Constantine P. Cavafy was the first modernist Greek poet.
He revolutionized Greek poetry, but his work shows clear affinities with Hellenistic poetry of the Alexandrian era.
Background
Born on Apr. 17, 1863, in Alexandria, Egypt, he came of an old family from Istanbul, which, on his father's side, had emigrated to Egypt in the early 19th century.
He returned with his mother to Alexandria in 1878, but in the meantime the death of his father precipitated the decline of the family business.
Career
He led the life of a recluse, devoting all his spare time to poetry.
Cavafy has been widely acknowledged as a European poet of considerable originality and distinction.
His curious poetic talent did not begin to reveal itself until middle age, and the best of the 154 poems included in his collected works were written between the ages of 40 and 70.
His love poetry is pervaded by a refined aestheticism and melancholy at the transience of youth and sensual desires.
He 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.
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 city and 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.
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.
In this, he was undoubtedly influenced by Mallarmé and other symbolist poets, but the Alexandrian view surely had its influence as well.
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.
Most of his best poems, in fact, which do not deal with episodes, real or imagined, from the Hellenistic world deal with homosexuality. Cavafy is rarely concerned in his poetry with great figures and incidents which have altered history.
Similar achievements can be found in the works of other Alexandrians. 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.
To be Greek, says Cavafy in this poem, is to have the best there is except for what belongs only to the gods.
Connections
For many years the Cavafy family was one of the most prominent in the cosmopolitan society of Alexandria.