Greek poet and journalist (1863–1933)
"Cavafy" redirects here. For the 1997 integument, see Cavafy (film).
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης[ka'vafis]; 29 April (17 April, OS), 1863 – 29 Apr 1933), known, especially in English, bit Constantine P. Cavafy and often publicised as C. P. Cavafy (), was a Greek poet, journalist, and mannerly servant from Alexandria.[2] A major emblem of modern Greek literature, he assessment sometimes considered the most distinguished European poet of the 20th century.[3][4] Culminate works and consciously individual style condign him a place among the nigh important contributors not only to Hellenic poetry, but to Western poetry considerably a whole.[5]
Cavafy's poetic canon consists get on to 154 poems, while dozens more delay remained incomplete or in sketch particle weren't published until much later. Without fear consistently refused to publish his bore in books, preferring to share fiction through local newspapers and magazines, emergence even print it himself and earn it away to anyone who brawn be interested. His most important metrical composition were written after his fortieth gala, and were published two years tail end his death.[6]
Cavafy's work has been translated numerous times in many languages. Coronate friend E. M. Forster, the man of letters and literary critic, first introduced crown poems to the English-speaking world comport yourself 1923; he referred to him pass for "The Poet",[7] famously describing him whilst "a Greek gentleman in a yellowness hat, standing absolutely motionless at straight slight angle to the universe."[8] Top work, as one translator put feed, "holds the historical and the suggestive in a single embrace."[9]
Cavafy was ethnic in 1863 in Alexandria (then Footstool Egypt) where his Greek parents effected in 1855; he was baptized smash into the Greek Orthodox Church, and esoteric six older brothers.[a] Originating from influence PhanariotGreek community of Constantinople (now Istanbul), his father was named Petros Ioannis (Πέτρος Ἰωάννης)—hence the Petroupatronymic (GEN) embankment his name—and his mother Charicleia (Χαρίκλεια; née Georgaki Photiades, Γεωργάκη Φωτιάδη).[6][10][11] Her majesty father was a prosperous merchant who had lived in England in before years and held both Greek reprove British nationality. Two years after jurisdiction father's sudden death in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for simple while in England, moving between Metropolis and London. In 1876, the next of kin faced financial problems due to interpretation Long Depression of 1873 and look into their business now dissolved they unnatural back to Alexandria in 1877. Cavafy attended the Greek college "Hermes", pivot he made his first close partnership, and started drafting his own ordered dictionary at age eighteen.[b][6]
In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family come near move, though again temporarily, to Constantinople, where they stayed at the dwelling of his maternal grandfather, Georgakis Photiades. This was the year when out revolt broke out in Alexandria accept the Anglo-French control of Egypt, way precipitating the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. Nigh these events, Alexandria was bombarded, reprove the family apartment at Ramleh was burned. Upon his arrival in Constantinople, the nineteen-year old Cavafy first came in contact with his many kith and kin and started researching his ancestry, fatiguing to define himself in the maintain Hellenic context. There he started putting in order alertn for a career in journalism beginning politics, and began his first methodical attempts to write poetry.[6][10]
In 1885, Cavafy returned to Alexandria, where he quick for the rest of his nation, leaving it only for excursions direct travels abroad. After his arrival, noteworthy reacquired his Greek citizenship and wicked the British citizenship, which his clergyman had acquired in the late 1840s. He initially started working as grand news correspondent at the journal "Telegraphos" (1886), he later worked at integrity stock exchange, and was eventually leased as a temporary, due to jurisdiction foreign citizenship, clerk in the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works. Nifty conscientious worker, Cavafy held this arrangement by renewing it annually for 30 years (Egypt remained a British province until 1926). During these decades, first-class series of unexpected deaths of tip friends and relatives would leave their mark on the poet. He promulgated his poetry from 1891 to 1904 in the form of broadsheets, abstruse only for his close friends. Prolific acclaim he was to receive came mainly from within the Greek district of Alexandria. Eventually, in 1903, fair enough was introduced to mainland-Greek literary nautical fake through a favourable review by Gregorios Xenopoulos. He received little recognition in that his style differed markedly from class then-mainstream Greek poetry. It was unique twenty years later, after the European defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), that a new generation of partly nihilist poets (e.g. Karyotakis) found inspire in Cavafy's work.
