Derek Coyle

Here is a superb tribute to the Greek poet, Constantinos Cavafy. I totally enjoyed this performance of poetry, theatre, literary talk, history lecture.

With André Aciman, Michael Cunningham, Mark Doty, Olympia Dukakis, Craig Dykers (of Snøhetta), Edmund Keeley, Daniel Mendelsohn, Orhan Pamuk, Dimitris Papaioannou, Kathleen Turner.

In celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Cavafy’s birth, we are presented with a stellar line-up of writers, actors, performers, translators and artists to celebrate one of the most original and influential Greek poets, his work, and his legacy.

Described by English novelist, E. M. Forster, as “standing at a slight angle to the universe,” Cavafy has been widely admired for his contemporary use of language, charged with irony, homoeroticism, longing, and deep reflections on history and philosophy.

An interesting overview of his book, ‘The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean’ by David Abulafia, Prof. of the Mediterranean at the University of Cambridge.

We forget the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians all lived, traded and fought around this sea. And later, the Spanish, the Ottomans (Turkey), and most surprisingly of all, the British. I really enjoyed this book, finding out along the way that the Romans came to dominate the sea after the Punic Wars, three major wars fought over a century and a little more; how the British preferred to deal with the Turkish, Muslim, Ottoman court, over that of the Catholic King James of Spain; and how the sea's significance diminished in the face of Atlantic trade by Northern European powers.

'I met my old lover on the street last night,/She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled.'

'The boy lay down, charmed by the quiet pool,

And, while he slaked his thirst, another thirst

Grew; as he drank he saw before his eyes

A form, a face, and loved with leaping heart

A hope unreal and thought the shape was real.'

Here are two images inspired by Ovid's tale of 'Echo and Narcissus.'

  'Narcissus now had reached his sixteenth year

And seemed both man and boy, but hard pride

Ruled in that delicate frame, and never a youth

And never a girl could touch his haughty heart.'

  Ovid, 'Metamorphoses', trans. by A.D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 61.

It is interesting to note how Ted Hughes omits the male interest in Narcissus in his version in 'Tales from Ovid' (1997).

You should learn a new word everyday. My new word is 'revanchism', a word TonyJudt uses very frequently in his history 'Postwar.' Here is an explanation:

 Revanchism (from French: revanche, "revenge") is a term used since the 1870s to describe a political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and is often motivated by economic or geo-political factors. Extreme revanchist ideologues often represent a hawkish stance, suggesting that desired objectives can be achieved through the positive outcome of another war.

Revanchism is linked with irredentism, the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains "unredeemed" outside the borders of its appropriate nation-state. Revanchist politics often rely on the identification of a nation with a nation-state, often mobilizing deep-rooted sentiments of ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live, while using heavy-handed nationalism to mobilize support for these aims. 

So there you go.

Could this be a description of Ireland under Fianna Fail:

'Whoever controlled the Italian state was peculiarly well placed to dispense favours, directly and indirectly. Politics in post-war Italy then, whatever their patina of religious or ideological fervour, were primarily a struggle to occupy the state, to gain access to its levers of privilege and patronage. And when it came to securing and operating these levers, the Christian Democrats under Alcide De Gaspari and his successors demonstrated unmatched skill and enterprise.'