The Alexandria of Constantin Cavafy: The Place and the Imaginary. Hommage to Gilbert Durand

When Constatin Cavafy speaks of Alexandria, he does not refer to either the port or the industrial city of 1900. His poems are traversed by specters of ancient epochs. As Edmund Keeley has demonstrated, in the work of the Alexandrian there exist at least five imaginary spaces that respond to the name of Alexandria. But there is also a sixth, the Platonic Alexandria, that which make possible the presence of the others, that which functions as matrix or as Chora, to speak the language of the Platonic dialogue, Timee. Just as Platonic Alexandria remains hidden in the work of the Alexandrian, so does Platonism remain in retirement in the theory of the imaginary. In studying the poetic philosophy of Cavafy, we initiate ourselves simultaneously into the mysteries of the genealogy of the imaginary, from Plato to Avicenne & from there to Henri Corbin & Gilbert Durand. Adapted from the source document.