Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand
Abstract
Please Note: This article is in Greek. Kavafis: Let me submit to Art: Beginning with the poem “Κίμων Λεάρχου, 22 ετών,
σπουδαστής ελληνικών γραμμάτων”, this study reveals that behind his “synthetic”
poetry lays a secret desire for Kavafis to compose a “novelistic” prose. It is an ambitious
but almost undeclared project, which could embrace not only diachronic characters
but also philosophical and cosmopolitan ideas from the Hellenistic era (like epicurean
hedonism) to the 20th century, in an “epigrammatic” approach. Other important issues
arise, such as: the antithesis between philosophically mature subject on one hand and
“educated”/uneducated characters dealing with every day unsolved passionate matters,
on the other. Kavafis seems to develop a particularly strong interest in the second
ones. Analysing Kavafi’s poem, when he is dealing with both, we can decode not only
his literary passions but also his theory about a poem as a “synthetic” combination of
tales, ideas and lust narratives: the dream trip for a postmodern sophist
