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Pharos and Pharillon

Chapter 15: THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY
By E. M. Forster
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About This Book

A collection of essays and sketches blends antiquarian narrative, personal travel impressions, and literary criticism centered on Alexandria and its environs. The early pieces retell ancient episodes, local legends, and ecclesiastical anecdotes—lighthouse lore, Greek and Jewish interactions, and patristic memories—while later pieces offer modern recollections, character studies, and atmospheric vignettes of ruins and everyday life. Translations and responses to C. P. Cavafy’s poetry are interleaved with the prose. Recurring concerns include the layering of civilizations, the persistence of memory, and the melancholy of decay as it shapes place and identity.

THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY

When at the hour of midnight
an invisible choir is suddenly heard passing
with exquisite music, with voices—
Do not lament your fortune that at last subsides,
your life’s work that has failed, your schemes that have proved illusions.
But like a man prepared, like a brave man,
bid farewell to her, to Alexandria who is departing.
Above all, do not delude yourself, do not say that it is a dream,
that your ear was mistaken.
Do not condescend to such empty hopes.
Like a man for long prepared, like a brave man,
like the man who was worthy of such a city,
go to the window firmly,
and listen with emotion
but not with the prayers and complaints of the coward
(Ah! supreme rapture!)
listen to the notes, to the exquisite instruments of the mystic choir,
and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria whom you are losing.
C. P. Cavafy.[1]

1.  For a study of Cavafy’s work see p. 91.

PHARILLON