Depths

When I saw this work, entitled The Depths of the Sea (1887, watercolor and gouache on wove paper mounted on panel, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA) by Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898) of the Pre-Raphaelites, I immediately thought of the following poem by Cavafy:

ΔΕΗΣΙΣ

Η θάλασσα στά βάθη της
πήρ’ έναν ναύτη.—
Η μάνα του ανήξερη πηαίνει κι ανάφτει

Στήν Παναγία μπροστά ένα ύψηλο κερί
γιά νά επιστρέψει γρήγορα
καί νάν’ καλοί καιροί—


καί όλο πρός τόν άνεμο στήνει τ’ αυτί.
Αλλά ενώ προσεύχεται καί δέεται αυτή,

η εικών ακούει σοβαρή καί λυπημένη,
ξεύροντας πώς δέν θάλθει πιά
ο υιός που περιμένει.

Prayer

Into her depths, the sea took a sailor—
His mother unknowingly went to light

a tall candle before the All-Holy Virgin
for tranquil seas and so that
her son might return quickly—

and so she kept her vigil,
but while she prayed and pleaded,

the icon listened soberly and sadly
knowing that the son for whom she waited would never return.

(1898)

On its surface, this is in many ways a peculiar poem. It is folksy, and not a little hokey, with its personification of both the sea and the inanimate icon. However, if one looks a bit deeper, one will find many features that are characteristic of Cavafy’s other works. For starters, its Greek is pure demotic (i.e. the popular idiom, not fancy literary Greek). The title itself, “Prayer,” directs the reader’s attention away from the tragedy of the sailor’s drowning to the futility of his mother’s prayer. Futility is a theme that works its way into many of Cavafy’s poems. A similar poem, “Η Αρρώστια του Κλείτου” (Kleitos’ Illness), also portrays a prayer that falls on deaf ears. These unanswered prayers are examples of the larger theme of unsatisfied longing and desire that haunts Cavafy’s body of work.

I believe this poem also possesses an autobiographical element. Cavafy lived with his widowed mother until her death in 1899. Their relationship surely felt the strain of the double life he led. Although he kept—or attempted to keep—his homosexuality a secret from his aging mother, this poem perhaps points to that inner conflict and Cavafy’s awareness of his mother’s desperation at seeing her youngest son descend into the depths of some unknown and unnamed vice. Cavafy wrote “Prayer” in 1898, just one year before his mother’s death.

The icon is Παναγία Παυσολύπη (14th century, egg tempera on wood, Holy Trinity Monastery, Halki/Heybeliada, Turkey). The name of this icon means “she who stops sadness.”