Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 85

Painter and poet, runner and thrower,

Endymion’s beauty: Ianthes, son of Antonius.

From a family close to the Synagogue.

“The days that I most value are the ones

when I abandon the aesthetic quest,

when I forsake the beauty and rigor of the Hellenic,

with its overriding preoccupation

with perfectly formed and perishable white limbs.

And I become what I would like

always to remain: of the Jews, of the holy Jews, the son.”

A bit too heated, this declaration of his. “Always

remain of the Jews, of the holy Jews—”

But he ­didn’t remain one at all.

the Hedonism and Art of Alexandria

made the boy into their devotee.

[1912; <1919?]