Poetry Friday: Atlantis

Many of my former students know my obsession with the heroes of Greek myth—and some few of you will remember also a favorite poem of mine that connects to one of those heroes, Odysseus.  It’s a poem by the Greek poet, Constantine Cavafy, entitled “Ithaca”.  I made much of Ithaca as an idea once in some public remarks, inspired at least a little bit by Cavafy, who talks about the journey to Ithaca…what we find along the way, and how we come in the end to realize that Ithaca’s gift to the people who journey there is the journey itself.  It’s a lovely poem, and one I may post someday, but tonight I’m more interested in a parody/homage/re-envisioning of Cavafy’s poem—a poem by Wystan Hugh Auden, one of my very favorite poets, entitled “Atlantis”.  I’ll say more about why I picked it (and why I strung together those three non-equivalent nouns with slashes) once you’ve read it:

Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis,
You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is
Making the voyage this year,
As gales of abnormal force
Are predicted, and that you
Must therefore be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty scholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground
Among the headlands of Thrace,
Where with torches all night long
A naked barbaric race
Leaps frenziedly to the sound
Of conch and dissonant gong;
On that stony savage shore
Strip off your clothes and dance, for
Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely
About Atlantis, you will
Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay
Carthage or Corinth, take part
In their endless gaiety;
And if in some bar a tart,
As she strokes your hair, should say
‘This is Atlantis, dearie,’
Listen with attentiveness
To her life-story: unless
You become acquainted now
With each refuge that tries to
Counterfeit Atlantis, how
Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
The terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Tundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and snow, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
Farewell, dear friend, farewell: may
Hermes, master of the roads,
And the four dwarf Kabiri.
Protect and serve you always:
And may the Ancient of Days
Provide for all you must do
His invisible guidance,
Lifting up, friend, upon you
The light of His countenance.

I know it’s long, but I’ve always wondered about this poem. When I first read it, I had read Cavafy’s “Ithaca” not long before, and the opening lines of “Atlantis” (and, honestly, multiple moments in later stanzas) are so obviously modeled on “Ithaca” that I immediately took it for a parody—a joke on Cavafy, mocking the idea of the journey to a nearly unreachable island, and the notion of being satisfied if the destination didn’t live up to expectations.

But as I return to “Atlantis”, year after year, I’m increasingly moved by it. I suspect that it’s not a parody at all, or else that Auden, who began in a parody, gradually found his own ground to stand on and his own ideas to explore. Some of you may know “Ithaca” and I’m hoping you can give your own impression. More importantly, most of you probably won’t have ever read Cavafy’s poem. You can hunt it down via Google, of course, but I’m curious—I’d expect that, if this poem is only a parody, it won’t have done much for you. All the “winks” in the poem will just feel like non sequiturs to you (I’d surmise). But, conversely, if there’s something real here in “Atlantis”, I’d expect you’d have an easier time finding it, being undistracted by any similarities the poem bears to some verse you haven’t read. I would love to get reactions to this poem from a few of you passers-by.

In the meantime, I don’t want to poison the well too much with my own opinions (which I hope to expand on in comments conversations with you), but I will say that I think “Ithaca” was a poem about what a person can find in the world, and that what makes “Atlantis” different is that Auden was interested in what a person can find inside themselves. “Atlantis”, then, becomes not the external goal that creates the journey, but the internal voice that calls us onto the road. But maybe I’m wrong, and in any case this is by no means the sum total of my thoughts. Enjoy your weekend, and read some more poetry if you can.