my own personal "third circle of Irrigation"

Some few weeks ago I remember warning my friends about my intentions to switch my working mode into the one of a Greek civil servant. It was to be considered as warning since Greek civil servants are not exactly famous for their commitment and devotion. In my case, however, it had more to do with a sense of a lack of objective and an increasing decline of interest. You see, in my mind, working as a civil servant is less about lack of commitment and more about lack of goals. People think civil servants are not working enough, I think they are simply doing meaningless work. Instead of working for something, they are working for someone. In the end, they have been obliged, or have simply accepted to channel their efforts into something other than what they would like or consider fruitful.

As my main research project was growing to be more and more like the boring job of a ministry clerk and my main focus was shifting from doing something original to re-doing all the things other people have been publishing before I was allowed to, I started to feel like the life of a civil servant would be more suitable for me. I saw myself in a grey office, with piles of papers all around, in a world somewhere between that of Kafka and that of Pessoa. It looked less and less like my sunlit desk at the side of the Mediterranean and more like the one in the photo.

It was then that in order not to get completely depressed, I somehow subconsciously remembered of probably the most famous of all Greek civil servants of all time, Constantin Cavafy. For those unaware of this great man, I can simply recount a couple of biographical facts. He was Greek, living in Alexandria around the turn of the previous century and he was a civil servant for the Ministry of Public works, a position he held throughout his life. There you have it, your Greek civil servant. What makes Cavafy so special, is the fact that at the margin of an extremely boring life, spent between his desk at the "Third cycle of Irrigation" and his rather small, badly decorated, apartment in Rue Lepsius, he wrote a number of poems, whose number was big enough to qualify him as a poet and whose essence and style so supreme as to qualify him the great of them all.

I reflected a bit about this life of his, which most of his friends and acquaintances would describe as rather dull and ordinary, nothing like the tragically, romantic trajectory of Byron, the glorious magnificence of Goethe, or the bohemian voluptuousness of Beaudelaire. I saw Cavafy on his way home, back from work and I imagined him completely detached from the daily routine, drifting away in his timeless universe of interweaving pasts, the Byzantine emperors, the Alexandrian notaries and the forgotten lovers. To him, being a civil servant was simply a condition of subsidy, the irrigation plans, the daily correspondence and the translations were all but the side-effects of a conventional life he was too coward or too wise, (or perhaps both) to renounce.

I imagined how he could safely steer away from all these conventions and slowly, uncompromisingly head towards greatness. Cavafy, was able to achieve immortality. The rest of us, whose aim is the simple deliverance from everyday frustration and the hope for a meaningful life that takes place outside the office and resumes after 5pm, should know that this hope still exists.

And that anyone may be worth his own personal "Third cycle of irrigation".