Pytheas Social & Political Review ®
August 2013
“Ithaca” by C. P. Cavafis – An allegory about life (and business) ventures
By Harris A. Samaras
www.pytheas.net
Pytheas Social & Political Review ®
About the Author – Harris A. Samaras An Economist and presently the Chairman & CEO of Pytheas, an international investment banking organization, Harris has also worked with the Bank of America Group, Thomson Financial BankWatch, and Moody’s Investors Service. His expertise lies primarily in the areas of investment and corporate banking, private equity and finance, corporate restructuring, risk management and business development, strategic advisory and thought leadership. His research and extensive publications in these areas range across practice rather than theory, economic and business thought, entrepreneurship and geopolitics. He has been an adviser to various governments, central banks, financial institutions, and other corporates and has been a member of the board of directors of multinational organizations.
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Pytheas Social & Political Review ® Free translation of Cavafis poem “Ithaca” from Greek to English by Harris A. Samaras: Ιθάκη Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (1911)
Ithaca Constantinos P. Cavafis (1911)
Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι, τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρείς, αν μέν' η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις, αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου, αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου. Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος. Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωϊά να είναι που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους να σταματήσεις σ' εμπορεία Φοινικικά, και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν' αποκτήσεις, σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ' έβενους, και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής, όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας, να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους. Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη. Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν' ο προορισμός σου. Αλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξίδι διόλου. Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει και γέρος πια ν' αράξεις στο νησί, πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο, μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray and hope that the road is long, full of adventures and challenges, full of discovery and knowledge. The Laestrygonians and the Cyclops, the angry Poseidon, fear them not; negligible fixations such as those you will never encounter on your path, if your thoughts are high, if a selective process that touches your mind and body dictates your every action. The Laestrygonians and the Cyclops, the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter, if you do not carry them in your soul, if your soul does not allow them to be set up before you. Pray that the journey is long. Many may the summer mornings be when with pleasure and joy and rare excitement you enter harbors for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician markets, not just to purchase fine merchandise, mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony, and sensual perfumes of all kinds, get as many hedonic perfumes as you can! And may you visit many Egyptian cities to acquire knowledge but learn from scholars and simple people alike. But Always keep Ithaca in your mind. To arrive there is your ultimate destination and goal. But hurry not! May the journey last for years and years and anchor at the island an old man, rich from all that you earned on your quest, expecting not that Ithaca will ever provide you with riches.
Η Ιθάκη σ' έδωσε το ωραίο ταξίδι. Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο. Αλλο δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια. Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε. Ετσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα, ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.
Ithaca has given you this amazing journey. Without Her you would not have set out. She (Ithaca) has nothing more to give you. And if you deem Ithaca poor, She deceived you not. Wise as you have become, with all this experience, you must by now have realized the true meaning of Ithacas.
Ithaca, the poem, is not just a story about a fantastic voyage and of a hero overcoming some imaginary or not difficulties on his way back home. It is an inner-self quest for rediscovering
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Pytheas Social & Political Review ® who you really are; at the same time it is a celebration of the human nature and the capability of achieving your goals, even if it means that you have to go through the most difficult and unexpected obstacles to reach those goals. It is the journey not the destination that matters most in ones quest for life, says Cavafis with aesthetism and skepticism! Parabolizing from Homer’s Odyssey, Cavafis expresses through myth, allusion and symbolism that most important in life is the experience acquired from the journey of life and not necessarily just reaching the ultimate single goal. If one allows self to ignore those encounters that are only negligible fixations imposed by society’s status quo; if one challenges the status quo with wisdom and an open mind; facing life without fear, avoiding the frayed and stereotyped; exploring life to the fullest… then this person will be truly rich… this person would have lived and “tasted” life to the fullest! Entrepreneurship is no different! An excelling entrepreneur and businessman or businesswoman will have to understand life if he or she is to be successful: One will have to enrich his or her critical thinking and thought leadership skills if he or she is to answer the “whys” and the “whynots”, the “cans” and the “cannots”, the “hows” and the “hownots”, the “whatifs”. How else can you achieve your business goals unless you are a true explorer of life? How could you even understand what your business goals are or should be if you do not understand life? Life should not be wasted in always contemplating the goal of one’s endeavors or in building up hopes and schemes for the future but in enjoying the journey, gaining from the journey. An obsession with the final goal can blind a person to the real business of living, which is to enjoy and explore every minute that is available. Life at times can be disappointing. The goals people strive for, their Ithacas, may not yield what they hoped for. Therefore, it is better not to have fixations. There may be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Ithaca may be poor, with nothing to give. A person should not have the type of lofty ideals that society imposes and considers success. Yet, it is human to have ambitions and expectations, and one must have, to strive to explore and achieve. As the poet states, without having an “Ithaca,” a goal, in mind, there would be