76
PARTISAN REVIEW
are regularly relieved by hectic recollections of outlawed sexual pleas–
ure snatched furtively by the poet. The former are based on a
doctrine of minimum pain, the latter on one of maximum pleasure :
the same hedonistic doctrine, really, although through the historical
perspective, never entirely abandoned, a small measure of necessary
conflict is allowed such personages as prefigure the modern poet. In
other words, it is conceded that our forebears were slightly more
heroic than ourselves, that with the
pa~ing
of each generation there
occurs a further attrition of the traditional manly virtucs.
Prudence Becomes the Supreme Rule of Conduct. The Dangers of the
Sea Lend Spice, Prospectively, to the Tedium of the Safe Harbor
As life grows more decorous, poetry-hand in hand with life–
abandons energy for decoration . The exquisite craftsman who fashions
his own life as though it were a poem appears as the constant pro–
tagonist of so much contemporary verse, and most signally of the
verse of Cavafy. The spheres of action and contemplation, most
rigorously distinguished in the past, are now readily collapsed into
one: to remember imaginatively is to
act .
. .
to act, that is, as well
as circumstances permit. All procedures, henceforth, are prudent pro–
cedures; and all action described as moral is seen to be no more than
procedure. Such overt action as is still maintained has one function
only: to lead up to retirement, to the Voltairean cultivation of one's
backyard; it is recommended to the seeker as adding relish to his final
retreat. Thus we are brought round once more to the hedonistic
bias, that bias which Cavafy has expressed so movingly in his poem,
"Ithaka" :
Setting out on the voyage to Ithaka
You must pray that the way be long,
Full of adventures and experiences .
. .
and so on, until the arch of the poem closes ominously:
Ithaka has given you your lo vely journey,
Without Ithaka you would not have set out.
Ithaka has no more to give you now.
Poor though you find it, Ithaka has not cheated you .
..
