BEFORE MIDNIGHT

 

Every New Year’s Eve, wherever I may find myself, as I watch the passage of the dial across the clock until midnight, I hear the words of Cavafy’s poem “Since Nine” resonate with each tick:

“Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp

and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,

without speaking. With whom should I speak,

so utterly alone within this house?

The apparition of my youthful body,

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp,

has come and found me and reminded me

of shuttered perfumed rooms

and of pleasure spent—what wanton pleasure!

And it also brought before my eyes

streets made unrecognizable by time,

bustling city centres that are no more

and theatres and cafés that existed long ago.

The apparition of my youthful body

came and also brought me cause for pain:

deaths in the family; separations;

the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings of

those long dead which I so little valued.

Half past twelve. How the time has passed.

Half past twelve. How the years have passed.”

 

Twelve o’clock is the terminal point. This is where time runs out and it is not at all certain whether it begins anew and for whom. Cavafy begins to ponder the end at nine, that is in the twilight of his life. He is, in contrast to many of us who seek during festive occasions to be with friends or family, abjuring and inordinately fearful of solitude, absolutely alone. In the desolation of his empty house, all that remains for him to do, is to delineate a topography of loss.

Despite what he may think, Cavafy is not alone in this pursuit. I too, cast my mind back to New Year’s Eve’s of old. I remember parties and dances in clubhouses that have been sold long ago, their revellers, with their mutton chop sideburns and their inordinately wide-ties having been laid to rest decades ago. I remember my grandparents and their siblings bemusedly watch my uncles, so young then, attempting to the cheat them at cards, while trying to stifle a smile and recalling New Year’s Eves in other places, in other times, impossibly ancient and hard to fathom when one is only in the first decade of one’s life. Mostly however, I remember my great-grandmother, in the midst of an adoring crowd of descendants, celebrated, revered but utterly alone, remembering like Cavafy, loved ones long dead that had left her behind as the only person who remembered them, streets that no longer existed, neighbourhoods and customs that had passed out of sight and out of mind.

 

In Cavafy’s experience, reminiscing is a harbinger of pain and an evocator of a sense of ennui, with the poet regretting the fact that he did not value his loved ones while he was with them, nor have sufficient regard for their feelings. These holidays, many of us will feel the same sense of pain as we remove loved ones from their accommodation in aged care in order for them to share the joy of the season with us. In a large number of cases, those afflicted with dementia will be physically present, just as Cavafy’s memories are visceral and sensory: he evokes the smell of perfumed rooms, the sound of the bustle of busy cities, the touch that beings wanton pleasure. However, unlike Cavafy, they will not be in a position to remember, to analyse those memories and to feel pleasure or regret, just as they will not be able to absorb or in any way relate to the celebrations they have been brought to partake in. For them, midnight has come and gone. Unable to be haunted by an apparition of their younger, more sensual selves, unable to distinguish between evolving streetscapes of yore and their present condition, they are transcend Cavafy’s conundrum: For them, Time no longer has any meaning whatsoever and instead, it is we, their loved ones who are implicated in Cavafy’s reverie: lamenting the decay of their corporeal form, feeling guilty about having disappointed them, disregarding their feelings and inevitably, in our most guilt-laden moments, furtively watching the clock.

 

The genius of Cavafy’s understanding of time however, is that it can ever be manipulated. While we meet him just before the end, the time is now half past doomsday and yet he is still with us, albeit in a diminished and melancholy form. Is guilt therefore a form of purgatory for those who cease to “live” a vibrant life, however this may be defined? What happens after midnight.

Many things it turns out, not all of them unpleasant. In the poem “Comes To Rest,” the memory of a torrid erotic encounter is placed a little after midnight:

 

“It must have been one o'clock at night

or half past one.

A corner in a taverna,

behind the wooden partition:

except for the two of us the place completely empty.

A lamp barely gave it light.

The waiter was sleeping by the door.

No one could see us.

But anyway, we were already so worked up

we'd become incapable of caution.

Our clothes half opened - we weren't wearing much:

it was a beautiful hot July.

Delight of flesh between

half-opened clothes;

quick baring of flesh - a vision

that has crossed twenty-six years

and now comes to rest in this poetry.”

 

As is the case with “Before Nine,” the memories unfold within a closed space: an empty home in the case of the first poem, an empty corner of a taverna behind a partition in the second. Midnight has been and gone and yet both sets of memories, set at approximately the same time  emphasise a physical and emotional barrier between the poet, his memories and the outside world that acts as a vessel to preserve those memories against time even while tacitly acknowledging that such an endeavour is ultimately futile and full of grief.

 

Those endeavours extend way past midnight into the afternoon. In “The Afternoon Sun,” in which via a description of urban renewal Cavafy describes with photographic accuracy a room used to make love which no longer exits, the seminal moment upon which his memory turns and is projected into eternity is precisely pinpointed as four o’clock in the afternoon:

 

“One afternoon at four o’clock we separated

for a week only. . . And then—

that week became forever.”

 

There is movement in the kitchen now. Dishes of food are being brought out, bottles of unspeakable vile Verve Clicquot champaign emerge from the refrigerator. Someone turns up the television and as I see the jubilant countenances of revellers in cities just as bustling as the poet’s Alexandria of old, all of them young and none of them of the age of his seedy conurbation, I muse that the  intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in Cavafy’s poetry, are Kantian in the way that they form transcendental pre-conditions of experience, but rather than being theoretical, they assume a concrete form.

 

There is a countdown now. Soon after the fireworks begin. From our location, the Melburnian fireworks are clearly visible, spreading their outrage of light across the dark night sky. The neighbours have all come out onto the street, their mouths open in wonder. As one fireburst follows the other in nauseating succession, a young child exclaims: “I wish this night could last forever.”

 

It is then that I am reminded that the ultimate brilliance of Cavafy, is not that he can, as an Egyptian, mummify and preserve time, nor that he can conflate it or transcend it, but, as in his poem “Before Time Altered Them,” make is stand completely still.

 

“Or maybe Fate

appeared as an artist and decided to part them now,

before their feeling died out completely, before Time altered

them

the one seeming to remain for the other always what he was,

the good-looking young man of twenty-four.”

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 4 January 2025