidden wish.
>
> Thanks for finding and quoting the full text.
Cavafy is a hoot for our times. He had a shrewd sense of debased politics. He usually uses the late Byzantine Empire, I suppose for distancing, but it doesn't take a lot of learning to see the modern parallel. It makes me wonder if his poems aren't also sly comments on the Egypt or at least the Greeks in Egypt in his day.
If I can get away with it, here is another Cavafy:
IN A TOWNSHIP OF ASIA MINOR
The news about the outcome of the sea-battle at Actium was of course unexpected. But there’s no need for us to draft a new proclamation. The name’s the only thing that has to be changed. There, in the concluding lines, instead of: “Having freed the Romans from Octavius, that disaster, that parody of a Caesar,” we’ll substitute: “Having freed the Romans from Antony, that disaster, ...” The whole text fits very nicely.
“To the most glorious victor, matchless in his military ventures, prodigious in his political operations, on whose behalf the township ardently wished for Antony’s triumph, ...” here, as we said, the substitution: “for Octavius Caesar’s triumph, regarding it as Zeus’ finest gift – to this mighty protector of the Greeks who graciously honors Greek customs, who is beloved in every Greek domain, who clearly deserves exalted praise, and whose exploits should be recorded at length in the Greek language, in both verse and prose, in the Greek language, the vehicle of fame,” et cetera, et cetera. It all fits brilliantly.
1926
BTW, I've been thoroughly enjoying Carrol's posts too.
-- John K. Taber
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