Introduction
One January evening in 1930, in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, Constantine Petrou Cavafy, the Greek modernist poet, met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian Futurist. The latter, an Alexandrian by birth (like Cavafy), was visiting Egypt to give a series of lectures to the Italian-speaking community. At one of these lectures, Marinetti met Atanasio Catraro, an Italian journalist based in Alexandria, writing mostly for Italian expatriates (Viscomi 150). Catraro, who was the first to translate some of Cavafy’s verse into Italian and had become a good friend of the Greek poet, immediately saw an opportunity too good not to be seized: Why not introduce these two extraordinary personalities to each other? Two firsthand accounts of that evening were produced, presented here together for the first time and in full, making for a composite retelling of that momentous evening in 1930—as experienced by Marinetti, Cavafy, and Catraro.
The first text is taken from Marinetti’s volume of memoirs, Il fascino dell’Egitto (1933; The Charm of Egypt), which has never been translated into English, except for brief excerpts in Marinetti scholarship. Marinetti dedicates a short chapter, “Il poeta greco-egiziano Cavafy” (“The Greek-Egyptian Poet Cavafy”), to his encounter with the prominent Alexandrian figure. This chapter had already appeared verbatim on 2 May 1930 in La gazzetta del popolo (The People’s Gazette), a nationwide Italian newspaper, preceded by a longer introduction with Marinetti’s reminiscences of Alexandria and of his mother, also to be included in The Charm of Egypt.Footnote 1 Here Marinetti refers to a typical Egyptian January afternoon, and the publication date of his article would make it plausible that the two met in January 1930, as also stated by Catraro. Neither Gino Agnese nor Giordano Bruno Guerri (both authors of Marinetti biographies) mentions this Egyptian stay, while Chris Michaelides and Claudia Salaris support a 1930 dating. In further support of this date is Marinetti’s inclusion of Cavafy’s poem Ἀπολείπειν ὁ θεὸς Ἀντώνιον (“The God Abandons Antony”), translated by Catraro, who likely gave Marinetti a copy of his translation, either before or after this meeting. His Italian translation of “The God Abandons Anthony” appeared in the Italian-language Alexandrian publication Quaderno (Notebook) in 1929 (Daskalopolous 542), making it plausible for the meeting to have happened in 1930. Catraro’s translation has an antiquated ring to it, which jars with the Italian Futurist’s punctuation-scant, skittish prose. Filippo Maria Pontani, a mid-century Italian scholar and translator of Cavafy, went so far as to call Catraro’s versions ridiculous (xxxvi), devoid of the original Greek’s solemn and moving tone. Yet it was through Catraro’s voice that Marinetti became acquainted with Cavafy’s verse.
The second text is Catraro’s longer account of the Marinetti-Cavafy encounter. The Italian journalist’s narrative emphasizes Cavafy’s perspective, bringing to the fore new details of the evening. This text, originally written in Italian by Catraro himself, makes up the body of the chapter Συνάντηση με τον Marinetti (“Meeting with Marinetti”), which is part of the book O φίλος μου ο Καβάφης (My Friend Cavafy), published in Athens in 1970 and translated into Greek by Aristeas Ralli. After doing research at various libraries and consulting with a number of colleagues at institutions across Europe, I have found that Catraro’s Italian version was never published, at least not in Italy or anywhere else in Europe. Parts of it might have been published as separate pieces in Italian-language publications in Alexandria, or elsewhere, but are now lost or extremely difficult to track down.Footnote 2 The text presented here is an English translation of the published Greek translation of the inaccessible or lost Italian original. My Friend Cavafy was never translated into English in its entirety, although limited excerpts from “Meeting with Marinetti” were made available in English in an essay published in 2009 by Ioannis Tsolkas.
Catraro’s report of that evening shows that French was yet another language that mediated that encounter. As E. M. Forster remembers in Pharos and Pharillon (1923), Cavafy had no trouble speaking Greek, English, and French (92). He first addresses Marinetti in French, calling him “Excellence” (“Excellency”). Marinetti, who was educated in French-language schools (Salaris 46, 59), rebalances the tone of the dialogue with a more jovial response, and their conversation continues in what Catraro calls the “familiar form,” using the informal French pronoun “tu.” Catraro reports that the conversation between Cavafy and Marinetti continued “in wonderful French,” with the exception of Cavafy’s reading of his poem “The God Abandons Antony,” which was in Greek, followed by Catraro’s Italian rendition. Cavafy, who had some knowledge of Italian as Marinetti himself attests, might have caught parts of Catraro’s translation. The choice of French would have come naturally to them. Since the 1860s, French had been commonly used in Alexandria, its spread aided by the French-language schools Marinetti (and Giuseppe Ungaretti after him) had attended (Mansel 145). French was also an obvious choice as the language of poets both Cavafy and Marinetti admired (such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine [Roilos 33; Salaris 50]), epitomizing their shared poetic background. It offered a bypass through which Marinetti was able to get a sense of other Greek-language authors otherwise unknown to him.
