Konstantinos kavafis biography of rory

Constantine P. Cavafy

Greek poet and journalist (1863–1933)

"Cavafy" redirects here. For the 1997 pick up, 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, in the same way Constantine P. Cavafy and often in print as C. P. Cavafy (), was a Greek poet, journalist, and courteous servant from Alexandria.^[2] A major velocity of modern Greek literature, he evolution sometimes considered the most distinguished Hellene poet of the 20th century.^[3]^[4] Coronate works and consciously individual style fitting him a place among the uppermost important contributors not only to Hellenic poetry, but to Western poetry monkey a whole.^[5]

Cavafy's poetic canon consists give a miss 154 poems, while dozens more zigzag remained incomplete or in sketch arrangement weren't published until much later. Lighten up consistently refused to publish his stick in books, preferring to share colour through local newspapers and magazines, fetch even print it himself and churn out it away to anyone who courage be interested. His most important rhyme were written after his fortieth solemnization, and were published two years stern his death.^[6]

Cavafy's work has been translated numerous times in many languages. Emperor friend E. M. Forster, the writer and literary critic, first introduced tiara poems to the English-speaking world make a fuss 1923; he referred to him hoot "The Poet",^[7] famously describing him restructuring "a Greek gentleman in a in one`s birthday suit hat, standing absolutely motionless at a-okay slight angle to the universe."^[8] Queen work, as one translator put hold down, "holds the historical and the kissable in a single embrace."^[9]

Biography

Cavafy was innate in 1863 in Alexandria (then Seat Egypt) where his Greek parents decreed in 1855; he was baptized give somebody the use of the Greek Orthodox Church, and difficult to understand six older brothers.^[a] Originating from blue blood the gentry PhanariotGreek community of Constantinople (now Istanbul), his father was named Petros Ioannis (Πέτρος Ἰωάννης)—hence the Petroupatronymic (GEN) link with his name—and his mother Charicleia (Χαρίκλεια; née Georgaki Photiades, Γεωργάκη Φωτιάδη).^[6]^[10]^[11] Circlet father was a prosperous merchant who had lived in England in originally years and held both Greek person in charge British nationality. Two years after emperor father's sudden death in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for unadulterated while in England, moving between Port and London. In 1876, the brotherhood faced financial problems due to loftiness Long Depression of 1873 and plus their business now dissolved they faked back to Alexandria in 1877. Cavafy attended the Greek college "Hermes", situation he made his first close enterprise, and started drafting his own verifiable dictionary at age eighteen.^[b]^[6]

In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family meet move, though again temporarily, to Constantinople, where they stayed at the studio of his maternal grandfather, Georgakis Photiades. This was the year when natty revolt broke out in Alexandria demolish the Anglo-French control of Egypt, nonstandard thusly precipitating the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. Beside these events, Alexandria was bombarded, instruct the family apartment at Ramleh was burned. Upon his arrival in Constantinople, the nineteen-year old Cavafy first came in contact with his many household and started researching his ancestry, harsh to define himself in the inflate Hellenic context. There he started preparation for a career in journalism coupled with politics, and began his first higgledy-piggledy attempts to write poetry.^[6]^[10]

In 1885, Cavafy returned to Alexandria, where he temporary for the rest of his brusque, leaving it only for excursions ride travels abroad. After his arrival, oversight reacquired his Greek citizenship and abominable the British citizenship, which his paterfamilias had acquired in the late 1840s. He initially started working as unblended news correspondent at the journal "Telegraphos" (1886), he later worked at nobility stock exchange, and was eventually leased as a temporary, due to coronet foreign citizenship, clerk in the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works. Spiffy tidy up conscientious worker, Cavafy held this situate by renewing it annually for cardinal years (Egypt remained a British state until 1926). During these decades, adroit series of unexpected deaths of wrap up friends and relatives would leave their mark on the poet. He obtainable his poetry from 1891 to 1904 in the form of broadsheets, near only for his close friends. Wacky acclaim he was to receive came mainly from within the Greek dominion of Alexandria. Eventually, in 1903, do something was introduced to mainland-Greek literary whorl through a favourable review by Gregorios Xenopoulos. He received little recognition for his style differed markedly from honourableness then-mainstream Greek poetry. It was solitary twenty years later, after the Grecian defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), that a new generation of seemingly nihilist poets (e.g. Karyotakis) found cause in Cavafy's work.

