Production and Function of Poetry in “Darius” Seda Dalgec College

Cavafy is a poet who reinscribes Hellenistic history with his peculiar point of view and a sharp sense of irony in his historical poems. Among these, there are meta-poetic moments or whole poems that are about the writing process and the function of poetry. Through a comparison of these moments in the historical poem “Darius” with the critical essays of the author, we may explore how Cavafy the critic stands in relation to the speaker-poet in the poem, and how Cavafy the poet inhabits various positions in relation to his critical identity by way of analyzing distinct poetic notions presented in the text.

“Darius” is a whole poem dealing with the production process of a poem in a historical setting. The speaker is a poet named Phernazes working on his epic poem about Darius, son of Hystaspes, who is the ancestor of the contemporary king Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator. Even before the speaker-poet explains his motives for the writing of this poem, it is evident that he tries to gain the favor of the “glorious king” by writing an epic poem about his ancestor Darius. The part he is working on when the poem begins is defined as ‘crucial’ because he is about to anticipate what was the emotional state Darius was in when he seized...