Scholars do not routinely discuss Marinetti and Cavafy together, or think of the two as having anything in common other than their Alexandrian origins. Cavafy lived in the Egyptian town for most of his life, famously revolutionizing Greek verse from afar, without gaining much recognition outside Alexandria until the 1920s (Beaton 92; Politis 187). Cavafy’s poetry is firmly entrenched in historicism, and, even as one might place him on the more progressive side of passéism, his poetics did not quite dovetail with Futurist poetics. In his reconstruction of the evening at Cavafy’s house, Catraro remembers how even the two poets’ body language was intrinsically oppositional: Cavafy sat motionless, while Marinetti was perpetually gesticulating and moving about the room. Marinetti, too, re-creates this curious polarity, calling Cavafy “an Arcadian shepherd” and himself—obviously, one might add—“a speeding driver.”Footnote 3
Read together, the two documents emphasize different moments in the conversation, enabling a richer understanding of that evening. Marinetti appears somewhat charmed by Cavafy’s profile, presence, and performance; according to his side of the story, they spend the evening discussing “the future of Poetry” over some whiskey and soda and a dish of cheese meze, in the company of “Cavafy’s admirers.” At the end of the evening, Marinetti observes the moon reflected over the Mahmoudiyah Canal and an ancient villa being demolished, a scene that he compares to Cavafy’s own verse—a sublimation of the modern with the ancient. But in Catraro’s account Marinetti goes so far as to claim Cavafy as a Futurist. It was not rare for Marinetti to appropriate other writers as Futurists to promulgate his movement internationally, but to attach the history-loving Cavafy to Futurism sounds rather exceptional even by his standards. Half-insulted, Cavafy demands a clarification, and Marinetti articulates a notion of Futurism tailored to Cavafy’s poetry: Cavafy’s seamless merging of times makes him a Futurist in his own right. Yet Marinetti never mentions his reappropriation of Cavafy as a Futurist in his retelling—something he might have decided to omit after Cavafy’s reaction—and makes a veiled reference to it only at the end of his chapter, comparing Cavafy’s verse to Alexandria’s modern yet ancient landscape.
There he is: tiny gray head of a sweet and intelligent tortoise; slender arms paddling out of the enormous Greco-Roman shell of an erudite shadow; deep red velvet, and paintings raining down the dust of centuries.
Deep red, too, are the gold-trimmed breeches of the Sudanese servant, who hands me a whiskey and soda alongside the traditional Greek cheese meze, on a sanieh.Footnote 1 As we both munch on these—him looking like an Arcadian shepherd, me like a speeding driver—we launch into a discussion on the Poetry of tomorrow.
Cavafy praises the Futurist Movement, but considers it healthier “to symbolically interpret historical phases as applied to the wretched, long-lasting human existence.”
He adds:
—This interpretation must be put into words without old meters or rhymes, using free verse.
To this I respond that we need to outflank free verse and reach the simultaneity of words-in-freedom, as they better express our great fast mechanic civilization.Footnote 2
The conversation reaches new heights. More of Cavafy’s admirers take part in it. All of them sing the praises of the original poet who is our host. They explain how the Greek poet Palamás, a rival of Cavafy, is similar to Victor Hugo for his abundance of words and to Lamartine for his sentimental vein; Malakásis is a blend of De Musset and Sully Prudhomme; Porfíras, the youngest of Greek poets, is a digest of Baudelaire and Verlaine; Gripáris’s sonnets recall those of José María de Heredia.Footnote 3
The master of the house, touched, offers me another round of cheese meze and explains to me how his intention was to fix—to literarily chisel in his verses—demotic Greek, the people’s language celebrated by the famous linguist Psycháris.Footnote 4
This language has a powerful vitality outside and against classical grammar, which is rigid and passéist, and now destined to die out in libraries.
Demotic language is dynamic. It readily welcomes all essential foreign terms—Italian words especially.
Cavafy recites a few verses where the Italian words porta cappello calze guanti carriera [door hat socks gloves career] sound most harmoniously, as necessary neologisms amalgamated well, showing me how equivalent words in English French Spanish would ring false instead.
