Konstantin Kavafi

Konstantin Kavafi (grč. Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης; Aleksandrija, 29. april 1863 — Aleksandrija, 29. april 1933) bio je grčki pesnik koji je živeo u Aleksandriji i radio kao novinar i državni službenik. Objavio je 154 pesme; još desetine su ostale nedovršene ili u obliku skice. Svoje najvažnije pesme napisao je posle četrdesetog rođendana. Njegovo delo, kako je rekao jedan prevodilac, „drži istorijsko i erotsko u jednom zagrljaju.“

Konstantin Kavafi
Fotografija iz 1900.
Lični podaci
Datum rođenja	(1863-04-29)29. april 1863.
Mesto rođenja	Aleksandrija, Egipat
Datum smrti	29. april 1933.(1933-04-29) (70 god.)
Mesto smrti	Aleksandrija, Egipat

Kavafijev prijatelj E. M. Forster, romanopisac i književni kritičar, predstavio je njegove pesme svetu engleskog govornog područja 1923. godine, slavno ga opisujući kao „grčkog gospodina u slamnatom šeširu, koji stoji apsolutno nepomično pod blagim uglom u odnosu na univerzum“. Kavafijev svesno individualni stil doneo mu je mesto među najvažnijim ličnostima ne samo u grčkoj poeziji, već i u zapadnoj poeziji u celini.

Biografija

Kavafi je rođen 1863. u grčkoj porodici u Aleksandriji, i kršten je u pravoslavnoj crkvi. Otac mu je bio uspešni trgovac koji se bavio uvozom i izvozom robe, a kao mladić je živeo u Engleskoj, zahvaljujući čemu je imao britansko državljanstvo. Nakon očeve smrti 1870, Kavafi je sa porodicom jedno vreme živeo u Liverpulu u Engleskoj. Zbog finansijskih problema koji su bili uzrokovani ekonomskim statusom države, 1877. su se vratili u Aleksandriju.

Kada je 1882. Aleksandriju zahvatio talas previranja, porodica Kavafi je bila primorana da se iznova, mada privremeno, preseli, ovoga puta u Carigrad. Upravo te godine u Aleksandriji je, kao najava anglo-egipatskog rata, izbila pobuna protiv anglo-francuske uprave u Egiptu. U bombardovanju Aleksandrije koje je ubrzo usledilo, porodični stan Kavafijevih je izgoreo.

Tri godine kasnije, 1885, Kavafi se vratio u Aleksandriju, gde će ostati do kraja svog života. Najpre je radio kao novinar da bi zatim dobio posao u egipatskom Ministarstvu javnih poslova koje je bilo pod britanskim patronatom (Egipat je bio pod britanskim protektoratom sve do 1926. godine). Na tom radnom mestu se zadržao trideset godina. Svoje pesme je objavljivao u periodu od 1891. do 1904, i to samo za bliske prijatelje. Većina pohvala koje je dobijao stizala je od strane pripadnika grčke zajednice koji su živeli u Aleksandriji. Tek 1903. književni krugovi Grčke čuli su za Kavafija zahvaljujući pozitivnoj kritici koji je napisao Gregorios Ksenopulos. Međutim, nije privukao veliku pažnju pošto mu se stil pisanja značajno razlikovao od stila važnih grčkih pesnika tog vremena. Tek pune dve decenije kasnije, nakon grčkog poraza u grčko-turskom ratu, nova generacija skoro nihilističkih pesnika poput Kariotakisa naći će inspiraciju u Kavafijevoj poeziji.

Pesma Termopili napisana Kavafijevom rukom.

Kavafijeva pesma Κρυμμένα ("Krimmena", Skriveno) ispisana na zidu zgrade u Lajdenu, u Holandiji.

E. M. Forster ga je lično poznavao i napisao je o njemu memoare, sadržane u njegovoj knjizi Aleksandrija. Forster, Arnold Dž. Tojnbi i T. S. Eliot bili su među najranijim promoterima Kavafija na engleskom govornom području pre Drugog svetskog rata. Godine 1966, Dejvid Hokni je napravio seriju grafika da bi ilustrovao izbor Kavafijevih pesama, uključujući U dosadnom selu.

Bibliografija

Izbori Kavafijevih pesama su se tokom njegovog života pojavljivali samo u pamfletima, privatno štampanim brošurama i listovima. Prva publikacija u obliku knjige bila je „Ποιήματα“ (Poiēmata, „Pesme“), objavljena posthumno u Aleksandriji, 1935. godine.

Tomovi sa prevodima Kavafijeve poezije na engleski

• Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by John Mavrogordato (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978, first edition in 1951)
• The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, introduction by W. H. Auden (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961)
• The Greek Poems of C.P. Cavafy As Translated by Memas Kolaitis, two volumes (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 1989)
• Complete Poems by C P Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, (Harper Press, 2013)
• Passions and Ancient Days - 21 New Poems, Selected and translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis (London: The Hogarth Press, 1972)
• Poems by Constantine Cavafy, translated by George Khairallah (Beirut: privately printed, 1979)
• C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, Revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
• Selected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, translated by Desmond O'Grady (Dublin: Dedalus, 1998)
• Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis, foreword by Gore Vidal (New York: Harcourt, 2001)
• Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated by J.C. Cavafy (Athens: Ikaros, 2003)
• I've Gazed So Much by C. P. Cavafy, translated by George Economou (London: Stop Press, 2003)
• C. P. Cavafy, The Canon, translated by Stratis Haviaras, foreword by Seamus Heaney (Athens: Hermes Publishing, 2004)
• The Collected Poems, translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou, edited by Anthony Hirst and with an introduction by Peter Mackridge. . Oxford University Press. 2007. ISBN 9608762707. 
• The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation, translated by Aliki Barnstone, Introduction by Gerald Stern (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007)
• C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems, translated with an introduction by Avi Sharon (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008)
• Cavafy: 166 Poems, translated by Alan L Boegehold. . Axios Press. 2008. ISBN 1604190051. 
• C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)
• C. P. Cavafy, Poems: The Canon, translated by John Chioles, edited by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Early Modern and Modern Greek Library, ISBN 9780674053267, 2011)
• "C.P. Cavafy, Selected Poems", translated by David Connolly, Aiora Press, Athens 2013
• Clearing the Ground: C.P. Cavafy, Poetry and Prose, 1902-1911, translations and essay by Martin McKinsey (Chapel Hill: Laertes, 2015)

