boundary 2 44:3 (2017) DOI 10.1215/01903659-3898142 © 2017 by Duke University Press Cavafy’s Debt Stathis Gourgouris For Stephen Yenser There is a peculiar relation between the words Cavafy and debt. On the one hand, there are the obvious and voluminous references to what the world of poetry generally (and certain poets specifically) owe to C. P. Cavafy: from practically the entire modernist Greek poetic tradition (from Kostas Karyotakis onward) to the broader sphere of twentieth-century poetry and literature worldwide, from E. M. Forster and W. H. Auden to Joseph Brodsky and J. M. Coetzee. The poetic debt owed to Cavafy has become something of a literary topos, even if, curiously, this has not been adequately addressed in the newfangled institution of the “world literature” canon, which has not managed to escape modern literature’s submission to the hegemony of the novel. On the other hand, this literary topos should be contrasted with the fairly common ruminations (even if not quite as wide- spread) as to how Cavafy’s poetry is indebted to no one, to no other poet or tradition that preceded him or is concurrent with his work. Of course, such judgments, on both sides, are how literary critics pay their dues (and occa- sionally even their debts), so they cannot serve as departure points for a Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/article-pdf/44/3/129/499166/BOU44_3_07Gourgouris_Fpp.pdf by COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY user on 08 January 2018