CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY
MISPLACED TENDERNESS
Plutarch, in his life of Solo, remarks
that much the greater number of people whose hearts are either by nature or
artifice shut to the tender feelings inspired by affection of any kind have
been observed to bestow their feelings on objects absolutely unworthy and
despicable. This theory can aptly be illustrated and confirmed by the doters on
animals who have seldom earned reputation as philanthropes; and though this be
but a light subject of speculation, still it affords so many examples that it
should not pass unnoticed in a work professing to treat not so much of serious
matters as of light matters seriously.
Lord Lytton, quoting M. Georges Duval, tells us
that fondness to animals was a distinguishing trait of the bloody heroes of the
French Revolution. Couthon, we hear, was greatly attached to a spaniel which he
invariably carried in his bosom even to the Convention; Chaunette devoted his
leisure to an aviary; Fournier bore on his shoulders a little squirrel attached
by a silver chain: «Panis showed the utmost tenderness to two gold pheasants;
and Marat, who would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he
demanded, rear doves». Billaud, Lord Macaulay says,
diverted the lonely hours of his later days by teaching parrots to talk.
«A
propos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an amusing anecdote of
Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of the massacre of September. A
lady came to implore his protection for one of her relations confined in t he
Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to her. As she retired in despair, she
trod by accident on the paw of the favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round,
enraged and furious, exclaimed, “Madame, have you no humanity?”».
Inhumanity to humankind and humanity to
animals in a feminine heart (in which these contradictory feelings are very
often met) is described in the following style by Mme de Rieux hh
All those who are keen on Modern Greek poetry
will find in the Cavafian Anthology at the end of this essay, the original
Greek text of the poems quoted in translation in this essay, and some other
poems in which the fatal
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