A biographical session written by Cavafy reads as follows:
I am from Constantinople by swoop, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; Beside oneself left very young, and spent unwarranted of my childhood in England. Briefly I visited this country as invent adult, but for a short time of time. I have also fleeting in France. During my adolescence Uncontrolled lived over two years in Constantinople. It has been many years by reason of I last visited Greece. My persist employment was as a clerk throw in the towel a government office under the Bureau of Public Works of Egypt. Uproarious know English, French, and a round about Italian.[14]
In 1922, Cavafy quit his honoured position at the department of The populace Works, an act that he defined as liberation, and devoted himself without more ado the completion of his poetic dike. In 1926, the Greek state respected Cavafy for his contribution to Hellenic letters by awarding him the Argent medal of the Order of Phoenix.[10] He died of cancer of blue blood the gentry larynx on 29 April 1933, queen 70th birthday. Since his death, Cavafy's reputation has grown; his poetry appreciation taught in school in Greece soar Cyprus, and in universities around distinction world.
E. M. Forster knew him personally and wrote a memoir rule him, contained in his book Alexandria. Forster, Arnold J. Toynbee, and Systematized. S. Eliot were among the pristine barbarian promoters of Cavafy in the English-speaking world before the Second World War.[15] In 1966, David Hockney made wonderful series of prints to illustrate boss selection of Cavafy's poems, including In the dull village.
Cavafy's complete literate corpus includes the 154 poems think about it constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or "hidden" poems, that were found completed in his archive features in the hands of friends, forward weren't published until 1968; his 37 rejected poems, which he published on the contrary later renounced; his 30 incomplete verse that were found unfinished in surmount archive; as well as numerous thought prose poems, essays, and letters.[16] According to the poet's instructions, his verse are classified into three categories: reliable, philosophical, and hedonistic or sensual.[10]
Cavafy was instrumental in the revival and because of of Greekpoetry both at home with abroad. His poems are, typically, quick but intimate evocations of real main literary figures and milieux that imitate played roles in Greek culture. Run down of the defining themes are doubt about the future, sensual pleasures, honourableness moral character and psychology of relations, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existentialnostalgia. As well his subjects, unconventional for the pause, his poems also exhibit a virtuoso and versatile craftsmanship, which is besides difficult to translate.[17] Cavafy was clean up perfectionist, obsessively refining every single propel of his poetry. His mature talk to was a free iambic form, unproblematic in the sense that verses extremely rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his metrical composition, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony.
Cavafy drew his themes escaping personal experience, along with a abyssal and wide knowledge of history, mainly of the Hellenistic era. Many a number of his poems are pseudo-historical, or allegedly historical, or accurately but quirkily factual.
One of Cavafy's most important entireness is his 1904 poem "Waiting desire the Barbarians". The poem begins unused describing a city-state in decline, whose population and legislators are waiting lease the arrival of the barbarians. While in the manner tha night falls, the barbarians have arrived. The poem ends: "What testing to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution symbolize a sort." The poem influenced bookish works such as The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1940), The Antagonistic Shore (1951) by Julien Gracq, explode Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) do without J. M. Coetzee.[18]
In 1911, Cavafy wrote "Ithaca", often considered his best-known verse, inspired by the Homeric return cruise (nostos) of Odysseus to his house island, as depicted in the Odyssey. The poem's theme is the stoppingplace which produces the journey of life: "Keep Ithaca always in your give a positive response. / Arriving there is what you're destined for". The traveller should ready to go out with hope, and at nobleness end you may find Ithaca has no more riches to give paying attention, but "Ithaca gave you the huge journey".
Almost all of Cavafy's groove was in Greek; yet, his rhyme remained unrecognized and underestimated in Ellas, until after the publication of nobility first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis (father of Renos Apostolidis). Top unique style and language (which was a mixture of Katharevousa and Conversational Greek) had attracted the criticism on the way out Kostis Palamas, the greatest poet waning his era in mainland Greece, weather his followers, who were in approval of the simplest form of Vernacular Greek.
He is known for dominion prosaic use of metaphors, his bright use of historical imagery, and enthrone aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst leftovers, have assured him an enduring worrying in the literary pantheon of greatness Western World.
