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C. P. Cavafy

Constantine Cavafy was born Konstantínos Pétrou Kaváfis in Alexandria, Egypt, on April 29, 1863, the ninth child of Constantinopolitan parents. His father died in 1870, leaving the family poor. Cavafy’s mother moved her children to England, where the two eldest sons took over their father’s business. Their inexperience caused the ruin of the family fortunes, so they returned to a life of genteel poverty in Alexandria. The seven years that Constantine Cavafy spent in England—from age nine to sixteen—were important to the shaping of his poetic sensibility: he became so comfortable with English that he wrote his first verse in his second language.

After a brief education in London and Alexandria, he moved with his mother to Constantinople, where they stayed with his grandfather and two brothers. Although living in great poverty and discomfort, Cavafy wrote his first poems during this period, and had his first love affairs with other men. After briefly working for the Alexandrian newspaper and the Egyptian Stock exchange, at the age of twenty-nine Cavafy took up an a

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Constantine P. Cavafy’s sexuality (1863-1933) was a paradox. While he composed daring homoerotic verse, he wrote very little about his own erotic life.

As a result, few traces of his homosexuality remain in the archive. Not a single letter addresses the topic in any detail, nor is there a journal or a diary devoted to it. Anyone interested in Cavafy’s life is left with the puzzling question: How could someone, who published path-breaking poetry about men loving men, have written so little about his own lovers?

Quite possibly Cavafy feared being ostracized from his social milieu. Alexandrians knew of his “anomaly” and accepted it as long as it led to no scandal. While they may have made passing references to this “perversion,” they did not write about it, preferring a conspiracy of evasion.

Therefore, little exists in the historical record about the poet’s intimate life. We know from hearsay that he had his first sexual experiences with a cousin in Istanbul between 1882 and 1885 and that he frequented the hamams (bath houses) in that city. But we have no eye-witness account and

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Constantine P. Cavafy

Greek poet and journalist (1863–1933)

"Cavafy" redirects here. For the 1997 film, see Cavafy (film).

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης[ka'vafis]; 29 April (OS 17 April), 1863 – 29 April 1933), known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy (), was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria.^[2] A major figure of modern Greek literature, he is sometimes considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century.^[3]^[4] His works and consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important contributors not only to Greek poetry, but to Western poetry as a whole.^[5]

Cavafy's poetic canon consists of 154 poems, while dozens more that remained incomplete or in sketch form weren't published until much later. He consistently refused to publish his work in books, preferring to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it himself and give it away to anyone who might be interested.