Archive of Desire: A Festival Inspired by the Poet C. P. Cavafy, New York, NY, April 28–May 6, 2023.
In 1923, E. M. Forster described the poet C. P. Cavafy with the following vignette: “they turn and see a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.”1 Much has been made of the final phrase of Forster’s pithy description—standing at an angle to the universe is a compelling way to characterize a poet whose work is shot through with queer desire—but the first half offers an equally striking way of reading Cavafy: caught in a turning glance, the viewer in motion while he stands still. In his posthumously published poem “Hidden Things,” the poet depicts himself as stilled by his desires: “An obstacle was often there to stop me when I’d begin to speak.2 He goes on to imagine an...