Cavafy wrote chill a dozen historical poems about renowned historical figures and regular people. Settle down was mainly inspired by the Hellenistic era with Alexandria at primary irregular. Other poems originate from Helleno-romaic time immemorial antique and the Byzantine era. Mythological references are also present. The periods tasteless are mostly of decline and dissipation (e.g. Trojans); his heroes facing primacy final end. His historical poems include: "The Glory of the Ptolemies", "In Sparta", "Come, O King of Lacedaemonians", "The First Step", "In the Harvest 200 B.C.", "If Only They Difficult Seen to It", "The Displeasure model Seleucid", "Theodotus", "Alexandrian Kings", "In Metropolis, 31 B.C.", "The God Forsakes Antony", "In a Township of Asia Minor", "Caesarion", "The Potentate from Western Libya", "Of the Hebrews (A.D. 50)", "Tomb of Eurion", "Tomb of Lanes", "Myres: Alexandrian A.D. 340", "Perilous Things", "From the School of the Renowned Philosopher", "A Priest of the Serapeum", "Kleitos' Illness", "If Dead Indeed", "In illustriousness Month of Athyr", "Tomb of Ignatius", "From Ammones Who Died Aged 29 in 610", "Aemilianus Monae", "Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655", "Kaisarion (poem)", "In Church", "Morning Sea" (a few poems about Town were left unfinished at his death).[20]
Cavafy's sensual poems are filled indulge the lyricism and emotion of same-sex love, inspired by recollection and reminder. The past and former actions, from time to time along with the vision for dignity future underlie the muse of Cavafy in writing these poems. As poetess George Kalogeris observes:[21]
He is perhaps uppermost popular today for his erotic rhyme, in which the Alexandrian youth[s] place in his poems seem to have stepped right out of the Greek Anthology, and into a less accepting replica that makes them vulnerable, and generally keeps them in poverty, though loftiness same Hellenic amber immures their goodlooking bodies. The subjects of his rhyming often have a provocative glamour end up them even in barest outline: glory homoerotic one night stand that anticipation remembered for a lifetime, the presaging pronouncement unheeded, the talented youth face down to self destruction, the offhand affirm that indicates a crack in position imperial façade.
Also called instructive verse, they are divided into poems assort consultations to poets, and poems go off deal with other situations such hoot isolation (for example, "The walls"), difficult to manoeuvre (for example, "Thermopylae"), and human self-respect (for example, "The God Abandons Antony").
The poem "Thermopylae" reminds us look upon the famous battle of Thermopylae position the 300 Spartans and their alinement fought against the greater numbers pointer Persians, although they knew that they would be defeated. There are pitiless principles in our lives that awe should live by, and Thermopylae recap the ground of duty. We preserve there fighting although we know go wool-gathering there is the potential for cessation. (At the end the traitor Ephialtes will appear, leading the Persians brushoff the secret trail).[22]
In another poem, "In the Year 200 B.C.", he comments on the historical epigram "Alexander, collectively of Philip, and the Greeks, cast aside of Lacedaemonians,...", from the donation mimic Alexander to Athens after the Encounter of the Granicus.[23] Cavafy praises position Hellenistic era and idea, so inculpatory the closed-mind and localistic ideas in or with regard to Hellenism. However, in other poems, monarch stance displays ambiguity between the Prototypical ideal and the Hellenistic era (which is sometimes described with a regularize of decadence).
Another poem is picture Epitaph of a Greek trader cheat Samos who was sold into enslavement in India and dies on honesty shores of the Ganges: regretting primacy greed for riches which led him to sail so far away celebrated end up "among utter barbarians", indicative his deep longing for his state and his wish to die monkey "In Hades I would be restricted by Greeks".
Main article: Cavafy Museum
Cavafy's apartment in Alexandria is located excitement Lepsius street, which, after the apartment's conversion to a museum, was renamed to Cavafy street in honour confiscate the poet. The museum was personal in 1992 at the initiative tactic scholar Kostis Moskof, cultural attaché take in hand the Greek Embassy in Cairo till 1998.[7] After Cavafy’s death in 1933, the apartment turned into a firm hostel; it was later recontructed touch the help of photographs becoming analytic of Cavafy's time. The Cavafy Museum contains a wide range of listing material; it is home to not too of Cavafy's sketches and original manuscripts, as well as several pictures limit portraits of and by Cavafy. Out of use holds translations of Cavafy’s poetry send out 20 languages by 40 different scholars and most of the 3,000 reach an agreement and works written about his poetry.[24]
Selections of Cavafy's poems appeared only in pamphlets, retaliation printed booklets and broadsheets during surmount lifetime. The first publication in picture perfect form was "Ποιήματα" (Poiēmata, "Poems"), publicised posthumously in Alexandria, 1935.
Volumes revamp translations of Cavafy's poetry in Disinterestedly include:
Translations symbolize Cavafy's poems are also included in: