Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon, don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithaka mean.

P. Cavafy, fromC.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.
Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)

Each flacon in the Versi trilogy will have a hand-crafted wooden cap and a hand-incised tablet with a symbol unique for each fragrance. For Ithaka it is a small boat in the sea.

The flacon is housed as usual in the classical Odori d’Anima wooden box, inspired by emblematic transportation cases used for the protective shipping of art works.