Literary Greek can contain familiar words beside forms you would not copy into an everyday message. This activity uses only the opening two lines of C. P. Cavafy’s Τείχη, not the whole poem. Read the short excerpt, identify its grammatical clues and separate what it states from what you might infer.
The opening, with its spelling preserved
Χωρίς περίσκεψιν, χωρίς λύπην, χωρίς αιδώ
μεγάλα κ’ υψηλά τριγύρω μου έκτισαν τείχη.Source: Onassis Cavafy Archive: Τείχη. The excerpt follows the archive’s text. The archive page also provides the complete poem.
A working gloss, not a published translation
For this exercise, understand the opening as: without consideration, pity or shame, they built great, high walls around me. This is a plain explanatory gloss made for the activity, not a quotation from a published translation or an attempt to reproduce the poem’s rhythm.
Find the sentence underneath the poetic order
Ask three questions: what was built, where, and by whom? The object is walls; the location is around the speaker. The verb is third-person plural, but these two lines do not name the builders. Do not supply a particular person, institution or historical event as though the excerpt explicitly identified it.
Check the reading
- Does the excerpt describe walls or windows?
- Are they described as low or high?
- Does “around me” refer to the speaker or to a named group of builders?
- Do these two lines explicitly name who built them?
Answers
1. Walls. 2. High. 3. The speaker. 4. No: the verb indicates “they”, but the builders are not named in the excerpt.
Notice literary forms without treating them as mistakes
The endings in περίσκεψιν and λύπην belong to the poem’s literary language; familiar modern forms are περίσκεψη and λύπη. The shortened κ’ stands for και. Preserve the original when quoting it. When writing your own everyday example, choose ordinary contemporary forms instead of reproducing every feature of the poem.
Separate an observation from an interpretation
“The walls surround the speaker” is an observation grounded in this excerpt. “The walls represent social exclusion” is a possible interpretation that needs argument and the wider poem. Write one observation and one possible interpretation in your own language, labelling which is which. Different readings are not automatically interchangeable, and this short activity does not settle the poem’s meaning.
Use one familiar pattern yourself
Write an original everyday sentence using χωρίς: Πίνω καφέ χωρίς ζάχαρη — I drink coffee without sugar. This is our practice sentence, not a line by Cavafy. Then return to the excerpt and notice the repeated negative opening. Keep the literary reading and your own modern example clearly separate.
Continue with the poet and everyday Greek
Visit the Cavafy profile for cultural context, or practise a café exchange to use the everyday pattern. Follow the archive link above when you are ready to read the complete poem.