'Ithaka' by CP Cavafy

    Ok, it's not the first time I have posted this one on a blog but it might be new to someone out there,

    Another poem I discovered in later childhood with that immediate sense of 'stickability' - something that would remain just below the surface of consciousness and memory to come back to the top with its accretions of associations and meanings throughout the rest of life. To be thought about, experienced and realized in some way.

    At the centre of the poem is the all important notion and reality of psychological projection ('unless your soul sets them up in front of you') and its effect on how we see the world. Without this knowledge - and the capacity to withdraw and own one's projections - we can never grasp what autonomy or 'individuation' might mean; just who you are and what I might be.That is the work of a lifetime.  

    Ithaka as a worthwhile destination that demands the surrender of illusions.

    Cavafy takes us directly not just to the realm of the demigods but the world of 'archetypes', 'self' and the 'collective unconscious' - the world of universal, subjective mentations that contemporary neuroscience has no way of thinking about or even conceiving of.

   

   ITHAKA

   As you set out for Ithaka

   hope your road is a long one,

   full of adventure, full of discovery.

   Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

   angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

   you’ll never find things like that on your way

   as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

   as long as a rare excitement

   stirs your spirit and your body.

   Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

   wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

   unless you bring them along inside your soul,

   unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

   Hope your road is a long one.

   May there be many summer mornings when,

   with what pleasure, what joy,

   you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

   may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

   to buy fine things,

   mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

   sensual perfume of every kind—

   as many sensual perfumes as you can;

   and may you visit many Egyptian cities

   to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

   Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

   Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

   But don’t hurry the journey at all.

   Better if it lasts for years,

   so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

   wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

   not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

   Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

   Without her you wouldn't have set out.

   She has nothing left to give you now.

   And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

   Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

   you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

   CP CAVAFY

Constantin Cavafy