When Vangelis, Cavafy and Sean Connery “met” in … “Ithaca” (sound spot)
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February 24, 2023As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
The great actor Sean Connery and Vangelis Papathanassiou once "met" in "Ithaca" by Konstantinos Cavafy.
It was the distant -now- 2004, when Vangelis Papathanassiou who "passed away" on Tuesday 17 May 2022 , in 2004 teamed up with his good friend and unforgettable actor, Sean Connery, in the shocking recitation of "Ithaca" by Konstantinos P. Cavafy " dressed ”by the composer's music.
"It is a wonderful story, one of the most beautiful I have encountered and something very different from what I have read," said Sir Sean Connery of Ithaca, a poem that is among the most essential by Constantine Cavafy. As for the poet himself, Connery had said: "it is wise, simple and this is the best way to address the public."
The recitation is on the CD "Ithaca" which came with Micheline Rockburn-Connery's book "A journey in color," in which she illustrates her works. This collection was released in Greece -in a limited number of copies- for a good cause, as all the proceeds from the sales of the collection, as well as the rights of the couple Koneri and Vangelis Papathanassiou were donated to the charitable association "Friends of the Child" .
Ithaka
BY C. P. CAVAFY
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY
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.
C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.
Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)
