Memory

Last photograph of Cavafy, taken just before his death in 1933.
S.N.H.

Limestone funerary stela Terenouthis, Egypt 2nd–4th century AD Kelsey Museum 21077

For Ammonis, Who Died at 29, in 610 Raphael, they’re asking you to write a few lines as an epitaph for the poet Ammonis: something very tasteful and polished. You can do it, you’re the one to write something suitable for the poet Ammonis, our Ammonis. Of course you’ll speak about his poems— but say something too about his beauty, about his subtle beauty that we loved. Your Greek is always elegant and musical. But we want all your craftsmanship now. Our sorrow and our love move into a foreign language. Pour your Egyptian feeling into the Greek you use. Raphael, your verses, you know, should be written so they contain something of our life within them, so the rhythm, so every phrase clearly shows that an Alexandrian is writing about an Alexandrian. Trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Plaster funerary mask of a young boy Egypt Roman, 2nd century AD Kelsey Museum 88243

Plaster funerary mask of a bearded man Egypt Roman, 2nd century AD Kelsey Museum 88236 Plaster funerary mask of a beardless man Fayum, Egypt Roman, AD 117–138 Kelsey Museum 1874

Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias In the Beirut library, just to the right as you go in, we buried wise Lysias, the grammarian. The spot is beautifully chosen. We put him near those things of his that he remembers maybe even there: comments, texts, grammars, variants, voluminous studies of Greek idioms. Also, this way, as we go to the books, we’ll see, we’ll honor his tomb. Trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard