Sean Connery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Ithaca,” Set to the Music of Vangelis

This video com­bines three things that make me hap­py: the voice of Sean Con­nery (who passed away today), the music of Van­ge­lis (Blade Run­ner, Char­i­ots of Fire), and the poet­ry of C.P. Cavafy. Put them all togeth­er and you get a bliss­ful sound­scape of rolling synth lines, rolling Scot­tish R’s, and a suc­ces­sion of Home­r­ic images and anaphor­ic lines. And the video’s quite nice as well.

Cavafy, whose work, I’m told, is real­ly untrans­lat­able from the orig­i­nal Greek, always seems to come out pret­ty well to me in Eng­lish. “Itha­ca,” one of his most pop­u­lar poems, express­es what in less­er hands might be a banal sen­ti­ment akin to “it’s the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion.” But in Cavafy’s poem, the jour­ney is both Odysseus’s and ours; it’s epic where our lives seem small, and it trans­lates our minor wan­der­ings to the realm of myth­ic his­to­ry.

Any­way, it seems rude to say much more and drown the poem in com­men­tary. So, fol­low along with Sean Con­nery.

Find the text of the poem after the jump.

ITHACA [1910, 1911]
As you set out for Itha­ca
hope that your jour­ney is a long one,
full of adven­ture, full of dis­cov­ery.
Laestry­go­ni­ans and 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 sen­sa­tion
touch­es your spir­it and your body.
Laestry­go­ni­ans and 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 that your jour­ney is a long one.
May there be many sum­mer morn­ings when,
with what plea­sure, what joy,
you come into 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 learn again from those who know.

Keep Itha­ca 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 that you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expect­ing Itha­ca to make you rich.
Itha­ca gave you the mar­velous jour­ney.
With­out her you would have not set out.
She has noth­ing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Itha­ca won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of expe­ri­ence,
you’ll have under­stood by then what these Itha­cas mean.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness