Responses to American Poetry

The aim of this online space is to host the research work of university students or young scholars as this emerges from larger projects focusing on the American poetry scene. The objective of this initiative is to bring this kind of research activity to the attention of the general public in an attempt to further promote the exchange of ideas with regard to the process of reading, understanding and appreciating poetry writing.

  

Tatiani Rapatzikou 
(Professor, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; Advisor and initiative co-ordinator trapatz@enl.auth.gr)

 

 

 

THOMAIS GKATZOUNI

 

 

Cavafy re-locating: Placing Stein & Cavafy in motion and re-creation

 

The writing of my piece has been sparked immediately after reading excerpts by Ersi Sotiropoulos’ book titled What’s Left of the Night. As I was writing it, I also realized that it is more than a story; I realized that since 1898 not many things have changed, and how many people would relate to at least one sentence of what I’ve written.

It’s not easy to love someone. This can be read in several ways; sometimes this ‘someone’ is hard to love, sometimes you’re not free to love this ‘someone’. While reading What’s Left of the Night, I decided I wanted to tell a story about people who could not love out loud; this is what I imagine Cavafy was like with his lover(s).1 I wanted to place him in 1897 France and give him a voice he could not express explicitly in his writings, a (hidden) voice in love. However, I also wanted to have him in motion throughout the world and relocate him in several centuries later, where he could have a voice to love and be “free”; according to Maria Boletsi motion is nevertheless a crucial element of his work: “the nonlinear temporality of Cavafy’s own work, in which past, present, and future constantly (re)shape each other” (199). Cavafy is intertwined with time and almost defined by it; he lived at a time where he could not love out loud, he lived without the time to love out loud. This notion is long connected with queer love which, similarly to Cavafy, is mainly defined by time, as J.L. Watson mentions “[t]he relationship between queerness and temporality has long been documented by queer theorists […] , ‘queer connections are frequently brought about by acts of bending time, productive mobilizations of anachronism […]” (11). I envisioned Cavafy moving from cold hotel rooms filled with secret ephemeral love adventures2 to a warm bedroom with a man he loves and a family; I cannot be certain about whether this was something he would have wanted, but I am certain that he deserved to live at a time where he had the right to want that.

This idea needed Stein’s unique style of writing to come to life and embody the concept I had envisioned. Mainly, I adopted her repetitions with certain phrases & words that I wanted to emphasize in mind; the element of repetition would give my piece a more modernist character, as Natalia Cecire suggests: “Clement encounters Stein’s writing on its own terms and brings those terms to bear on contemporary distant reading” (284). One of the things that connect Cavafy with Stein is the power their words carry, the former with meaning, the latter with form. I wanted to conjoin these elements and create a “conversation” between Stein & Cavafy, between form & meaning, in motion with each other and with the world and in constant (re)-creation of language & writing.

While writing it not many things changed, the main idea I had was conveyed through imaginings of mine, inspired by songs, books, films, docuseries, and other. What did change was the various events that took place in Greece regarding LGBTQ+ issues throughout the time I’ve been working on it; on the one hand, the legalization of same-sex marriage & adoption which is a crucial part of my story and offered a glimpse of hope, but, on the other hand, the attack of 150 youngsters towards two queer people in Thessaloniki.

An important aspect of my piece is how real and familiar it felt. As a member of the LGBTQ+, I have experienced the fear of being seen, holding my partner’s hand, the secret & rushed kisses, the thrill, the adrenaline, the hatred. But what I prefer my sexuality to be associated with is not the fear but the effort to bring at least a small change in this world. This was my main motive while writing my piece, to offer an alternative to Cavafy’s love and lack of freedom, to use Stein’s powerful repetition & emphasis that would mark my words with meaning.

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WORKS CITED:

Boletsi, Maria. Review of “Made just like me”: The homosexual Cavafy and the poetics of sexuality, by Dimitris Papanikolaou. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2016, pp. 198-203. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2016.0019. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Cecire, Natalia. “Ways of Not Reading Gertrude Stein.” ELH, vol. 82, no. 1, 2015, pp. 281-312. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24477816. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.
Watson, J.L. “Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy”. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 29, 2022, pp. 190–213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-021-00595-2. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.

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FOOTNOTES:

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Thomais Gkatzouni (she/her) is an undergraduate student at the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She lives in Thessaloniki. Her academic interests include translation, contemporary literature, poetry and theatre. She has worked on various projects varying from audiovisual translation to creative writing and theatre performances. She participates in volunteering teams & projects both in Thessaloniki and in her hometown, Katerini, in Greece.

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