De Griekse dichter Konstantínos Petros Kaváfis werd geboren te Alexandrië (Egypte) op 29 april 1863. Zie ook alle tags voor Konstantínos Petros Kaváfis op dit blog.
Morgenzee
Laat ik hier gaan staan. En laat ook ik even
de natuur aanschouwen. Het vonkende azuur
van morgenzee en wolkeloze hemel, een gele kust:
alles overgoten door een groot, mooi licht.
Laat ik hier gaan staan. En me wijsmaken dat ik dit zie
Ik zag het werkelijk het eerste moment toen ik bleef staan)
en niet ook hier mijn fantasieën,
mijn herinneringen, de droombeelden van de wellust.
Vertaald door Hans Warren en Mario Molengraaf
One Night
The room was cheap and sordid,
hidden above the suspect taverna.
From the window you could see the alley,
dirty and narrow. From below
came the voices of workmen
playing cards, enjoying themselves.
And there on that common, humble bed
I had love’s body, had those intoxicating lips,
red and sensual,
red lips of such intoxication
that now as I write, after so many years,
in my lonely house, I’m drunk with passion again.
Days of 1896
He became completely degraded. His erotic tendency,
condemned and strictly forbidden
(but innate for all that), was the cause of it:
society was totally prudish.
He gradually lost what little money he had,
then his social standing, then his reputation.
Nearly thirty, he had never worked a full year—
at least not at a legitimate job.
Sometimes he earned enough to get by
acting the go-between in deals considered shameful.
He ended up the type likely to compromise you thoroughly
if you were seen around with him often.
But this isn’t the whole story—that would not be fair.
The memory of his beauty deserves better.
There is another angle; seen from that
he appears attractive, appears
a simple, genuine child of love,
without hesitation putting,
above his honor and reputation,
the pure sensuality of his pure flesh.
Above his reputation? But society,
prudish and stupid, had it wrong.
Vertaald door Edmund Keeley en Philip Sherrard
K. P. Kaváfis (29 april 1863 – 29 april 1923)