Peter Green
Cavafy : The supreme modern poet of nostalgia

Page 3

Anglicized, and schooled, in Liverpool and London, a declasse polyglot bookworm with poetic yearnings, Cavafy was to spend most of the rest of his life in Alexandria. Though he knew virtually no Arabic, and counted no Egyptians among his friends (even his rent-boys would seem to have belonged to the large Greek community), the city became his home and, eventually, one of his most haunting symbols. Urban to the core, Cavafy took no interest in scenery. Convalescing--shortly before his death--in Kifissia, a northern suburb of Athens, with a stunning panorama visible beyond his window, including the mountains of Parnes and Pendeli in the background, his only comment on the view was: "It bores me." What held his heart were the shabby streets, the run-down cafes and billiard halls, the cheap rooms (linked indelibly in memory with sex long past but never forgotten) of the Greek quarter. Not even his one youthful expedition to Constantinople, where he had his first physical homoerotic experience, was preferable. Refusing an invitation to Athens, he wrote: "Mohammed Aly Square is my aunt. Rue Cherif Pasha is my first cousin, and the Rue de Ramleh my second. How can I leave them?"

Until her death in 1899 he lived with his mother, whom he referred to affectionately (and accurately, to judge from surviving photographs) as "the Fat One." He finally settled in an apartment over a brothel at 10 Rue Lepsius (re-christened the Rue Clapsius by wartime troops). There, surrounded by a hodgepodge of old furniture, rugs, vases, and endless bric-a-brac, which reminded one Greek friend of a secondhand furniture store, Cavafy spent the rest of his life: working mornings as a clerk for the Egyptian Third Circle of Irrigation; entertaining chosen friends by dim candlelight (an especially beautiful face would get the silent tribute of an extra candle); reading voraciously in Hellenistic and Byzantine history; mulling over his own and the Hellenic diaspora's past until they became indistinguishable in his mind; calling up nocturnal visions of historical charmers, former lovers, and himself when young; writing and circulating the poems that would one day make him famous.

 

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Cf. Cavafy's poems - Bilingual versions, Mendelsohn, Cavafy - Life of a Poet, Cavafy resources

More about New Hellenism / Constantinople

The Greek Word Library

Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/modern/cavafy-green.asp?pg=3