Seferis & Cavafy
A Poetic Dialogue
Central orientation
The unit examines Seferis's encounter with Cavafy through Days III not as a simple relation of influence, but as a complex critical and existential dialogue.
Brief Course Description
This unit examines George Seferis's encounter with C. P. Cavafy through Days III, not as a simple relationship of influence, but as a complex critical and existential dialogue. Through this encounter, fundamental concepts of Modern Greek poetry come to the fore, including austerity, irony, emotional distance, and the function of reading as a process of self-knowledge.
The unit approaches Cavafy's poetry as a system of thought and Seferis as an active reader who transforms reading into a poetic and existential act.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the unit, students will be able to:
• analyse Seferis's relationship with Cavafy as a critical dialogue, rather than merely as a matter of influence;
• interpret the Seferian notion of austerity as both an aesthetic and an ethical choice;
• understand the significance of emotional distance in Cavafy's poetics;
• approach reading as a process of self-knowledge;
• compare the function of poetry as an instrument of thought and existence.
Recommended Preparation
Students are advised to read selected poems by Cavafy, as well as passages from Seferis's Days III, so that they are able to follow the comparative and theoretical dimension of the unit.
Introduction: The 'Mathematical' Nature of Cavafy
In university teaching on Modern Greek literature, George Seferis's encounter with C. P. Cavafy constitutes one of the most essential points for understanding Greek modernism. It is not simply a relationship of influence, nor a linear succession of poetic models. Rather, it is a profound critical dialogue through which Seferis simultaneously redefines Cavafy, the condition of Modern Greek poetry, and his own poetic self.
When Seferis writes from Korçë in 1937 and returns to Cavafy's work, he does not treat him as merely another important poet of modern Hellenism. He approaches him as an interpretive schema, as a figure in whom central features of the Modern Greek experience are condensed. His formulation is particularly revealing: 'I had no doubt that C. was one of the most remarkable “types” of modern Hellenism - I mean type as in “mathematical formula”.' This observation, drawn from Days III, is especially significant because it shows that Cavafy is approached not only as a poetic personality but as a structure, a model of understanding, a system.
The phrase 'mathematical formula' should not be read superficially. It does not imply coldness or mechanical rigidity. It denotes structure, precision, internal coherence, and repeatability. In Seferis's reading, Cavafy is the poet who does not simply describe experience, but organises it into form. Lived experience, history, irony, decay, moral judgement, and self-knowledge acquire in his work such density that poetry functions as an instrument for interpreting the world. From this point onward, it becomes clear that Seferis does not read Cavafy only aesthetically; he reads him cognitively.
The Great Dialogue: Reading as Self-Definition
For Seferis, reading is never a passive act. It is not a safe distance between reader and work, nor a neutral reception of a literary object. On the contrary, reading is an existential act. The text of the other becomes the space in which the reader may recognise, test, or revise himself. From this perspective, Cavafy becomes for Seferis a necessary point of reference.
The relevant statement from Days III is again highly characteristic: 'I read him, however, and paid attention to him as an element that helps us see what we are and where we are.' Reading, therefore, is not exhausted in aesthetic evaluation. It becomes an act of self-knowledge. Cavafy functions as a mirror, not because he offers ready-made answers, but because he possesses that power of form which allows the reader to stand before it and see more clearly his own historical and spiritual position.
The experience of Korçë illuminates this dimension even further. Seferis notes: 'Korçë soaked me in bitterness and poison; but it also offered me a few quiet hours... In Korçë this memory becomes for me a kind of anchor.' This point is crucial because it reveals that the reading of Cavafy is not a theoretical exercise but a lived function of stability. Cavafy is recalled not only as a poetic consciousness, but as an inner anchor within isolation. In this sense, literature is not read simply in order to be interpreted; it is read in order to be used. The word 'used' here does not imply utilitarianism, but existential activation.
The Ethics of Austerity and the Rejection of Ornament
One of the most important lessons Seferis draws from Cavafy is the notion of austerity, or expressive spareness. In Seferis's use, this word acquires particular weight: it does not signify lack of power or poverty of expression, but a deliberate aesthetic and ethical choice. Seferis observes: 'I like the fact that C. sometimes merely names things - without decoration... Yet he had the wisdom to confine himself to this austerity. He rests on few things, perhaps, but he rests on things.'
This formulation summarises Seferis's reading of Cavafy's poetics with remarkable precision. Austerity in Cavafy is not deficiency but economy. It is not weakness but a choice of restraint. His language rejects the unnecessary, resists decoration, and refuses to burden experience with rhetorical embellishment. Instead of beautifying, it names. Instead of covering over, it strips bare.
This choice has aesthetic depth, but it also has ethical consequences. Austerity is ethical because it presupposes self-limitation. The poet does not display his power; he restrains it. He does not surrender to the ease of verbal abundance; he chooses to rely on 'things'. The clarity that emerges from this stance is connected with a deeper discipline of vision and thought. Cavafy does not seek to impress; he speaks with precision. It is precisely this precision that offers Seferis one of the most fertile lessons of Modern Greek poetics.
