Constantine P. Cavafy
Constantine P. Cavafy | |
---|---|
civil servant | |
Nationality | Greek |
Notable awards | Silver medal of the Order of the Phoenix |
Signature | |
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (
Cavafy's poetic canon consists of 154 poems, while dozens more that remained incomplete or in sketch form weren't published until much later. He consistently refused to publish his work in books, preferring to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it himself and give it away to anyone who might be interested. His most important poems were written after his fortieth birthday, and were published two years after his death.[6]
Cavafy's work has been translated numerous times in many languages. His friend E. M. Forster, the novelist and literary critic, first introduced his poems to the English-speaking world in 1923; he referred to him as "The Poet",[7] famously describing him as "a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe."[8] His work, as one translator put it, "holds the historical and the erotic in a single embrace."[9]
Biography
Cavafy was born in 1863 in
In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family to move, though again temporarily, to
In 1885, Cavafy returned to Alexandria, where he lived for the rest of his life, leaving it only for excursions and travels abroad. After his arrival, he reacquired his Greek citizenship and abandoned the British citizenship, which his father had acquired in the late 1840s.
A biographical note written by Cavafy reads as follows:
I am from Constantinople by descent, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; I left very young, and spent much of my childhood in England. Subsequently I visited this country as an adult, but for a short period of time. I have also lived in France. During my adolescence I lived over two years in Constantinople. It has been many years since I last visited Greece. My last employment was as a clerk at a government office under the Ministry of Public Works of Egypt. I know English, French, and a little Italian.[14]
In 1922, Cavafy quit his high-ranking position at the department of Public Works, an act that he characterized as liberation, and devoted himself to the completion of his poetic work. In 1926, the Greek state honoured Cavafy for his contribution to Greek letters by awarding him the Silver medal of the
E. M. Forster knew him personally and wrote a memoir of him, contained in his book Alexandria. Forster, Arnold J. Toynbee, and T. S. Eliot were among the earliest promoters of Cavafy in the English-speaking world before the Second World War.[15] In 1966, David Hockney made a series of prints to illustrate a selection of Cavafy's poems, including In the dull village.
Work
Cavafy's complete literary corpus includes the 154 poems that constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or "hidden" poems, that were found completed in his archive or in the hands of friends, and weren't published until 1968; his 37 rejected poems, which he published but later renounced; his 30 incomplete poems that were found unfinished in his archive; as well as numerous other prose poems, essays, and letters.[16] According to the poet's instructions, his poems are classified into three categories: historical, philosophical, and hedonistic or sensual.[10]
Cavafy was instrumental in the revival and recognition of
Cavafy drew his themes from personal experience, along with a deep and wide knowledge of history, especially of the
One of Cavafy's most important works is his 1904 poem "Waiting for the Barbarians". The poem begins by describing a city-state in decline, whose population and legislators are waiting for the arrival of the barbarians. When night falls, the barbarians have not arrived. The poem ends: "What is to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution of a sort." The poem influenced literary works such as The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1940), The Opposing Shore (1951) by Julien Gracq, and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) by J. M. Coetzee.[18]
In 1911, Cavafy wrote "Ithaca", often considered his best-known poem,[19] inspired by the Homeric return journey (nostos) of Odysseus to his home island, as depicted in the Odyssey. The poem's theme is the destination which produces the journey of life: "Keep Ithaca always in your mind. / Arriving there is what you're destined for". The traveller should set out with hope, and at the end you may find Ithaca has no more riches to give you, but "Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey".
Almost all of Cavafy's work was in Greek; yet, his poetry remained unrecognized and underestimated in Greece, until after the publication of the first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis (father of Renos Apostolidis). His unique style and language (which was a mixture of Katharevousa and Demotic Greek) had attracted the criticism of Kostis Palamas, the greatest poet of his era in mainland Greece, and his followers, who were in favour of the simplest form of Demotic Greek.
He is known for his prosaic use of metaphors, his brilliant use of historical imagery, and his aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst others, have assured him an enduring place in the literary pantheon of the Western World.
Historical poems
Cavafy wrote over a dozen historical poems about famous historical figures and regular people. He was mainly inspired by the
Homoerotic poems
Cavafy's sensual poems are filled with the lyricism and emotion of
He is perhaps most popular today for his erotic verse, in which the Alexandrian youth[s] in his poems seem to have stepped right out of the Greek Anthology, and into a less accepting world that makes them vulnerable, and often keeps them in poverty, though the same Hellenic amber immures their beautiful bodies. The subjects of his poems often have a provocative glamour to them even in barest outline: the homoerotic one night stand that is remembered for a lifetime, the oracular pronouncement unheeded, the talented youth prone to self destruction, the offhand remark that indicates a crack in the imperial façade.
Philosophical poems
Also called instructive poems, they are divided into poems with consultations to poets, and poems that deal with other situations such as isolation (for example, "The walls"), duty (for example, "Thermopylae"), and human dignity (for example, "The God Abandons Antony").