no reason to act at all, no reason to embark on a journey… All of us set ever-changing goals that we want to achieve in our lifetime and we strive or not hard throughout our lives to reach these goals. As a result, we can all relate to our hero’s quest to reach Ithaca as being our own journey of life, to reach the goals we set before we start this long voyage. Just like Odysseus, we will all face difficulties, temptations and problems while we try to achieve what we want. The question is whether we have the strength and patience to remain focused on achieving these goals when we come face to face with the extreme difficulties of personal and business life alike – using all the resources of senses and intellect – just like Odysseus finally made it and reached his Ithaca. What happens if we do not achieve all our goals when we finally reach our Ithaca? Should we be considered unsuccessful? Should we feel that we have failed in our lives or business venture? The answer is clearly “No”. The actual objective lies in making the voyage itself, and to face all those difficulties; to overcome them and gain experience while we are out making the voyage. By the time we reach our Ithaca we will already have gained so much from the trip that whether we reach our goals or not becomes of secondary importance. The poet has a recipe for enjoying the journey that involves the cultivation of a certain habit of mind. The whole person – body, mind, spirit, even soul – must be fully alert and engaged in the life it is living. A person must keep his or her “thoughts raised high,” which means that the mind must not give in to melancholy or disappointment or the sordid aspects of life. The poet in his own unique way highlights the contemplation of art, which leads the mind to the higher levels of the human spirit, rather than allowing it to sink to abyssal depths. Another prerequisite for happiness and content on the journey is what Cavafis calls “rare excitement.” This might be explained as a certain attitude to the experiences that life produces. A person must cultivate the ability to respond to situations and experiences as if
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Pytheas Social & Political Review ® they were entirely new and fresh, never before seen, and therefore an object of wonder and delight. The opposite would be to respond in a tired, mundane way, influenced by habit and custom, or by the polarized elements of society. The last part of the recipe for a fulfilling journey is to enjoy the sensual aspects of life (“as many sensual/hedonic perfumes as you can”), to value beautiful things (symbolized by the precious stones), and to cultivate the intellect. The latter is suggested by the advice to learn and “go on learning” from the scholars in Egypt. The way this is phrased is significant. A person can never say that he or she has learned enough. Learning is an ongoing process with no final end in sight. The advice given throughout the poem could be summed up as the need to live and feel life, to perceive, enjoy, and understand the world. The aim is to live in the actualities of the present moment, not in the imagined future that will only lead to fixations and obsessions… The final, and perhaps most important, symbol in “Ithaca” is Ithaca itself. Ithaca, Homeric Odysseus’ island kingdom, represents both the starting and ending place. Everyone comes from somewhere. There was a time and place that shaped them and made them what they are. As they reached adulthood they left home. Some went far indeed, even as this poem recommends. Ironically, the farther people get from home or focus (physically, temporally, and ideologically) the more they want to return. The great risk, however, is of idealizing your own personal Ithaca. The point of life is the journey and the experiences along the way. If you go long enough you will eventually get back to where you began. Ithaca is the beginning and the end. Ithaca acts symbolically as a representation of the achievement of the goals people set in their lives. Consequently, the quest for reaching Ithaca stops being just a fantastic voyage... Instead, it can now be thought as everybody’s quest in their lives to make their dreams come true. Ithaca exists for each and every one of us, in personal and business life, although for each in different ways! Remember, it is the path in between that makes life worth living! It is the path in between that makes a business venture a valuable experience and a remarkable story! It is the path in between that enriches our senses and intellect!
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Pytheas Social & Political Review ®
Sources (Alphabetically) ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ►
Auden, W. H., Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden, Random House, 1958, pp. 71–73 Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis, foreword by Gore Vidal (New York: Harcourt, 2001) Bien, Peter, Constantine Cavafy, Columbia University Press, 1964 Bowra, C. M., “Constantine Cavafy and the Greek Past,” In the Creative Experiment, Macmillan, 1949, pp. 29–60 Capri-Karka, C., Love and the Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis, Pella Publishing Company, 1982 Cavafy, C. P., Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, Princeton University Press, 1980 Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies – The official website of the Cavafy archive Complete Poems by C P Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, Harper Press, 2013 C. P. Cavafy, Poems: The Canon, translated by John Chioles, edited by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Early Modern and Modern Greek Library, 2011 Forster, E. M., Alexandria: A History and a Guide, with an introduction by Lawrence Durrell, Michael Haag, 1982 Helium – An overview in the major characters in The Odyssey, by Homer, Michael Smoker, 2010 Helium – Plot summary: The Odyssey by Homer, Tim Harry, 2011 Helium – Poetry analysis: Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Beth Gaboury, 2011 Keeley, Edmund, Cavafy’s Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress, Harvard University Press, 1976 Passions and Ancient Days – 21 New Poems, Selected and translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis, London: The Hogarth Press, 1972 Pinchin, Jane Lagoudis, Alexandria Still: Forster, Durrell, and Cavafy, Princeton University Press, 1977 Poetry Foundation – C. P. Cavafy Pytheas Social & Political Review – In search for excellence through critical thinking and thought leadership, Harris A. Samaras, 2012 QuickiWiki – Constantine P. Cavafy Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, “Ulysses,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th ed., Vol. 2, Norton, 1979, pp. 1110–11 University of Michigan – C. P. Cavafy forum You Tube – Ithaca by C. P. Cavafy (Recitation by Sean Connery. Music by Vangelis) Σημειώσεις Νεοελληνικής Λογοτεχνίας - Κωνσταντίνου Καβάφη "Ιθάκη" (Ανάλυση) Sky.gr – 150 χρόνια από τη γέννηση του Κωνσταντίνου Καβάφη
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