Emotional Distance and the 'Seams' of Things
Among Seferis's most penetrating observations on Cavafy is the one concerning emotional distance. In Days III he writes: 'He always keeps, it seems to me, a certain distance from everything else. Whatever connects a person emotionally, he dissolves it, or shows it from the reverse side, exposing its seams.' This passage is dense and revealing, because it introduces a crucial concept for understanding Cavafy's poetics: the exposure of the 'seams'.
Cavafy's writing does not allow emotion to appear as self-evident or unmediated. On the contrary, it deconstructs it, reverses it, and examines it through its own constructions. Where other poetics might seek immediacy or emotional identification, Cavafy maintains a distance that makes thought possible. By showing 'the seams' of things, he reveals the ways in which emotion, history, and memory are already shaped, constructed, and processed.
The idea of the seam is central here. It marks the point where the surface of experience meets the process of its construction. Cavafy does not destroy emotion; he reveals the conditions under which it appears. This demystification does not entail coldness, but intellectual maturity. Seferis recognises in this stance a way of protecting thought from emotional arbitrariness and preserving critical alertness.
An Anthology of Ethical Precepts: Poetry as a Guide for Living
Cavafy's poetry can be read not only as an aesthetic achievement, but also as a condensed form of ethical thought. Many of his poems or lines function as dense verbal units, as brief structures of thought capable of being activated at critical moments in life. This does not mean that Cavafy writes didactically or aphoristically in the conventional sense. It means that his poetry produces propositions for taking a stance toward the world.
When he writes, 'and if you cannot make your life as you want it, try at least to do this', his writing formulates an ethics of the minimum. When he writes, 'as if prepared for long, as if courageous, bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving', he constructs a form of stance toward loss. When a poem demands alertness, self-knowledge, or measure, it does not merely propose an interpretation; it proposes a mode of being.
In the context of teaching, the significance of this element is decisive. Students are not asked only to analyse Cavafy's lines as technical forms, but to approach them as condensed structures of ethical reflection. Literature is thereby shifted from the level of an object of study to that of an instrument of thought.
The Sonic Return of the Voice: From Reading to Lived Experience
Reading, however, is not completed through the visual reception of the text. Poetry, especially in the case of poets such as Cavafy and Seferis, acquires a second life when it returns to the voice. Recitation, listening, prosody, pauses, and vocal timbre do not function as mere accompanying features; they constitute modes of reconstructing poetic experience.
The voice bridges text with memory and thought with feeling. Where reading organises structure, listening brings out the rhythm of inner tension. For teaching, this dimension is particularly productive, because it enables students to understand that poetic language is not only written form but also an event of voice. Poetry is not only read; it is heard, and through hearing it a different access to meaning is activated.
The Transformation of the 'Ethical Precept' in Seferis
The issue becomes even more interesting when Cavafy's function of the 'ethical precept' is compared with Seferis's poetics. In Seferis, the precept does not appear as a direct and transparent formulation, but as the outcome of an interpretive process. Seferis does not offer brief rules or condensed ethical propositions in Cavafy's manner. Instead, he creates poetic situations within which the reader is called upon to reconstruct meaning and to produce a stance for himself.
This happens primarily through three mechanisms. The first is myth, which does not function as an example to be imitated, but as a mirror of modern crisis. The second is fragmentation, which prevents meaning from being easily closed into a single formulation. The third is silence: the gaps and spaces in which writing leaves room for the reader's thought.
Thus, where in Cavafy the ethical precept is stated, in Seferis the ethical precept is produced. This difference is especially fruitful for teaching, because it allows for a more active form of reading. The student is not asked only to understand what the poem says, but to assume responsibility for its interpretive activation.
The 'Honest' Autobiographical Relation: Subjectivity and Control
Seferis understands very well that every act of reading begins from subjectivity. He does not believe in the illusion of an absolutely neutral critical reception. At the same time, however, he refuses to turn subjective feeling into an arbitrary measure of judgement. His formulation is clear: 'We begin subjectively... Sin begins when we lazily surrender to our subjective feeling and the control we exercise is not grounded outside ourselves.'
This is a foundational statement not only for reading Cavafy, but also for understanding Seferis's own critical method. Reading is necessarily personal, but it has no right to remain self-satisfiedly personal. The reader's personal involvement must be controlled, substantiated, and grounded outside the self - in the text, in form, and in its historical and intellectual context.
This is precisely what constitutes an 'honest' relationship with the work: not the elimination of the self, but its disciplined presence. Not the absence of lived experience, but its conscious processing.
Cavafy as a Formula of National and Personal Survival
Through Seferis's reflection it gradually becomes clear that Cavafy functions as a formula, as a form for organising experience. His poetry offers a structure of stability within the chaos of historical and personal life. It does not erase the rupture; it gives it form. It does not answer the problem; it offers a way of thinking it.
In this sense, Cavafy's poetry becomes a means of both national and personal survival. National, because it gives form to Modern Greek historical and ethical self-reflection. Personal, because it offers the reader - and in this case Seferis - a schema of spiritual stability and self-knowledge.