The poem "Thermopylae" reminds us of the famous battle of Thermopylae where the 300 Spartans and their allies fought against the greater numbers of Persians, although they knew that they would be defeated. There are some principles in our lives that we should live by, and Thermopylae is the ground of duty. We stay there fighting although we know that there is the potential for failure. (At the end the traitor Ephialtes will appear, leading the Persians through the secret trail).[22]
In another poem, "In the Year 200 B.C.", he comments on the historical epigram "Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks, except of Lacedaemonians,...", from the donation of Alexander to Athens after the
Another poem is the Epitaph of a Greek trader from Samos who was sold into slavery in India and dies on the shores of the Ganges: regretting the greed for riches which led him to sail so far away and end up "among utter barbarians", expressing his deep longing for his homeland and his wish to die as "In Hades I would be surrounded by Greeks".
Museum
Cavafy's apartment in Alexandria is located on Lepsius street, which, after the apartment's conversion to a museum, was renamed to Cavafy street in honour of the poet. The museum was established in 1992 at the initiative of scholar Kostis Moskof, cultural attaché to the Greek Embassy in Cairo until 1998.[7] After Cavafy’s death in 1933, the apartment turned into a cheap hostel; it was later recontructed with the help of photographs becoming reminiscent of Cavafy's time. The Cavafy Museum contains a wide range of bibliographical material; it is home to several of Cavafy's sketches and original manuscripts, as well as several pictures and portraits of and by Cavafy. It holds translations of Cavafy’s poetry in 20 languages by 40 different scholars and most of the 3,000 articles and works written about his poetry.[24]
In popular culture
In film
- Scottish-songwriter There is an Ocean.[citation needed]
- Cavafy, originally titled Kavafis,[25] is a 1996 award-winning film directed by Yannis Smaragdis based on the life of the poet, starring Dimitris Katalifos and with music by Vangelis.[26]
- Greek director Stelios Haralambopoulos's 2006 documentary The Night Fernando Pessoa Met Constantine Cavafy imagined Cavafy met with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa on a transatlantic ocean liner.[27]
Literature
- C. P. Cavafy appears as a character in the Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell.[citation needed]
- The American poet Mark Doty's book My Alexandria uses the place and imagery of Cavafy to create a comparable contemporary landscape.[citation needed]
- The Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, in an extended essay published in The New York Times, writes about how Cavafy's poetry, particularly his poem "The City", has changed the way Pamuk looks at, and thinks about, the city of Istanbul, a city that remains central to Pamuk's own writing.[28]
Songs
- The Weddings Parties Anything song "The Afternoon Sun" is based on the Cavafy poem of the same title.[citation needed]
- The Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen transformed Cavafy's poem "The God Abandons Antony", based on Mark Antony's loss of the city of Alexandria and his empire, into "Alexandra Leaving", a song around lost love.[29]
Other references
- Frank H. T. Rhodes' last commencement speech given at Cornell University in 1995 was based on Cavafy's poem "Ithaca".[30]
Bibliography
Selections of Cavafy's poems appeared only in pamphlets, privately printed booklets and broadsheets during his lifetime. The first publication in book form was "Ποιήματα" (Poiēmata, "Poems"), published posthumously in Alexandria, 1935.
Volumes with translations of Cavafy's poetry in English include:
- Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by John Mavrogordato (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978, first edition in 1951)
- The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, introduction by W. H. Auden (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961)
- The Greek Poems of C.P. Cavafy As Translated by Memas Kolaitis, two volumes (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 1989)
- Complete Poems by C P Cavafy, translated by Harper Press, 2013)
- Passions and Ancient Days - 21 New Poems, Selected and translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis (London: The Hogarth Press, 1972)
- Poems by Constantine Cavafy, translated by George Khairallah (Beirut: privately printed, 1979)
- C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, Revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
- Selected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, translated by Desmond O'Grady (Dublin: Dedalus, 1998)
- Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis, foreword by Gore Vidal (New York: Harcourt, 2001)
- Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by J.C. Cavafy (Athens: Ikaros, 2003)
- I've Gazed So Much by C. P. Cavafy, translated by George Economou (London: Stop Press, 2003)
- C. P. Cavafy, The Canon, translated by Stratis Haviaras, foreword by Seamus Heaney (Athens: Hermes Publishing, 2004)
- The Collected Poems, translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou, edited by Anthony Hirst and with an introduction by Peter Mackridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 96087627072007)
- The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation, translated by Aliki Barnstone, Introduction 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 16041900512008)
- C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)
- C. P. Cavafy, Poems: The Canon, translated by ISBN 9780674053267, 2011)
- "C.P. Cavafy, Selected Poems", translated by David Connolly, Aiora Press, Athens 2013
- Clearing the Ground: C.P. Cavafy, Poetry and Prose, 1902-1911, translations and essay by Martin McKinsey (Chapel Hill: Laertes, 2015)
Translations of Cavafy's poems are also included in:
- Lawrence Durrell, Justine (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1957)
- Modern Greek Poetry, edited by Kimon Friar (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973)
- Memas Kolaitis, Cavafy as 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 Chicago Press, 2012)
- Don Paterson, Landing Light (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2003)
- Derek Mahon, Adaptations (Loughcrew, Ireland: The Gallery Press, 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 and translated by Peter Jeffreys (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)
Footnotes
References
- ^ Egypt, by Dan Richardson, Rough Guides, 2003, p. 594.
