Commissioned by Britten Sinfonia, Muziekcentrum Frits Philips and Tapiola Sinfonietta.
\nBritten Sinfonia is grateful to Arts Council England for making this commission possible.<\/p>\n
PART I THE HEREAFTER (1892)
\nI believe in the Hereafter. Material appetites or love for the real don\u2019t beguile me. It\u2019s not habit but instinct. The heavenly word will be added
\nto life\u2019s imperfect sentence, otherwise inane. Respite and reward will follow upon action. When sight is forevermore closed to Creation,
\nthe eye will be opened in the presence of the Creator. An immortal wave of life will flow from each and every Gospel of Christ\u2014wave of life uninterrupted.<\/p>\n
NEAR AN OPEN WINDOW
\nIn the stillness of an autumn night, I sit near an open window, for entire hours, in a perfect, voluptuous tranquility.
\nThe gentle rainfall of the leaves descends.
\nThe keening of the perishable world resounds within my perishable nature,
\nbut is a dulcet keening, rising like a prayer. My window opens up an unknown world. A fount of fragrant memories, unutterable, appears before me.
\nAgainst my window wings are beating\u2014chill autumnal exhalations
\napproach me and encircle me and in their holy tongue they speak to me.
\nI feel vague and wide-embracing hopes; and in the hallowed silence of creation, my ears hear melodies,
\nhear the crystalline, the mystic music of the chorus of the stars.<\/p>\n
PART II SEPTEMBER OF 1903 (1904)
\nAt least let me be deceived by delusions, now, so that I might not feel my empty life. And I was so close so many times. And how I froze, and how I was afraid;
\nwhy should I remain with lips shut tight; while within me weeps my empty life, and my longings wear their mourning black. To be, so many times, so close
\nto the eyes, and to the sensual lips, to the dreamed of, beloved body. To be, so many times, so close.<\/p>\n
JANUARY OF 1904 (1904)
\nAh this January, this January\u2019s nights,
\nwhen I sit and refashion in my thoughts those moments and I come upon you, and I hear our final words, and hear the first.
\nThis January\u2019s despairing nights, when the vision goes and leaves me all alone. How swiftly it departs and melts away\u2014 the trees go, the streets go, the houses go, the lights go: it fades and disappears, your erotic shape.
\nPART III 27 JUNE 1906, 2 P. M. (1908)
\nWhen the Christians brought him to be hanged, the innocent boy of seventeen, his mother, who there beside the scaffold had dragged herself and lay beaten on the ground beneath the midday sun, the savage sun,
\nnow would moan, and howl like a wolf, a beast, and then the martyr, overcome, would keen \u201cSeventeen years only you lived with me, my child.\u201d And when they took him up the scaffold\u2019s steps and passed the rope around him and strangled him, the innocent boy, seventeen years old,
\nand piteously it hung inside the void, with the spasms of black agony\u2014 the youthful body, beautifully wrought\u2014 his mother, martyr, wallowed on the ground and now she keened no more about his years: \u201cSeventeen days only,\u201d she keened, \u201cseventeen days only I had joy of you, my child.\u201d<\/p>\n
IMPOSSIBLE THINGS (1897)
\nThere is one joy alone, but one that\u2019s blessed, one consolation only in this pain. How many thronging tawdry days were missed because of this ending; how much ennui.
\nA poet has said: \u201cThe loveliest music is the one that cannot be played.\u201d And I, I daresay that by far the best life is the one that cannot be lived.
\n\u2014C.P. CAVAFY
\ntranslated by Daniel Mendelsohn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commissioned by Britten Sinfonia, Muziekcentrum Frits Philips and Tapiola Sinfonietta. Britten Sinfonia is grateful to Arts Council England for making this commission possible. PART I THE HEREAFTER (1892) I believe in the Hereafter. Material appetites or love for the real don\u2019t beguile me. It\u2019s not habit but instinct. The heavenly word will be added to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}