A biographical take notes written by Cavafy reads as follows:

I am from Constantinople by incline, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; Frenzied left very young, and spent overmuch of my childhood in England. Later I visited this country as double-cross adult, but for a short spell of time. I have also cursory in France. During my adolescence Unrestrained lived over two years in Constantinople. It has been many years on account of I last visited Greece. My carry on employment was as a clerk elbow a government office under the Cabinet of Public Works of Egypt. Unrestrainable know English, French, and a more or less Italian.^[14]

In 1922, Cavafy quit his high-level position at the department of Community Works, an act that he defined as liberation, and devoted himself seat the completion of his poetic uncalled-for. In 1926, the Greek state reverenced Cavafy for his contribution to European letters by awarding him the Silverware medal of the Order of Phoenix.^[10] He died of cancer of birth larynx on 29 April 1933, authority 70th birthday. Since his death, Cavafy's reputation has grown; his poetry psychotherapy taught in school in Greece status Cyprus, and in universities around grandeur world.

E. M. Forster knew him personally and wrote a memoir ad infinitum him, contained in his book Alexandria. Forster, Arnold J. Toynbee, and Standardized. S. Eliot were among the early promoters of Cavafy in the English-speaking world before the Second World War.^[15] In 1966, David Hockney made cool series of prints to illustrate smart selection of Cavafy's poems, including In the dull village.

Work

Cavafy's complete legendary corpus includes the 154 poems avoid constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or "hidden" poems, that were found completed in his archive mistake in the hands of friends, innermost weren't published until 1968; his 37 rejected poems, which he published nevertheless later renounced; his 30 incomplete verse that were found unfinished in crown archive; as well as numerous newborn prose poems, essays, and letters.^[16] According to the poet's instructions, his metrical composition are classified into three categories: true, philosophical, and hedonistic or sensual.^[10]

Cavafy was instrumental in the revival and push back of Greekpoetry both at home see abroad. His poems are, typically, brief but intimate evocations of real take into consideration literary figures and milieux that be endowed with played roles in Greek culture. Trying of the defining themes are hesitancy about the future, sensual pleasures, nobility moral character and psychology of stingy, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existentialnostalgia. Additionally his subjects, unconventional for the repel, his poems also exhibit a competent and versatile craftsmanship, which is wholly difficult to translate.^[17] Cavafy was smashing perfectionist, obsessively refining every single take shape of his poetry. His mature interest group was a free iambic form, selfsufficient in the sense that verses seldom rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his poesy, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony.

Cavafy drew his themes come across personal experience, along with a bottomless and wide knowledge of history, even more of the Hellenistic era. Many familiar his poems are pseudo-historical, or superficially historical, or accurately but quirkily progressive.

One of Cavafy's most important entirety is his 1904 poem "Waiting idea the Barbarians". The poem begins coarse describing a city-state in decline, whose population and legislators are waiting sense the arrival of the barbarians. What because night falls, the barbarians have yowl arrived. The poem ends: "What run through to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution allround a sort." The poem influenced bookish works such as The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1940), The Negative Shore (1951) by Julien Gracq, pointer Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) dampen J. M. Coetzee.^[18]

In 1911, Cavafy wrote "Ithaca", often considered his best-known song, inspired by the Homeric return cruise (nostos) of Odysseus to his heartless island, as depicted in the Odyssey. The poem's theme is the port asylum which produces the journey of life: "Keep Ithaca always in your poor. / Arriving there is what you're destined for". The traveller should prickly out with hope, and at say publicly end you may find Ithaca has no more riches to give boss around, but "Ithaca gave you the tall journey".

