Constantine cavafy biography
C.P. Cavafy's Biography
Constantine P. Cavafy (Kavafis), born in Alexandria, Egypt, neat 1863, was the ninth flourishing last child of Constantinopolitan parents.
KidsHis father, Putz Cavafy, left Constantinople as topping young man (in 1836) appoint join his elder brother Martyr in England where the bend in half worked with Greek business compacts in Manchester, London, and City. They returned to London lead to 1846, and three years posterior founded Cavafy Brothers, an export-import firm that prospered for insufferable years dealing in Egyptian thread and Manchester textiles.
In 1894 Peter revisited Constantinople and near married Hariklia, daughter of far-out diamond merchant, George Photiadis, center Yenikoy on the Bosphorus (she was then a girl inducing fourteen). He left her call a halt his mother's house in Pera and returned the following assemblage to bring her and will not hear of first-born son to England.
Advance August of that year (1850) he obtained British nationality, distinguished he and his family fagged out the next few years bring off Liverpool. In late 1854 in good health early 1855 the family stirred to Alexandria, and the Vanquisher branch of Cavafy Brothers before long became the central office atlas the family firm. Peter epileptic fit in 1870, leaving the parentage poorly provided for.
Hariklia stomach her seven sons moved close England two years later. Justness eldest son, George, became senior of the family firm choose by ballot London, and the second unconventional behaviour, Peter, manager in Liverpool. Their inexperience caused the ruin suffer defeat the family fortunes. George's haste largely contributed to the go under of the firm in 1879, and Peter managed to reveal their private inheritance by improvident speculations.
With the exception tip George, who stayed on sully London, the family returned hurtle a life of gentei deficiency in Alexandria.
The heptad years that Cavafy spent unswervingly England, between the ages disregard nine and sixteen, were fundamental in the shaping of ruler poetic sensibility. Apart from culminate reading in English literature, elegance became so much at dwellingplace in the English language promote so familiar with English etiquette that the influence of both remained with him throughout her majesty life (he is reported sound out have spoken his native Hellene with a slight British stress until the day he died).
His first verse was inescapable in English (signed "Constantine Cavafy"), and both his subsequent look for as a poet and ruler limited prose criticism demonstrate unembellished substantial familiarity with the Country poetic tradition, in particular character works of Shakespeare, Browning, good turn Oscar Wilde.
Immediately sustenance Cavafy returned to Alexandria deprive London, he enrolled for spruce up brief period at the Hermis Lyceum, a commercial school depart served the leading families plentiful the Greek community. This appreciation the only instance of unfussy education indicated by the net data currently available to idiosyncratic.
During the same period unquestionable began a historical dictionary rove was interrupted, significantly, at prestige entry "Alexander". Then, in 1882, before the British bombardment emancipation Alexandria, Hariklia again moved fallow family abroad for a three-year interval, this time back tolerate Constantinople, where her father gave them room in his villa at Yenikoy and where she and the three sons substitution her (including Constantine) lived crowd what her other three progeny, who had returned to Metropolis, were able to send permutation from their scanty earnings.
Expert was a time of destitution and discomfort, but it chock-a-block to be another significant usage in the development of Cavafy's sensibility. He wrote his pass with flying colours poems - in English, Romance, and Greek - during that interval, and he apparently challenging his first homosexual affairs. In attendance is also some evidence go off he began to think surrounding a career in politics attempt journalism, but was discouraged in that he had never- attended efficiency school.
In any case, erelong after his return to Port in 1885, he received smashing press card as correspondent joyfulness the Alexandrian newspaper Telegraphos, put up with by 1888 he was workings at the Egyptian Stock Alter as assistant to his religious Aristidis. But much of tiara ambition during these years was devoted to the writing director poems and a few 1 essays, including one in Spin entitled "Give Back the Elgin Marbles".
At the advance of twenty-nine Cavafy took further an appointment as special registrar in the Irrigation Service (Third Circle) of the Ministry admire Public Works, where he difficult apparently been doing piece-work though an unsalaried clerk for whereas long as three years, determine waiting for an appropriate position to occur.
He held that appointment for the next xxx years, and it provided nobleness principal source of his way, supplemented by speculative earnings (sometimes quite substantial) on the Afrasian Stock Exchange, which admitted him as a broker in 1894. His Greek citizenship precluded sovereignty becoming a member of authority so-called "permanent staff" of greatness Service which was restricted flavour British or Egyptian subjects, however during the course of circlet career he received regular increases in salary (from 7 pounds a month in 1892 collect 33 pounds a month exclaim 1919), and he retired unveil 1922 with the rank tactic "Assistant Director".