We then discuss Ibsenism in the playwrights Xenópoulos and Nirvánas.Footnote 5 Spíros Melás, on the contrary, is carrying out an almost Futurist project with his “Free Stage” where works of French avant-garde theater are brilliantly interpreted by the theater company of Marika Kotopouli, Athens’s own Duse, according to the main Greek newspaper, Eléftheron Vima.Footnote 6
When, begged by everyone present, Cavafy finally decides to offer us a recitation of an unpublished poem, Catraro intervenes to explain its mysterious title: “The God Abandons Antony.” In fact, it comes from Plutarch, where one evening, while Antony yielded to pleasure with Cleopatra in Alexandria, a melodious choir of voices mandolas flutes was heard from afar over the sea.Footnote 7 The people of Alexandria, enchanted by the sound, ran to the harbor beach, but could see nothing. It was Dionysus, Anthony’s protector, abandoning his protégé.
Cavafy slowly enunciates his free-verse lines, all the while tracing delicate arabesques with his hands.
Occasionally his hand falls again under the languid weight of his verbal music.
Catraro translates the poem:Footnote 8
An hour later I took leave from the poet, and raced to the Antoniades Gardens in my car, to enjoy their acacia-scented half-light.
Full moon. Nightingales. In this frenzied atmosphere the colonnade of tall palm trees is dripping an immaterial milk. Now and then a dull clang and some thuds: they are demolishing the ancient Villa full of memories to extemporize a most modern one, destined for the European royals on tour.
Rumbling of trucks loaded with ancient marbles. At times the lugubrious collapse of the rubble resembles a cheerful blast of grenades.
The Mahmoudiyah Canal is full of nostalgic liquid moons like the most modern and most ancient free verse of Alexandria’s Greek poet, Constantine Cavafy.
In January 1930, the Italian communities in Egypt were electrified by an unexpected event: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italy’s Royal Academician, had arrived to give a series of lectures in Alexandria and Cairo.Footnote 1
His compatriots knew at least three things about Marinetti: he had been born, like Giuseppe Ungaretti, in Alexandria, Egypt; he was a poet who provoked controversy; and he was the leader of a literary revolution that went by the name of “Futurism.”Footnote 2 But ninety-nine out of a hundred of the Italians who lived in Egypt knew very little about Futurism. They had heard, however, from the more cultivated, that Futurism was creating a storm in the world of art and letters: that it had dismantled syntax, played havoc with punctuation; that it had assassinated moonlight, had concocted fantastic allegories, and other fearsome things. And that its adherents, making the rounds of the most beautiful cities in Italy, had the audacity to ridicule classical traditions and time-honored ways of expression, provoking the most lively reactions among ordinary people who heard them: reactions that frequently turned to wild uproar and veritable combat—when eggs, vegetables, and tomatoes were thrown on impulse at the audacious speaker.
After all this, it is easy for anyone to understand why the arrival of Marinetti was disconcerting for his compatriots, who, nevertheless, for patriotic reasons, did nothing that might threaten the integrity of the Academician and his beautiful wife, Benedetta. They confined themselves, after the recitation of “The Battle of Adrianople,” or after the exhibition of a picture painted by one of the partisans of the Movement, simply to bursting out into loud laughter.Footnote 3 The disapproval did not go beyond catcalls of derision, something that made the plenipotentiary Italian ambassador—protector, as was only natural, of the Academician—let out a sigh of relief.
As a journalist, I had the opportunity to meet Marinetti “officially.” He wanted to know everything about his native city, which he had abandoned on the threshold of youth in order to throw himself into a life of adventures. He also wanted to know if the city had an artistic life and if any notable person in the arts lived there. When I told him that someone called Cavafy lived here, that some venerated him highly while others had a very low opinion of him, his eyes sparkled. Later, when I explained to him that Cavafy was a true poet, modern and original in every way, he began to address me in the familiar form, asking me to do the same, and the discussion, that day, ended with my undertaking to introduce him to Cavafy.
On the eve of the First World War, Lorenzo Viani had stayed for a short time in Alexandria.Footnote 4 I do not think he paid a visit to the company on Lepsius Street, for two reasons:Footnote 5 Cavafy had not yet been translated into Italian and was unknown to all foreigners, and secondly Viani was an agitator for an art of the poor and the revolutionary, within a small band of daring young working class Greek poets who—influenced in one way or another by the Italian anarchists (and in our community there were a few, still without black neckties)—had made common cause precisely against Cavafy, whose poetry seemed to them aristocratic, simply because its essential source lay in the pursuit of knowledge.
