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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
For T.S. Eliot, ‘the ghost behind the arras’ refers to ‘some simple metre’ typographically dislocated and dimly heard if not openly seen. This paper examines in some detail the ways in which C. P. Cavafy appropriates the predominant Modern Greek verse form, the ‘political verse’ (politikos stichos), in new contexts and asks what they contribute to the understanding of the poet’s poetics. It will be argued that the most dominant ‘ghost’ is Palamas’ Ηφλογέρα του βασιλιά (1910), mirroring the poet’s attempts to communicate his response to the demise of the ‘Great Idea’ of national expansion.