C. P. Cavafy's "Che Fece...Il Gran Rifiuto"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. A major figure of modern Greek literature, he is sometimes considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century.

-bio via Wikipedia

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.0	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, May 22, 2004.
0:09.1	Today's poem is by C.P. Cavafi, born Constantinos Petru Cavafis, to a Greek-speaking family in Alexandria.
0:21.6	The poem is called Shefece il grand refuto,
0:25.6	which is a line pulled from Dante's Inferno.
0:29.6	It translates to he who makes the great or grand refusal.
0:35.6	And in Dante's poem, the grand refusal is a sin attributed to probably a pope, although there is
0:49.4	some debate about who Dante has in mind.
1:00.3	But Pope Celestine the fifth resigned the office of the papacy in order to live out his days as a monk. This is credited to him by many in his day as a virtuous move.
1:12.9	It was remembered not too long ago when Pope Benedict did something similar because of concerns
1:20.4	about his failing health and advancing age.
1:24.1	Dante, however, saw this great renunciation as a dereliction of duty and alleged that it was done out of cowardice.
1:38.5	Now, the debate is over the ambiguity about exactly who Dante is referring to.
1:47.0	Many have assumed it was Pope Celestine, though other candidates include the Emperor Diocletian and Pontius Pilate,
1:57.5	who also washed his hands and refused to continue adjudicating the case of
2:04.5	Jesus, refused to render his own verdict about the innocent man, but rather left it up to
2:12.6	the Jews who would crucify him. Whatever the case, Kavati has turned this idea of the grand refusal and inverted it.
2:24.4	And in his poem, as you'll see, it's a positive.
2:30.2	Today I've got two different translations of this poem to read.
2:33.8	They make a few varying decisions
2:37.0	and choices that I think are intriguing and worth hearing. So here is the first by Kovfi's
2:45.0	own older brother, John. It goes like this. For some among among us there comes up a day when either the great yea or the great
	...

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