Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

—————
I kept coming back to Cavafy as the poet whose major themes seemed to most closely echo my own obsessions with time, place, and memory. Constantin Cavafy (1863-1933), a Greek citizen who spent nearly his entire life in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, wrote in a combination of purist and demotic Greek—a stylistic trait with no analogue in English, notoriously difficult to translate. He freely jumps between formal and familiar voices, mixing historical reference with bold intimate details, Byzantine emperors with twenty-three-year-old boys in dark port cafés…

Past All Deceiving compiles seven poems, carefully chosen from four translations, creating a dramatic arc of contrasting and sometimes interconnected movements. The idea of setting foreign poetry in translation put me off at first, but I later came to see it as a challenge to delve beyond the surface elements of language, to what Helen Vendler refers to as the "emotional curve" of a poem. My goal was to strip the music of artifice and focus on the formal trajectories of the poems instead: the reconstruction of a scene from memory, detail by detail, in "The Afternoon Sun," a gradual breakdown brought on by infatuation in "A Young Poet in His Twenty-Fourth Year"; reality transformed into pure emotion in "In the Same Space," or masked by delusions and daydreams in "The Sea, in the Morning." The structure of the poems is delineated through changes in texture, instrumentation, and intensity, always aiming to emulate Cavafy's tone: austere and restrained in certain dimensions, unabashedly direct and expressive in others.

Another Cavafy hallmark is his personification of the city itself, developing Alexandria into a character of its own with a multitude of roles. The bookends of this cycle are two of his most well-known poems: the diptych of expansive possibility versus encroaching entrapment in "The City," or the irrevocable, blinding loss of "The God Abandons Antony." For me, the most memorable image in all of Cavafy comes in the final stanza of "In the evening," when the poet steps out onto his balcony for a distraction from his brooding and regret: "to change my thoughts at least by seeing something / of this city I love."

Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

————
The sea, in the morning

Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky, the yellow shore; all lovely,
all bathed in light.

Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this 
(I really did see it for a minute when I first stopped) 
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those images of sensual pleasure.

[Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard]

II. The Sea, In The Morning

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

————
The Afternoon Sun

This room, how well I know it.
Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, merchants, companies.

This room, how familiar it is.

Here, near the door, was the couch,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right—no, opposite—a wardrobe with a mirror. In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window was the bed
where we made love so many times.

They must still be around somewhere, those old things.

Beside the window was the bed;
the afternoon sun fell across half of it.

...One afternoon at four o’clock we separated 
for a week only... And then—
that week became forever.

[Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard]

III. The Afternoon Sun

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

————
A Young Poet in his Twenty-Fourth Year

Brain, work now as well as you can.
A one-sided passion is destroying him.
He’s in a maddening situation.
Every day he kisses the face he worships,
his hands are on those exquisite limbs.
He’s never loved before with this degree of passion. 
But the beautiful fulfillment of love
is lacking, that fulfillment is lacking
which both of them must want with the same intensity.

(They aren’t equally given to the abnormal form of sensual pleasure; only he is completely possessed by it.)

And so he’s wearing himself out, all on edge. 
Then—to make things worse—he’s out of work. 
He manages somehow to borrow
a little here and there (sometimes
almost begging for it) and he just gets by.
He kisses those adored lips, excites himself 
on that exquisite body—though he now feels 
it only acquiesces. And then
he drinks and smokes, drinks and smokes; 
and he drags himself to the cafés all day long, 
drags the weariness consuming his beauty. 
Brain, work now as well as you can.

[Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard]

IV. A Young Poet In His Twenty-Fourth Year

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

————
In the evening

It wouldn't have lasted long anyway—
the experience of years makes that clear.
Even so, Fate did put an end to it a bit abruptly. It was soon over, that wonderful life.
Yet how strong the scents were,
what a magnificent bed we lay in,
what pleasure we gave our bodies.

An echo from my days given to sensuality,
an echo from those days came back to me, something of the fire of the young life we shared: I picked up a letter again,
and I read it over and over till the light faded away.

Then, sad, I went out on to the balcony,
went out to change my thoughts at least by seeing 
something of this city I love,
a little movement in the street and the shops.

[Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard]

V. In The Evening

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

————
In the same space

The surroundings of home, centers, neighborhood 
which I see and where I walk; for years and years.

I have created you in joy and in sorrows:
out of so many circumstances, so many things.

And you have become all feeling, for me.

[Translated by Rae Dalven]

VI. In The Same Space

from Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs (2012)

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

Text by Constantin P. Cavafy

————
The City

You said: "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea. 
Another city will turn up, a better one than this.
My efforts—each is judged and damned beforehand,
and my heart is buried, like a dead man.
And my mind, how long will it remain in this morass.
Anywhere I turn my eye, anywhere I look,
the black ruins of my life are what I see here,
where I have spent so many years, where I have botched and spoiled so many."

You will not find other places, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. All roads you walk
will be these roads. And you will age in these same neighborhoods; 
and in these same houses you will go gray.
Always you will end up in this city. For you
there is no boat—abandon hope of that—no road to other things. 
The way you've botched your life here, in this small corner,
makes for your ruin everywhere on earth.

[Translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis]

I. The City [from Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs (2012)]

from Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs (2012)

Margot Rood, soprano
Argento Ensemble
live recording — 18 March 2012, New York City

Text by Constantin P. Cavafy

————
The God Abandons Antony

When suddenly at darkest midnight heard,
The invisible company passing, the clear voices, 
Ravishing music of invisible choirs—
Your fortunes having failed you now,
Hopes gone aground, a lifetime of desires 
Turned into smoke. Ah! Do not agonize
At what is past deceiving
But like a man long since prepared
With courage say your last good-byes
To Alexandria as she is leaving.

Do not be tricked and never say
It was a dream or that your ear misled,
Leave cowards their entreaties and complaints, 
Let all such useless hopes as these be shed,
And like a man long since prepared,
Deliberately, with pride, with resignation 
Befitting you and worthy of such a city
Turn to the open window and look down
To drink past all deceiving
Your last black rapture from the mystical throng, 
And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria leaving.
[Translated by Lawrence Durrell]

VII. The God Abandons Antony [from Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs (2012)]

New Orleans -> Harvard -> London -> Paris -> Istanbul -> New York City -> Rome -> Los Angeles -> Palermo -> New Orleans

Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs

Christopher Trapani