- ^ Before Time Could Change Them. Theoharis Constantine. 2001. pp. 13–15.
- ^ "C. P. Cavafy". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
- ^ "C. P. 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 on 13 February 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
- ^ a b "Cavafy Museum | Hellenic Foundation for Culture". 10 November 2014. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
- ^ Forster, E. M. (1923). Pharos and Pharillon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 110.
- ^ Margaronis, Maria (15 July 2009). "Mixing History and Desire: The Poetry of 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 life and Work] (in Greek). 11 August 2017. Archived from the original on 11 August 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
- ISBN 978-960-04-0875-1.
- ^ Daskalopoulos & Stasinopoulou 2002, pp. 17–22.
- ^ Daskalopoulos & Stasinopoulou 2002, pp. 19, 26.
- ISBN 978-0-300-08088-9.
- ^ Talalay, Lauren. "Cavafy's World". Kelsey Museum Newsletter. The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
- ^ "Κ. Π. Καβάφης - Ποιήματα" [C. P. Cavafy - Poems]. 5 May 2009. Archived from the original on 5 May 2009. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
- ^ "More Cavafy by A. E. Stallings". Poetry Foundation. 27 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ISBN 978-90-04-30927-2.
- ^ Mendelsohn 2022, p. 611.
- ISBN 978-977-452-243-7.
- ^ Kalogeris, George (September–October 2009). "The Sensuous Archaism of C.P. Cavafy". The Critical Flame (3). Retrieved 15 June 2021.
- ^ "Thermopylae – a poem on the good kind of life". 30 June 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ "C.P. Cavafy - Poems - The Canon". www.cavafy.com. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ "Alexandria Portal - Cavafy Museum". www.alexandria.gov.eg. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
- IMDb
- ^ "Alexandros Film". Alexandros Film. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
- ^ Haralambopoulos, Stelios. "The Night Fernando Pessoa Met 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.
Sources
- Daskalopoulos, Dimitris; Stasinopoulou, Maria (2002). Ο βίος και το έργο του Κ. Π. Καβάφη [The life and work of C. P. Cavafy] (in Greek). Metaichmio. ISBN 9789603754572.
- Mendelsohn, Daniel (2022). "Cavafy's Homer". Hudson Review. 74 (4): 611–626.
Further reading
- Panagiotis Roilos, C. P. Cavafy: The Economics of Metonymy, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
- Panagiotis Roilos (ed.), Imagination and Logos: Essays on C. P. Cavafy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2010 (ISBN 9780674053397).
- Robert Liddell, Cavafy: A Critical Biography (London: Duckworth, 1974). A widely acclaimed biography of Cavafy. This biography has also been translated in Greek (Ikaros, 1980) and Spanish (Ediciones Paidos Iberica, 2004).
- P. Bien, Constantine Cavafy (1964)
- Edmund Keeley, Cavafy's Alexandria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). An extensive analysis of Cavafy's works.
- Michael Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). Provides a portrait of the city during the first half of the 20th century and a biographical account of Cavafy and his influence on E. M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell.
- Michael Haag, Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860–1960 (New York and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008). A photographic record of the cosmopolitan city as it was known to Cavafy. It includes photographs of Cavafy, E. M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, and people they knew in Alexandria.
- Martin McKinsey, Hellenism and the Postcolonial Imagination: Yeats, Cavafy, Walcott (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010). First book to approach Cavafy's work from a postcolonial perspective.
External links
- C. P. Cavafy - The official website of the Cavafy Archive (in English)
- A comprehensive website, including a biography, a gallery, bibliography, news and extensive selections of poetry in English and Greek
- Audio introduction to Cavafy's poems In English, with examination of ten of his finest poems
- The Cavafy Museum in Alexandria
- Cavafy: surviving immortality
- "Artificial Flowers"—translations by Peter J. King & Andrea Christofidou
- Extensive collection of poems, in English & Greek & audio
- 'As Good as Great Poetry Gets' Daniel Mendelsohn article on Cavafy from The New York Review of Books
- "Of the Jews (A.D. 50)" by C. P. Cavafy
- Audio: Cavafy's poem Ithaka read by Edmund Keeley
- "In the dull village", a painting by David Hockney inspired by Cavafy, now in the British Museum
- Works by or about Constantine P. Cavafy at Internet Archive
- Works by Constantine P. Cavafy at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)