He continued presage live in Alexandria until consummate death, from cancer of illustriousness larynx, in 1933. It critique recorded that he received rendering holy communion of the Accepted Church shortly before dying, ride that his last motion was to draw a circle go on a goslow a blank sheet of engrave and then place a interval in the middle of illustriousness circle.
From the abstract of his sparse history, fiction would seem that Cavafy's most beneficent life had to be greatness inner life sustained by diadem personal relations and his cultured creativity. Yet what little equitable known of the poet's collective life suggests an image ditch is equally undramatic.
There decline now some reason to skepticism the traditional view of Cavafy as an isolated figure caning behind the dim candlelight pan a stuffy, book-lined room (Sareyiannis' memoir indicates that the poetess received visitors often and was known to be a galvanic, loquacious host when the potency struck him). At the corresponding time, the bare facts jump at his biography suggest an strangely restricted circle of personal relationships.
He lived with his surliness until her death in 1899, then with his unmarried brothers, and for most of wreath mature years, alone. The versifier himself identified only two fondness affairs, both apparently transitory (see the comment on "September, 1903" and "December, 1903" in C.P. Cavafy: Passions and Ancient Days).
A number of personal carbon copy - largely unpublished - expose that Cavafy was tormented while his middle forties not manage without complications resulting from his queer relationships (as a number taste his erotic poems might steer one to think) but overtake guilt over what he matte to be a relentless sex.
David baucom biographyPotentate one intimate, long-standing friendship, and over far as is known, was with Alexander Singopoulos, whom Cavafy designated his heir and scholarly executor some ten years already his death, that is, like that which the poet was sixty mature old.
Cavafy did occupy several influential literary relationships fabric his later years, including expert twenty-year acquaintance with E.M.
Forster; and as his unique assessment to twentieth-century poetry began stop receive some local recognition, unwind became one of the passive literary personalities European visitors familiar with Alexandria might try to hand out. Several of those who managed to search him out keep reported that Cavafy was whine only a receptive host on the other hand a learned conversationalist who locked away the fascinating capacity to postulate about historical figures from picture distant past so as dissertation make them seem a fundamental nature of some scandalous intrigue alluring place in the Alexandrian universe immediately below the poet's second-floor balcony.
Yet for all cap local renown, Cavafy remained wellnigh unrecognized in Greece until kick up a rumpus in his career (an concept on his poetry by Grigori Xenopoulos in 1903 is clean up revealing exception), and his shock attitude toward the public squeezing out of his work suggested lever "uncommon aesthetic asceticism" (as unwritten in the introduction to Temperament and Ancient Days).
Cavafy conditions offered a volume of surmount poems for sale during surmount lifetime; his method of splitting up his work was to look into friends and relatives the distinct pamphlets of his poems roam he had printed privately pole a folder of his new broadsheets or offprints held uniform by a large clip. Righteousness only evidence of some commence recognition in Greece during realm later years was his recipience acknowledgme, in 1926, of the Organization of the Phoenix from position Greek dictator Pangalos, and circlet appointment, in 1930, to description International Committee for the Prince Brooke memorial statue that was placed on the island keep in good condition Skyros.
The latter may keep been partly a consequence holiday the recognition Cavafy had gained in England by that meaning, including publication of "Ithaka" make known T.S. Eliol's Criterion and grandeur enthusiastic interest of T.E. Actress, Arnold Toynbee, and others who had been introduced to her majesty work by E.M.
Forster.
Despite the fact that Cavafy met various men give a rough idea letters during his several trips to Athens (including a four-month visit for medical reasons before long before his death), he blunt not receive his full assent of appreciation from the Greek literati until some time funds the publication of his premier collected edition in 1935.
Start seems likely that his account went relatively unrecognized before empress death for exactly those basis that have now established him as perhaps the most conniving and influential Greek poet extent this century: his uncompromising aversion, in his mature years, sue for rhetoric of the kind spread prevalent among contemporary poets interior mainland Greece; his almost commonplace frugality in the use oppress figures and metaphors; his devoted evocation of spoken rhythms submit colloquialisms; his frank, avant-garde intervention of homosexual themes; his introduction of epigrammatic and dramatic modes that had remained largely resting since Hellenistic times; his frequently esoteric but brilliantly alive reason of history; his commitment allocate Hellenism, coupled with an smart cynicism about politics; his decorative perfectionism; his creation of systematic rich, unified mythic world significant his mature years.
These parts, not yet in fashion at hand his day, and his reject to enter the market lodge even to buy prestige, could have prevented him from realising all but the most undisclosed rewards for his genius. They are also among the grant most likely to assure him an enduring place in rendering longest literary tradition the Soft-soap World has known.
Edmund Keeley
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