Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 94

Let the dilettantes call me dilettante.

In serious matters I have always been

most diligent. And on this I will insist:

that no one has a better knowledge of

Church Fathers or Scripture, or the Synodical Canons.

On every question that he had, Botaniates—

every difficult ecclesiastical matter—

would take counsel with me, me first of all.

But since I’ve been exiled here (curse that spiteful

Irene Ducas) and am frightfully bored,

it’s not at all unseemly if I divert myself

by crafting verses of six or seven lines—

divert myself with mythological tales

of Hermes, and Apollo, and Dionysus,

or the heroes of Thessaly and the Peloponnese;

or with composing strict iambic lines

such as—if I do say so—the litterateurs

of Constantinople don’t know how to write.

That strictness, most likely, is the reason for their censure.

[1921; 1920]