Constantine P. Cavafy was the first modernist Greek poet.
Background
Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His father, a prosperous export merchant from Constantinople, died in 1870, and two years later the family moved to England. They returned to Alexandria in 1879 and, except for three years in Constantinople and brief visits to Athens and other cities, Cavafy spent the rest of his life there.
Career
Between 1892 and 1922 he supported himself in clerical and minor administrative posts in the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation. Aside from occasional magazine publication, the poems were privately printed, and a collected edition was not available until 1935. A complete English translation did not appear until 1951. In order to understand Cavafy, one must have some knowledge of Alexandria, for the spirit of that cityand its history contributed much to Cavafy's poetry. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B. C. and served as the capital of the Ptolemaic empire. It was the center of the Hellenistic world. It was particularly famous for the Mouseion (in effect a research university) and associated library, which may have had as many as 700, 000 rolls (including Aristotle's library), the largest in the world. Euclid, Aristarchus of Samothrace, and Callimachus were among the great scholars who worked there. In Alexandria differences of opinion were not only tolerated but encouraged. Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Judaism, and Christianity all had followers here-traditionally St. Mark founded Christianity in Alexandria-and the population was an eclectic mixture, as it was again in Cavafy's day, of Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and others. An indication of the curious blend of cultures and ideas in Alexandria was the local worship of Serapis (mentioned by Cavafy in his poems), a god whose characteristics showed traces of both Greek and Egyptian influences. The complex, always changing culture of Alexandria gave its citizens little sense of stability or permanence, and for that they turned to art, to the well crafted artifice of a poem. Cavafy's poems are often self-consciously antiquarian, dealing with obscure corners of history, and this trait he also shares with famous Alexandrian predecessors. Furthermore, like his predecessors, he created his own highly artificial poetic language, a mixture of demotic and purist Greek, deliberately employing archaisms and colloquialisms. Also like the poetry of the ancient Alexandrians, Cavafy's is less the result of sudden inspiration than the result of the most scrupulous craftsmanship. It is the poetry of a very learned, very intelligent man. Most modernist poets did their greatest work in lyric poetry, but Cavafy turned to the elegiac epigram, which had been perfected by Callimachus and his contemporaries. The elegiac epigram was originally intended for inscriptions on funerary monuments, but the Alexandrians developed it into an objective, cool, and often ironic poetic form. Cavafy began, like his Alexandrian predecessors, as a relatively traditional or conventional poet, his work rhymed and metrically regular, but he later experimented with new verse patterns and free verse. Because of this experimentation and his highly personal and idiosyncratic use of Greek, he was able to transform thoroughly and revitalize Greek poetry. Modernist Greek poetry begins with Cavafy. But while acknowledging this fact, it must always be remembered that his poetry is essentially conservative in important respects: it represents in many ways a reawakening of certain aspects of the Alexandrian and Hellenistic culture Cavafy profoundly admired. Cavafy's own epitaph might well be the concluding lines of his own "Epitaph for Antiochos. " To be Greek, says Cavafy in this poem, is to have the best there is except for what belongs only to the gods. He died in 1933 of cancer in Alexandria.
Views
For Cavafy, as for the ancient Alexandrians, permanence was principally the property of art, not civilization or nature. In this, he was undoubtedly influenced by Mallarmé and other symbolist poets, but the Alexandrian view surely had its influence as well.
Quotations:
"When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge. "
"Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey. "
"And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean. "
"Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive — don’t mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving. Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say it was a dream, your ears deceived you: don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these. "
"Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires glowing openly in eyes that looked at you, trembling for you in voices. "
"Return often and take me, beloved sensation, return and take me - When memory of the body awakens, and old desire again runs through the blood; when the lips and skin remember, and the hands feel as if they touch again. "
"The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight Golden and warm and lively little candles. "
"One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love. "
"Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be. "
"Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of them granted a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings. "
"That we've broken their statues, that we've driven them out of their temples, doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead. O land of Ionia, they're still in love with you, their souls still keep your memory. "
"A month passes by and brings another month. Easy to guess what lies ahead: all of yesterday's boredom. And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow. "
"On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been, remember how much your imagination created for you. "
"And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, triumphant, brilliant in every way, celebrated on all sides, glorified incomparable, we emerged: the great new Hellenic world. "
Personality
As a poet, Cavafy was an exceptionally meticulous, slow worker, completing to his satisfaction only 24 poems before he was 48 (when he believed that he had reached his poetic maturity) and only 154 before his death.