KONSTANTINOS PETROU KAVAFIS'S POEM 'ITHAKA'

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis

After a Loli Stone's masterclass about The Iliad, accompanied by Homer, The Stones have decided to visit the island. Ithaca is a wonderful Mediterranean island and a fantastic place to practice trekking.

The family has decided to discover the hidden places of the island by foot. While The Stones enjoyed and contemplated the views, Daniel Stone was playing his fidle and Loli Stone was reciting one of the most transcendental and beautiful poems ever written, Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis's Ithaca.

Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, also known as Constantine Peter Cavafy, in Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (April 29 1863-April 29, 1933) was an Egyptiot Greek poet, journalist and civil servant. His consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important figures not only in Greek poetry, but in Western poetry as well.

Kavafis wrote 155 poems, while dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. During his lifetime, he consistently refused to formally publish his work and preferred to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it out himself and give it away to anyone interested.

His most important poems were written after his fortieth birthday, and officially published two years after his death.

More information: Poetry Foundation

Kavafis was born in 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Greek parents, originated from the Greek community of Constantinople (Istanbul), and was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church.

His father's name was Πέτρος Ἰωάννης, Petros Ioannēs -hence the Petrou patronymic (GEN) in his name- and his mother's Charicleia. His father was a prosperous importer-exporter who had lived in England in earlier years and acquired British nationality. After his father died in 1870, Kavafis and his family settled for a while in Liverpool.

David & Loli Stone recite Kavafis's Ithaka in Aetos

In 1876, his family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873, so, by 1877, they had to move back to Alexandria.

In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family to move again, though temporarily, to Constantinople. This was the year when a revolt broke out in Alexandria against the Anglo-French control of Egypt, thus precipitating the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. Alexandria was bombarded by a British fleet, and the family apartment at Ramleh was burned.

In 1885, Kavafis returned to Alexandria, where he lived for the rest of his life. His first work was as a journalist; then he took a position with the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works for thirty years. Egypt was a British protectorate until 1926.

He published his poetry from 1891 to 1904 in the form of broadsheets, and only for his close friends. Any acclaim he was to receive came mainly from within the Greek community of Alexandria. Eventually, in 1903, he was introduced to mainland-Greek literary circles through a favourable review by Gregorios Xenopoulos.

He received little recognition because his style differed markedly from the then-mainstream Greek poetry. It was only twenty years later, after the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), that a new generation of almost nihilist poets would find inspiration in Kavafis's work.

More information: Cambridge Scholars

He died on April 29, 1933, his 70th birthday. Since his death, Kavafis's reputation has grown. His poetry is taught in school in Greece and Cyprus, and in universities around the world.

E. M. Forster knew him personally and wrote a memoir of him, contained in his book Alexandria. Forster, Arnold J. Toynbee, and T. S. Eliot were among the earliest promoters of Kavafis in the English-speaking world before the Second World War. In 1966, David Hockney made a series of prints to illustrate a selection of Kavafis's poems, including In the dull village.

Kavafis was instrumental in the revival and recognition of Greek poetry both at home and abroad. His poems are, typically, concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieux that have played roles in Greek culture. 

Visiting the Alalkomenes Acropolis, Ithaca

Uncertainty about the future, sensual pleasures, the moral character and psychology of individuals, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existential nostalgia are some of the defining themes.

Besides his subjects, unconventional for the time, his poems also exhibit a skilled and versatile craftsmanship, which is extremely difficult to translate.

Kavafis was a perfectionist, obsessively refining every single line of his poetry. His mature style was a free iambic form, free in the sense that verses rarely rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his poems, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony.

Kavafis drew his themes from personal experience, along with a deep and wide knowledge of history, especially of the Hellenistic era. Many of his poems are pseudo-historical, or seemingly historical, or accurately but quirkily historical.

One of Kavafis's most important works is his 1904 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. The poem begins by describing a city-state in decline, whose population and legislators are waiting for the arrival of the barbarians. When night falls, the barbarians have not arrived. The poem ends: What is to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution of a sort.

More information: Poets

In 1911, Kavafis wrote Ithaca, inspired by the Homeric return journey of Odysseus to his home island, as depicted in the Odyssey.

The poem's theme is the destination which produces the journey of life: Keep Ithaka always in your mind. / Arriving there is what you’re destined for. The traveller should set out with hope, and at the end you may find Ithaca has no more riches to give you, but Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Almost all of Kavafis's work was in Greek; yet, his poetry remained unrecognized and underestimated in Greece, until after the publication of the first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis, father of Renos Apostolidis.

His unique style and language, which was a mixture of Katharevousa and Demotic Greek, had brought him under the criticism of Kostis Palamas, the greatest poet of his era in mainland Greece, and his followers, who were in favour of the simplest form of Demotic Greek.

He is known for his prosaic use of metaphors, his brilliant use of historical imagery, and his aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst others, have assured him an enduring place in the literary pantheon of the Western World.

More information: The New Yorker

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
 

Konstantinos P. Kavafis