Constantine Cavafy 1863-1933

Constantine Cavafy is considered by many as the greatest Greek poet. He was born in Alexandria and was the youngest of seven sons. His father, a wealthy merchant who ran offices in Constantinople, Liverpool, London and Alexandria,  died in 1870 and the family moved to England where they watched their fortunes decline before they were forced to move back to Alexandria.

Two weeks before the British fleet bombarded the city, the family moved to Contantinople where they lived until 1885. Cavafy returned to Egypt, where joint British-Ottoman rule was imposed. There, he got a job as a civil servant, later working as a broker in the stock exchange.

Cavafy lived with his mother or brothers until the age of forty-five and rarely traveled outside Alexandria. Soon after his brother left he started living on his own, but he limited his social life and devoted himself to poetry.

He published his poems in newspapers and periodicals or printed them privately and distributed them among his close friends. No book with his work was published during his life time. Cavafy wasn’t known to the mainland Greek literary circles until 1903 but subsequently became one of the most popular poets in the country.

His work deals with philosophy, history, emotion, sensual pleasures and homosexuality and his full skill and craftmanship can only be appreciated in the Greek language. However, his friend E.M. Forster introduced him to the English speaking public through his translations in 1919.

He died of cancer of the larynx in a hospital close to his home on his 70th birthday: 29 April 1933