When Viani left Alexandria to return to Viareggio, or to wander around other countries, he left behind him on the sun-drenched Egyptian shore a tiny band of Greek versifiers—they alone had taken the name “Apuani,” in honor of Viani’s “Repubblica di Apua”—in open conflict with Cavafy.Footnote 6 The leaders of the group were a sickly and engaging individual, who wanted them to call him “Alitis” (“Hooligan”), and another whose surname was Santorinios. The latter was no less likeable than his comrade Alitis: he ran every day from one street to another, from one mansion to another, and gasped for breath as he climbed the stairs to the third or the fourth floor, to sell to the Greek families the newspapers that had just arrived from Athens. In this way he managed to scrape together the money for his frugal meals. His poems, like those of Alitis, occasionally found hospitality in one of the local newspapers. Tuberculosis killed Alitis when he was still young. Santorinios, in his turn, also died suddenly, stricken, I think, by the same illness as his friend, an evil that poverty and dissipation render incurable.
Lorenzo Viani did not understand, or—for the reasons that have been conjectured—was unable to understand, Cavafy. And Enrico Pea, who lived for a long time in Alexandria (where his brother was based as a trader in marble), did not understand him either.Footnote 7 In his book Life in Egypt (which I have spoken about previously), where he recaptures the early years of the twentieth century, he does not mention Cavafy at all, while dedicating whole pages to a French poet, Henri Thuile, who lived with his family in almost monastic solitude in the suburb of Meks, in the famous “red house,” which few Alexandrians—those no longer young—remember.Footnote 8 Cavafy, ignored by Viani and by Pea, was unable to conceal his surprise when I told him that Marinetti wanted to meet him.
—Bonsoir, Excellence! Je suis très honoré …Footnote 9
—Entre poètes le mot “Excellence” n’a pas de place, cher Kavafis!Footnote 10
These first words served to break the ice. Cavafy and Marinetti, both speaking “in the familiar form” and continuing in wonderful French, immediately got down to the subjects that were close to their hearts.
If there had been tape recorders then (or at least if they had existed in Egypt), I would have recorded their conversation, and in that way scholars would today have at their disposal a unique testimony, where intellectual culture and humor had blended, perfectly naturally, to create a prodigious example of urbane polemics, without a hint of vocal monotony. Marinetti, with that raised, impudent moustache of his, resembled a soldier of olden times in the modern world, but without the beard and wig. He went back and forth, gesticulating, filling the drawing room with his presence, the way a great actor fills the stage. Cavafy, motionless, almost in a defensive posture, followed with lively interest the words of his guest. But after the first ten minutes, both of them were set on how they might go forward wondrously, lovingly into the neutral realm of tolerance.
Indeed, Marinetti, by virtue of some clarifications I had given him beforehand about the work of Cavafy—and also having read some of his poems that I had translated into Italian—suddenly made this extraordinary declaration:
—And you, Cavafy, are a Futurist.
The Greek poet, raising his eyebrows and creasing his forehead, like one disturbed by a sudden insult, remarked that what he knew about Futurism made him believe that he was precisely one of those people whom the Futurists regarded as partisans of the past.
—A passéiste poet you are, but only up to a certain point. I see that you are not impressed by the beauty of machines (of cars, for example), and that you still use verbs, commas, full stops, and you disdain the electric light. These things do not have great significance. You are passéiste as to form, but, from what I have discovered in your poems, my conclusion is that in your thinking you are a Futurist. You have universal ideas, you re-create, in a way that is perfect and enchanting, the old times in our own time, you have cut yourself loose, in short, from the rotten poetic world of 1800, from whining Romanticism, from subjects that were fit for the barrel organ. I have understood you or am I mistaken?
Cavafy shakes his head.
—My dear Marinetti, your idea is truly wonderful. However, it seems to me that I am a long way from Futurism.
Then Marinetti grows exasperated and, raising his voice, seeks, by every means, to make his difficult interlocutor acknowledge that “whoever precedes his time in art or in life is a Futurist.” And he mentions Michelangelo, Leonardo, Wagner. He concludes that there is an intellectual Futurism, which is worth as much as a militant Futurism.
Still, many other interesting things were said on that unforgettable afternoon. But, etched in the mind of Cavafy, there remained the manifest effort that Marinetti had made to win him over, on his first and last visit to the company on Lepsius Street.
Later, Cavafy, a little ironically—even though truly convinced of the value of his eccentric guest—said to me: “A strange man, dear Marinetti, strange and very clever. He claims that Futurism, in the final analysis, existed already in the time of Michelangelo and Leonardo, because Futurism is a revolt against tradition, against rules and against prevailing customs. But then why would I be a Futurist and he not be a passéiste? Michelangelo and Leonardo, if I am not mistaken, belong to the past!”
Marinetti retained a very agreeable memory of his meeting with the Greek poet. A few months after his return to Italy, he published a volume with the title Il fascino dell’Egitto [The Charm of Egypt]. One of its chapters is devoted to Cavafy, a chapter where, very generously, he mentions me as well as one of Cavafy’s most significant poems, which I had translated for purposes of instruction.
