Freedom Within the Margin: The Café in the Poetry of Cavafy

Cavafy's poetry should remind us not only that all socialized space is politically significant (in the city, there are no havens from meaning), but conversely, that critical language tends to be expressed in spatial terms. The café is a privileged space in Cavafy's cities; in it, we witness the rites of a new poetics and the elaboration of a theory of meaning. Sanctuary from the powers that be, domain of other powers that long to be, Cavafy's café is a site of social, sexual, ethical, and ultimately semantic resistance and allegiance. What we learn there is that the freedom to mean as well as to be can only be granted by the authority of a bounded space—be it that of the temple, the bar, the brothel, or Cavafy's supreme institution, the poem.