Laurie Anderson’s Thoughts-Blowing Efficiency of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Looking forward to the Barbarians” & “Ithaca”

In the video above, Lau­rie Ander­son describes C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians” as being “set in historical Rome.” That’s a rea­son­ready inter­pre­ta­tion, giv­en that it con­tains an emper­or, sen­a­tors, and ora­tors, regardless that Cavafy him­self mentioned that none of them are nec­es­sar­i­ly Roman. The uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the sit down­u­a­tion the poem describes, by which a state’s elite end up of their fin­ery in spite of hav­ing noth­ing to do however look forward to the tit­u­lar bar­bar­ian inva­sion, cer­tain­ly has­n’t been misplaced on its inter­preters. J. M. Coet­zee, for examination­ple, set his nov­el Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians at the fringe of an unnamed “Empire.”

Ander­son additionally males­tions assume­ing, whilst con­sid­er­ing the poem’s evo­ca­tion of gov­ern­ment useless­lock, “Grasp on, this sounds famil­iar” — and none can deny that com­par­isons between the Unit­ed States and the declin­ing Roman Empire were within the air past due­ly. That, partly, impressed the in line with­for­mance that fol­lows, by which Ander­son and a ver­i­ta­ble Greek cho­rus inter­pret each “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians,” which Cavafy wrote in 1904, and the Odyssey-based “Itha­ca” (which you’ll be able to additionally listen learn via Sean Con­nery with a Van­ge­lis rating) from sev­en years lat­er. “Itha­ca” is Cavafy’s best-known paintings, thank you now not least to its being learn on the funer­al of for­mer first girl of the Unit­ed States Jacque­line Kennedy Onas­sis.

It used to be, in reality, the Alexan­der S. Onas­sis Foun­da­tion, estab­lished via Aris­to­tle Onas­sis within the identify of his past due son, that spon­sored this tournament, which happened in New York Town’s Saint Thomas Church in Novem­ber of 2023. The occa­sion used to be the open­ing of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, on whose internet­web site clas­si­cist Gre­move­ry Jus­da­nis publicizes that the poet­’s “nice­ness lies in his tal­ent to pre­dict our personal international one hun­dred years in the past.” Cavafy would possibly smartly have beneath­stood that some polit­i­cal con­di­tions are inevitable, however he may just­n’t have recognized how Ander­son­’s in line with­for­mance of his phrases, in Eng­lish trans­los angeles­tion with the proper instru­males­tal and elec­tron­ic again­ing, would sound like some­factor proper out of her Large Sci­ence technology.

by means of Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Listen Lau­rie Ander­son Learn from The Tibetan Ebook of the Lifeless on New Album Songs from the Bar­do

Watch Lau­rie Anderson’s Hyp­now not­ic Har­vard Lec­ture Collection on Poet­ry, Med­i­ta­tion, Demise, New York & Extra

Lau­rie Anderson’s Most sensible 10 Books to Take to a Wasteland Island

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Song of Van­ge­lis

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Historic Rome?

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and vast­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the guide The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him at the social web­paintings for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.