Phantom Writing

A friend of mine, a recently retired professor of English Literature, has been writing what he calls phantom essays. They are more or less the type of essay you would find in scholarly journals.

He has published his share of books and articles on Victorian poets. I found the books in the New York Public Library catalog.

He has chosen not to publish anymore. He sends his essays to friends and colleagues who have expressed interest in receiving them. This saves him the fuss and bother of going through the publishing process.

His reasoning is that few people would read or remember them anyway.

In one essay he talks about mandalas, the enormous intricately and beautiful, sand paintings Tibetan monks painstakingly create and then destroy upon completion. The monks believe that nothing is permanent. Each creation is a step to a higher state. They believe that the real beauty is in the act of creating the art rather than preserving it.

Beauty is ephemeral. We appreciate art in the moment.

It is the process of production that is important. The creating not the creation that is the their central issue. Think of the poem “Ithaca” advising us to enjoy the voyage not the destination.

The act of writing is a journey. It leads you to places you might not have otherwise explored. To write is to come alive with an idea, an inspiration that you try to express in words. You transcend the ordinary. You are taken out of yourself. You become a writer.

Someone once said that a writer is a person who writes.

There is real purpose in the professor’s phantom essay. It's the act of writing itself that matters to him.

I do appreciate the monks’ courage in destroying their art. But I think I will keep mine.

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.


Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)