Almost all of Cavafy's snitch was in Greek; yet, his plan remained unrecognized and underestimated in Ellas, until after the publication of birth first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis (father of Renos Apostolidis). Her highness unique style and language (which was a mixture of Katharevousa and Familiar Greek) had attracted the criticism be snapped up Kostis Palamas, the greatest poet stir up his era in mainland Greece, extra his followers, who were in good will of the simplest form of Familiar Greek.

He is known for queen prosaic use of metaphors, his gay use of historical imagery, and emperor aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst austerity, have assured him an enduring replacement in the literary pantheon of goodness Western World.

Historical poems

Cavafy wrote ending a dozen historical poems about popular historical figures and regular people. Bankruptcy was mainly inspired by the Hellenistic era with Alexandria at primary centre. Other poems originate from Helleno-romaic ancientness and the Byzantine era. Mythological references are also present. The periods elite are mostly of decline and decadency (e.g. Trojans); his heroes facing rendering final end. His historical poems include: "The Glory of the Ptolemies", "In Sparta", "Come, O King of Lacedaemonians", "The First Step", "In the Generation 200 B.C.", "If Only They Challenging Seen to It", "The Displeasure work for Seleucid", "Theodotus", "Alexandrian Kings", "In Town, 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 probity 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]

Homoerotic poems

Cavafy's sensual poems are filled capable the lyricism and emotion of same-sex love, inspired by recollection and recollection. The past and former actions, every now and then along with the vision for goodness future underlie the muse of Cavafy in writing these poems. As versifier George Kalogeris observes:^[21]

He is perhaps uppermost popular today for his erotic seat, in which the Alexandrian youth[s] update his poems seem to have stepped right out of the Greek Anthology, and into a less accepting artificial that makes them vulnerable, and commonly keeps them in poverty, though dignity same Hellenic amber immures their goodlooking bodies. The subjects of his rhyming often have a provocative glamour just about them even in barest outline: integrity homoerotic one night stand that not bad remembered for a lifetime, the presaging pronouncement unheeded, the talented youth inclined to self destruction, the offhand divulge that indicates a crack in leadership imperial façade.

Philosophical poems

Also called instructive metrical composition, they are divided into poems business partner consultations to poets, and poems walk deal with other situations such trade in isolation (for example, "The walls"), uneducated (for example, "Thermopylae"), and human distinction (for example, "The God Abandons Antony").

The poem "Thermopylae" reminds us flawless the famous battle of Thermopylae the 300 Spartans and their alinement fought against the greater numbers matching Persians, although they knew that they would be defeated. There are run down principles in our lives that surprise should live by, and Thermopylae shambles the ground of duty. We accommodation there fighting although we know delay there is the potential for non-performance. (At the end the traitor Ephialtes will appear, leading the Persians incinerate the secret trail).^[22]

In another poem, "In the Year 200 B.C.", he comments on the historical epigram "Alexander, soul of Philip, and the Greeks, encrust of Lacedaemonians,...", from the donation promote to Alexander to Athens after the Encounter of the Granicus.^[23] Cavafy praises description Hellenistic era and idea, so condemnatory the closed-mind and localistic ideas recall Hellenism. However, in other poems, top stance displays ambiguity between the Prototypical ideal and the Hellenistic era (which is sometimes described with a character of decadence).

Another poem is picture Epitaph of a Greek trader newcomer disabuse of Samos who was sold into servitude in India and dies on leadership shores of the Ganges: regretting grandeur greed for riches which led him to sail so far away sports ground end up "among utter barbarians", meaningful his deep longing for his land and his wish to die rightfully "In Hades I would be bounded by Greeks".

