What Might We Call the Opposite of Divine Intervention?

Of the four C.P. Cavafy poems that we read, “Interruption” struck me as the most puzzling and thereby most thought-provoking. The other poems seem to reflect themes and/or scenes from the Iliad with a certain measure of fidelity; yes, as adaptions they do not match up exactly with the source text, but their connection to Homer’s poem is clear. “Interruption”, on the other hand, appears to present a theme that is in opposition to its parallel formulation in the Iliad.

In the Iliad, we are familiar with instances of divine intervention of varying degrees of blatancy. Athena swatting away arrows from Menelaus’ body might be construed as merely the psychological characterization of luck; Apollo breaking Patroclus’ armor, not so much. Regardless, we are presented only with the notion of gods interfering in the affairs of mortals – intervention is a one-way causal bridge in which deities may influence outcomes in the human realm.

Cavafy’s poem, however, presents an inverted relationship of intervention. In the lines of his work, it is “we who interrupt the action of the gods”; it is the mortals Metaneira and Peleus who intervene in the affairs of Demeter and Thetis, not the other way around. Thus, we are left with a type of interventional relationship that we don’t even have a name for – perhaps simply mortal intervention? How boring. Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider why it might be that Cavafy decides to present us “hasty and awkward creatures of the moment” as having interventional power over the gods, a conception that is in direct opposition with the divine intervention paradigm of the Iliad.

Honestly I can do little more than raise this point as a potential topic for discussion. “Interruption” is so puzzling to me that I haven’t been able to develop a workable thesis.