Learning Outcomes and Reflective Activity
By the end of the unit, students should be able to analyse the relationship between reading and self-knowledge, assess the aesthetic and ethical function of austerity, understand the significance of emotional distance, and approach literature not only as an object of interpretation but also as an instrument of thought.
Within this framework, the proposed reflective activity asks students to select a line by Cavafy that may function as an 'anchor'. They are asked to analyse how this line constructs an ethical or existential position and how it may be activated within contemporary experience. This activity moves literature away from sterile analysis and toward its personal and critical activation.
The Mythic Dimension in Cavafy and Seferis
The comparison between the two poets becomes even more productive when the function of myth is examined. Cavafy uses myth directly: he isolates it, reinscribes it in new contexts, and often demystifies it through irony. Seferis, by contrast, uses myth more as structure, as an underlying framework or network of unity that organises modern experience.
In concise terms, one might say that in Cavafy myth is deconstructed, whereas in Seferis it is recomposed. This distinction is pedagogically valuable because it allows students to see that Greek modernism does not have only one form of relation to tradition, but multiple strategies for revising it.
Close Reading: Application
The teaching application of this comparison can be developed through two characteristic examples. In Cavafy's 'Ithaca', the Homeric myth is shifted from destination to journey and functions as an ethical precept for the way the subject ought to stand before time and experience. In Seferis's Mythistorema, myth does not function as a clear ethical command but as a framework for collective and historical experience. There, the form of myth holds together a dispersed and traumatic reality without closing it into a single, unequivocal meaning.
Teaching Sequence
The unit may be developed pedagogically in five stages. In the introduction, Seferis's reading of Cavafy is presented as a form of self-knowledge. Next, Cavafy's austerity and emotional distance are analysed. This is followed by a comparative approach to Seferis, especially with regard to the ethical precept and the mythic method. A close-reading application to selected poems then follows. The lesson concludes with discussion and a reflective activity.
Comprehension Questions
At the end of the unit, students may be invited to work through questions such as the following: How does austerity function in Cavafy's poetics? What does reading as self-knowledge mean? In what way does Seferis differ from Cavafy with regard to the function of myth? How does emotional distance contribute to the clarity of poetic thought?
Essay Topics
The unit lends itself to written assignments such as the following: the concept of distance in Cavafy; Cavafy through Seferis's critical consciousness; the function of memory as a mechanism of interpretation in Modern Greek poetry. These topics allow students to connect close reading, theoretical reflection, and historical contextualisation.
Advanced Interpretive Observation
The relationship between the two poets should not be viewed as a simple pattern of influence. What is interesting is that Cavafy functions, within Seferis's critical consciousness, as a measure, an interpretive tool, a stable point through which Seferis confronts the problem of form, ethics, and historical self-knowledge. The dialogue between them is not external; it is deeply internal to the way Greek modernism reflects upon its own possibilities.
Connection with Theory
The unit can be productively connected with reception theory, with the concept of subjectivity in critical practice, and with patterns of modernist self-reflection. Seferis's reading of Cavafy makes it possible to see how the reception of a work is not a passive event, but a productive encounter with form, history, and the self.
Final Synthesis
What ultimately emerges is that Cavafy offers Seferis not ready-made answers, but a method of spiritual stance. Seferis, in turn, shows how this method may be activated in life, history, and writing. Poetry thus ceases to be merely an aesthetic object and becomes an act of existence.
Indicative Audiovisual Material
• Epochs and Writers: George Seferis. ERT production.
• Recitations of poems by C. P. Cavafy: 'Ithaca', 'The God Abandons Antony', 'Thermopylae'.
• Recitations of poems by George Seferis: 'Denial', excerpts from Mythistorema.
Teaching Flow Summary
Reflective Activity
Written prompt
Choose a line by Cavafy that can function as an 'anchor'. Analyse how this line constructs an ethical or existential position and how it may be activated within contemporary experience.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
• Cavafy, C. P. Poems. Athens: Ikaros.
• Seferis, George. Days III. Athens: Ikaros.
• Seferis, George. Essays, Vols. I-II. Athens: Ikaros.
• Seferis, George. Poems. Athens: Ikaros.
Secondary Bibliography
• Beaton, Roderick. George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel. Athens: Okeanida.
• Keeley, Edmund. Cavafy's Alexandria. Athens: Ikaros.
• Maronitis, D. N. C. P. Cavafy: Studies. Athens: Patakis.
• Maronitis, D. N. George Seferis: Studies. Athens: Patakis.
• Vitti, Mario. History of Modern Greek Literature. Athens: Odysseas.
• Vagenas, Nasos. The Poet and the Dancer: Studies in Greek Poetry. Athens: Kedros.
• Dallas, Alexandros. Greek Modernism and Tradition. Athens: Stigmi.
• Pieris, Michalis. Space, Light and Silence in Modern Greek Poetry. Athens: Nefeli.
Note on the Unit's Excerpts
All excerpts from Seferis included in this unit are drawn from Days III and are used as primary critical material for understanding Seferis’s relationship with Cavafy.
Sofia Deligeorgi, Professor, Head of the Department of Greek Language, University of Tirana
Amalia Rontou-Gorou, Lecturer, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