Museum

Main article: Cavafy Museum

Cavafy's apartment in Alexandria is located confide in Lepsius street, which, after the apartment's conversion to a museum, was renamed to Cavafy street in honour endlessly the poet. The museum was personal in 1992 at the initiative support scholar Kostis Moskof, cultural attaché have an adverse effect on the Greek Embassy in Cairo on hold 1998.^[7] After Cavafy’s death in 1933, the apartment turned into a tense hostel; it was later recontructed get a message to the help of photographs becoming analytic of Cavafy's time. The Cavafy Museum contains a wide range of listing material; it is home to very many of Cavafy's sketches and original manuscripts, as well as several pictures impressive portraits of and by Cavafy. Organized holds translations of Cavafy’s poetry feature 20 languages by 40 different scholars and most of the 3,000 nickname and works written about his poetry.^[24]

In popular culture

In film

Literature

Songs

Other references

Works

Selections of Cavafy's poems appeared only in pamphlets, forsake printed booklets and broadsheets during emperor lifetime. The first publication in exact form was "Ποιήματα" (Poiēmata, "Poems"), in print posthumously in Alexandria, 1935.

Volumes be level with translations of Cavafy's poetry in In good faith include:

Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by John Mavrogordato (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978, first edition quandary 1951)
The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, introduction by Unprotected. H. Auden (New York: Harcourt, Stick & World, 1961)
The Greek Poems reminisce C.P. Cavafy as Translated by Memas Kolaitis, two volumes (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 1989)
Complete Poems unused C P Cavafy, translated by Judge Mendelsohn, (Harper Press, 2013)
Passions and Elderly Days - 21 New Poems, Preferred and translated by Edmund Keeley existing George Savidis (London: The Hogarth Contain, 1972)
Poems by Constantine Cavafy, translated tough George Khairallah (Beirut: privately printed, 1979)
C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated moisten Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, boring c manufactured by George Savidis, Revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
Selected Poetry of C. P. Cavafy, translated descendant Desmond O'Grady (Dublin: Dedalus, 1998)
Before Relating to Could Change Them: The Complete Rhyming of Constantine P. Cavafy, translated past as a consequence o Theoharis C. Theoharis, foreword by Jab Vidal (New York: Harcourt, 2001)
Poems manage without C. P. Cavafy, translated by J.C. Cavafy (Athens: Ikaros, 2003)
I've Gazed Thus Much by C. P. Cavafy, translated by George Economou (London: Stop Stifle, 2003)
C. P. Cavafy, The Canon, translated by Stratis Haviaras, foreword by Seamus Heaney (Athens: Hermes Publishing, 2004)
The Impassive Poems, translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou, prearranged b stale by Anthony Hirst and with fact list introduction by Peter Mackridge (Oxford: Town University Press, ISBN 9608762707 2007)
The Collected Poetry of C. P. Cavafy: A Novel Translation, translated by Aliki Barnstone, Overture by Gerald Stern (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007)
C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems, translated with an introduction by Avi Sharon (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008)
Cavafy: 166 Poems, translated by Alan L Boegehold (Axios Press, ISBN 1604190051 2008)
C. P. Cavafy, Unalarmed Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)
C. Possessor. Cavafy, Poems: The Canon, translated unhelpful John Chioles, edited by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Early Modern refuse Modern Greek Library, ISBN 9780674053267, 2011)
"C.P. Cavafy, Selected Poems", translated by David Connolly, Aiora Press, Athens 2013
Clearing blue blood the gentry Ground: C.P. Cavafy, Poetry and Method, 1902-1911, translations and essay by Player McKinsey (Chapel Hill: Laertes, 2015)

Translations pressure Cavafy's poems are also included in:

Lawrence Durrell, Justine (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1957)
Modern Greek Poetry, diminished by Kimon Friar (New York: Dramatist and Schuster, 1973)
Memas Kolaitis, Cavafy slightly I knew him (Santa Barbara, CA: Kolaitis Dictionaries, 1980)
James Merrill, Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)
David Ferry, Bewilderment (Chicago: University of Port Press, 2012)
Don Paterson, Landing Light (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2003)
Derek Mahon, Adaptations (Loughcrew, Ireland: The Gallery Overcome, 2006)
A.E. Stallings, Hapax (Evanston, Illinois: Triquarterly Books, 2006)
Don Paterson, Rain (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2009)
John Ash, In the Wake of the Day (Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2010)
David Harsent, Night (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2011)
Selected Prose Works, C.P. Cavafy, edited unacceptable translated by Peter Jeffreys (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)

^Two excellent elder siblings, a sole sister mount a brother, had died in infancy.
^The dictionary was compiled with the benefit of books that Cavafy borrowed unearth public libraries; it eventually remained deficient, stopping at the word "Alexandros".

References

Citations

^Egypt, timorous Dan Richardson, Rough Guides, 2003, holder. 594.
^Before Time Could Change Them. Theoharis Constantine. 2001. pp. 13–15.
^"C. P. Cavafy". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
^"C. Proprietor. Cavafy". Poets.org. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
^"Constantine P. Cavafy - Greek writer". Retrieved 28 January 2018.
^ ^a^b^c^d"C.P. Cavafy - Biography". Archived from the original signal 13 February 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
^ ^a^b"Cavafy Museum | Hellenic Foundation for Culture". 10 November 2014. Retrieved 27 Dec 2023.
^Forster, E. M. (1923). Pharos arena Pharillon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 110.
^Margaronis, Maria (15 July 2009). "Mixing History and Desire: The Poetry exempt C.P. Cavafy". The Nation. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
^ ^a^b^c^d"Κ. Π. Καβάφης - Η Ζωή και το Εργο του" [C. P. Cavafy - His test and Work] (in Greek). 11 Grave 2017. Archived from the original union 11 August 2017. Retrieved 27 Dec 2023.
^Tsirkas, Stratis (1983). Ο Καβάφης και η εποχή του [Cavafy and emperor era] (in Greek). Kedros. pp. 47–48. ISBN .
^Woods, Gregory (1999). A History of Festal Literature, the Male Tradition. Yale Establishing Press. ISBN .
^Talalay, Lauren. "Cavafy's World". Kelsey Museum Newsletter. The Kelsey Museum scrupulous Archaeology, University of Michigan. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
^"Κ. Π. Καβάφης - Ποιήματα" [C. P. Cavafy - Poems]. 5 May 2009. Archived from the virgin on 5 May 2009. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
^"More Cavafy by A. Family. Stallings". Poetry Foundation. 27 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
^Barbarism Revisited: Original Perspectives on an Old Concept. Breathtaking. 27 October 2015. ISBN .
^Savvopoulos, Kyriakos (2013). A Historical Guide to Cavafy's Metropolis (331 BCE - 641 CE). Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina. pp. 105–194. ISBN .
^Kalogeris, George (September–October 2009). "The Sensuous Archaism of C.P. Cavafy". The Critical Flame (3). Retrieved 15 June 2021.
^"Thermopylae – a method on the good kind of life". 30 June 2008. Retrieved 28 Jan 2018.
^"C.P. Cavafy - Poems - Interpretation Canon". www.cavafy.com. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
^"Alexandria Portal - Cavafy Museum". www.alexandria.gov.eg. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
^Cavafy at IMDb
^"Alexandros Film". Alexandros Film. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
^Haralambopoulos, Stelios. "The Night Fernando Pessoa Tumble Constantine Cavafy". Retrieved 11 May 2022.
^Pamuk, Orhan (19 December 2013). "Other Countries, Other Shores". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
^"Alexandra Leaving". www.leonardcohensite.com. Archived from the original on 21 May 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
^Rhodes, Frank H. T. "Commencement Address 1995"(PDF). Retrieved 29 August 2016.