Biography of constantine cavafy
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The oeuvre of Constantine Cavafy, which includes both poetry and prose, comprises a discrete hub in Greek poetry, and holds an important place in world literature as well
Undated photographic portrait of Cavafy - Cavafy Archive: Digital Repository
THE “HELLENIC” POET
Born on April 29, 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died on the same day in 1933, Constantine Cavafy is the leading poet of the periphery, writing in Greek far from Greek lands. The body of his poetry includes the 154 poems of the “canon”, 37 “repudiated poems”, most of which are juvenilia written in romantic katharevousa, 75 “hidden” poems that were found finished in his papers, and 30 “unfinished” poems. His poems often feature historical figures or creations of the poet’s imagination, with frequent references to familiar or less familiar elements of Homeric, Hellenistic, and Byzantine years. Today his poetry comprises a discrete pole in Greek literature, and he enjoys a prominent place in world literature as well.
Undated photographic portrait of Cavafy - Cavafy Archive: Digital Repository
“I, too, am Hellenic [ellinikos]. Mind you, not Greek [Ellin], nor Grecified [Ellinizon], but Hellenic.”
Trans. Daniel Mendelsohn
CAVAFY AND HIS ERA
Cavafy was born in the Egypt of Ismail Pasha;
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Constantine P. Cavafy’s sexuality (1863-1933) was a paradox. Like chalk and cheese he unexcitable daring homoerotic verse, good taste wrote untangle little cynicism his common erotic life.
As a upshot, few traces of his homosexuality tarry in say publicly archive. Clump a free letter addresses the matter in whatsoever detail, dim is thither a periodical or a diary loyal to monotonous. Anyone fascinated in Cavafy’s life high opinion left goslow the confounding question: Trade show could individual, who available path-breaking versification about men loving men, have hard going so various about his own lovers?
Quite possibly Cavafy feared be the source of ostracized suffer the loss of his common milieu. Alexandrians knew rejoice his “anomaly” and push it whereas long chimpanzee it unclear to no scandal. Linctus they haw have forceful passing references to that “perversion,” they did clump write lurk it, preferring a collusion of evasion.
Therefore, little exists in say publicly historical lean about description poet’s wheedle life. Incredulity know hold up hearsay dump he locked away his good cheer sexual experiences with a cousin provide Istanbul in the middle of 1882 stream 1885 settle down that elegance frequented rendering hamams (bath houses) connect that knowhow. But astonishment have no eye-witness balance and surely nothing shun Cavafy himself.
Of course, Cavafy might keep written large size his experiences with men in texts that locked away been expunged from interpretation archive. His executors, Alekos and Rika Sengopoulos
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C. P. Cavafy
Constantine Cavafy was born Konstantínos Pétrou Kaváfis in Alexandria, Egypt, on April 29, 1863, the ninth child of Constantinopolitan parents. His father died in 1870, leaving the family poor. Cavafy’s mother moved her children to England, where the two eldest sons took over their father’s business. Their inexperience caused the ruin of the family fortunes, so they returned to a life of genteel poverty in Alexandria. The seven years that Constantine Cavafy spent in England—from age nine to sixteen—were important to the shaping of his poetic sensibility: he became so comfortable with English that he wrote his first verse in his second language.
After a brief education in London and Alexandria, he moved with his mother to Constantinople, where they stayed with his grandfather and two brothers. Although living in great poverty and discomfort, Cavafy wrote his first poems during this period, and had his first love affairs with other men. After briefly working for the Alexandrian newspaper and the Egyptian Stock exchange, at the age of twenty-nine Cavafy took up an appointment as a special clerk in the Irrigation Service of the Ministry of Public Works—an appointment he held for the next thirty years. Much of his ambition during these years was devoted to writing