Loss, Lament, and Survival in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy

Abstract: The question of loss and its relation to aesthetic form emerges in poems by C. P. Cavafy that deal specifically with the unacknowledged losses suffered by lives on the sexual margins, for whom the challenge of survival takes shape under punitive social forces. Finding in Greek literary tradition the aesthetic potential to manage what is unmanageable about loss under the historical conditions of modernity, Cavafy has recourse to the poetry of lament to reimagine the work of living with enduring loss. Cavafy's revisions to the poetry of lament facilitate the process of grieving for same-sex desiring subjects, especially when one does not know precisely what or how much has been lost. A number of these poems articulate new forms of pleasure that become possible in the aftermath of loss, thus proposing sensual pleasure as a mode of survival.