Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy.
Two major themes dominate the poetry of the Alexandrian poet, C. P. Cavafy: homosexual desire and Greekness, broadly defined. This paper explores the interconnectivity of these motifs, showing how Cavafy's poetic queerness is expressed through his relationship with the ancient Greek world, especiall...
| Publicado en: | International Journal of the Classical Tradition Vol. 29; no. 2; pp. 190 - 214 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Jun2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=156860752&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 156860752 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 10730508 IJC jtl: International Journal of the Classical Tradition issn: 10730508 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2022 vid: 29 iid: 2 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 156860752 10.1007/s12138-021-00595-2 ppf: 190 ppct: 24 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 836KB tig: atl: Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy. aug: au: Watson, J. L. affil: Department of Classics and Ancient History, Durham University, DH1 3EU, Durham, UK su: Cavafy, C. P. Poetry collections Poets Gay people Ancient sculpture sug: subj: Cavafy, C. P. Poetry collections Poets Gay people Ancient sculpture ab: Two major themes dominate the poetry of the Alexandrian poet, C. P. Cavafy: homosexual desire and Greekness, broadly defined. This paper explores the interconnectivity of these motifs, showing how Cavafy's poetic queerness is expressed through his relationship with the ancient Greek world, especially Hellenistic Alexandria. I focus on Cavafy's incorporation of ancient sculpture into his poetry and the ways that sculpture, for Cavafy, is a vehicle for expressing forbidden desires in an acceptable way. In this, I draw on the works of Liana Giannakopoulou on statuary in modern Greek poetry and Dimitris Papanikolaou on Cavafy's homosexuality and its presentation in the poetry. Sculpture features in around a third of Cavafy's poems and pervades it in various ways: the inclusion of physical statues as focuses of ecphrastic description, the use of sculptural language and metaphor, and the likening of Cavafy's beloveds to Greek marbles of the past, to name but three. This article argues that Cavafy utilizes the statuary of the ancient Greek world as raw material, from which he sculpts his modern Greek queerness, variously desiring the statuesque bodies of contemporary Alexandrian youths and constructing eroticized depictions of ancient Greek marbles. The very ontology of queerness is, for Cavafy, 'created' using explicitly sculptural metaphors (e.g. the repeated uses of the verb κάνω ['to make'] in descriptions of 'those made like me') and he employs Hellenistic statues as a productive link between his desires and so-called 'Greek desire', placing himself within a continuum of queer, Greek men. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: International Journal of the Classical Tradition is a copyright of Springer, 2022. All Rights Reserved. item: International Journal of the Classical Tradition holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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