Constantine P. Cavafy

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Lore & Background

Cavafy was born in 1863 in Alexandria (then Ottoman Egypt) where his Greek parents had settled in 1855. Originating from the Phanariot Greek community of Constantinople, his father was a prosperous merchant who had lived in England and held both Greek and British citizenship. Two years after his father's sudden death in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for a while in England, moving between Liverpool and London. In 1876, the family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873 and moved back to Alexandria in 1877. In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family to move temporarily to Constantinople, where the nineteen-year-old Cavafy first came in contact with his many relatives and started researching his ancestry. There he began his first systematic attempts to write poetry. In 1885, Cavafy returned to Alexandria, where he lived for the rest of his life. He reacquired his Greek citizenship and abandoned the British citizenship his father had acquired. He started working as a news correspondent at the journal Telegraphos (1886) and later worked at the stock exchange. He was eventually hired as a temporary clerk in the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works, holding this position by renewing it annually for thirty years. In 1922, Cavafy quit his high-ranking position, an act he characterized as liberation, and devoted himself to the completion of his poetic work. He died of cancer of the larynx on 29 April 1933, his 70th birthday.

Reader's Guide

Cavafy's complete literary corpus includes the 154 poems that constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or 'hidden' poems; his 37 rejected poems; his 30 incomplete poems; as well as numerous other prose poems, essays, and letters. According to the poet's instructions, his poems are classified into three categories: historical, philosophical, and hedonistic or sensual. Cavafy was instrumental in the revival and recognition of Greek poetry both at home and abroad. His poems are typically concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieux that have played roles in Greek culture. Some defining themes are uncertainty about the future, sensual pleasures, the moral character and psychology of individuals, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existential nostalgia. His mature style was a free iambic form, free in the sense that verses rarely rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his poems, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony. One of his most important works is his 1904 poem 'Waiting for the Barbarians', which 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. In 1911, Cavafy wrote 'Ithaca', often considered his best-known poem, inspired by the Homeric return journey of Odysseus. His friend E. M. Forster first introduced his poems to the English-speaking world in 1923, describing him as 'a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe'. Almost all of Cavafy's work was in Greek; his poetry remained unrecognized and underestimated in Greece until after the publication of the first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis. In 1926, the Greek state honoured Cavafy by awarding him the silver medal of the Order of Phoenix. Since his death, Cavafy's reputation has grown; his poetry is taught in school in Greece and Cyprus, and in universities around the world.

Did You Know?

• Cavafy's father held both Greek and British citizenship, and Cavafy himself abandoned his British citizenship in 1885 to reacquire Greek citizenship.
• He worked as a temporary clerk in the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works for thirty years, renewing his position annually.
• Cavafy consistently refused to publish his work in books, preferring to print his poems on broadsheets and give them away.
• His poem 'Waiting for the Barbarians' (1904) ends with the line: 'What is to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution of a sort.'
• E. M. Forster first introduced Cavafy's poems to the English-speaking world in 1923, famously describing him as 'a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.'