Of the Jews

 

(A.D. 50)

 

 

Painter and poet, runner and discus-thrower,

beautiful as Endymion, Ianthis, son of Antonios.

From a family friendly to the synagogue.

 

“My most honourable days are those

when I forsake aesthetics pursuits,

when I abandon hellenism, with its

beauty and harshness, its overriding devotion

to perfectly formed and perishable white limbs,

when I become he whom I would wish

always to remain—of the Jews, of the holy Jews, a son.”

 

Very passionate his statement “always

to remain of the Jews, of the holy Jews—”

 

But he remained nothing of the sort.

The Hedonism and Art of Alexandria

kept him their devoted child.

 

                                                  C. P. Cavafy
                       
Translated by Pavlos Andronikos

 

 

Published in Antipodes 21 (1987), p. 15.

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