Translations of Cavafy's poems are also included in

• Lawrence Durrell, Justine (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1957)
• Modern Greek Poetry, edited by Kimon Friar (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973)
• Memas Kolaitis, Cavafy as I knew him (Santa Barbara, CA: Kolaitis Dictionaries, 1980)
• James Merrill, Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)
• David Ferry, Bewilderment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
• Don Paterson, Landing Light (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2003)
• Derek Mahon, Adaptations (Loughcrew, Ireland: The Gallery Press, 2006)
• A.E. Stallings, Hapax (Evanston, Illinois: Triquarterly Books, 2006)
• Don Paterson, Rain (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2009)
• John Ash, In the Wake of the Day (Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2010)
• David Harsent, Night (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2011)
• Selected Prose Works, C.P. Cavafy, edited and translated by Peter Jeffreys (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)

Drugi radovi

• Panagiotis Roilos, C. P. Cavafy: The Economics of Metonymy, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
• Panagiotis Roilos (ed.), Imagination and Logos: Essays on C. P. Cavafy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. 2010. ISBN 9780674053397..
• Robert Liddell, Cavafy: A Critical Biography (London: Duckworth, 1974). A widely acclaimed biography of Cavafy. This biography has also been translated in Greek (Ikaros, 1980) and Spanish (Ediciones Paidos Iberica, 2004).
• P. Bien, Constantine Cavafy (1964)
• Edmund Keeley, Cavafy's Alexandria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). An extensive analysis of Cavafy's works.
• Michael Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). Provides a portrait of the city during the first half of the 20th century and a biographical account of Cavafy and his influence on E.M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell.
• Michael Haag, Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860-1960 (New York and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008). A photographic record of the cosmopolitan city as it was known to Cavafy. It includes photographs of Cavafy, E M Forster, Lawrence Durrell, and people they knew in Alexandria.
• Martin McKinsey, Hellenism and the Postcolonial Imagination: Yeats, Cavafy, Walcott (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010). First book to approach Cavafy's work from a postcolonial perspective.

Filmografija

• Cavafy, a biographical film was directed by Iannis Smaragdis in 1996 with music by Vangelis. A literary form of the script of the film was also published in book form by Smaragdis.

Druge reference

• C. P. Cavafy appears as a character in the Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell.
• The Weddings Parties Anything song 'The Afternoon Sun' is based on the Cavafy poem of the same title.
• The American poet Mark Doty's book My Alexandria uses the place and imagery of Cavafy to create a comparable contemporary landscape.
• The Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen transformed Cavafy's poem "The God Abandons Antony", based on Mark Antony's loss of the city of Alexandria and his empire, into "Alexandra Leaving", a song around lost love.
• Scottish songwriter Donovan featured one of Cavafy's poems in his 1970 film There is an Ocean.
• The Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, in an extended essay published in the "New York Times", writes about how Cavafy's poetry, particularly his poem "The City," has changed the way Pamuk looks at, and thinks about, the city of Istanbul, a city that remains central to Pamuk's own writing.
• Frank H. T. Rhodes' last commencement speech given at Cornell University in 1995 was based on Cavafy's poem "Ithaca".
• Greek director Stelios Haralambopoulos's documentary The Night Fernando Pessoa Met Constantine Cavafy imagined Cavafy met with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa on a transatlantic ocean liner.

Spoljašnje veze

• Zvanična internet stranica arhive Kavafi (jezik: engleski)
• Muzej Konstantina Kavafija u Aleksandriji (jezik: engleski)
• "The official website of the Cavafy Archive" (in Greek)
• A comprehensive website, including a biography, a gallery, bibliography, news and extensive selections of poetry in English and Greek
• Cavafy in English and Greek, Select Online Resources
• Audio introduction to Cavafy's poems In English, with examination of ten of his finest poems
• Cavafy: surviving immortality
• "Artificial Flowers"—translations by Peter J. King & Andrea Christofidou
• Extensive collection of poems, in English & Greek & audio
• Ithaki.net Arhivirano na sajtu Wayback Machine (27. februar 2011) A search engine named in honor of the poem "Ithaki"
• 'As Good as Great Poetry Gets' Daniel Mendelsohn article on Cavafy from The New York Review of Books
• "Of the Jews (A.D. 50)" by C. P. Cavafy
• Audio: Cavafy's poem Ithaka read by Edmund Keeley
• "In the dull village", a painting by David Hockney inspired by Cavafy, now in the British Museum
• Babis Koulouras recites Cavafy's poems by heart. The orchestra of "K.P.Kavafis" team of Culture Club of Ano Syros plays Cavafy's songs (in Greek)
• Konstantin Kavafi na sajtu Internet Archive (jezik: engleski)
• Konstantin Kavafi na sajtu LibriVox (jezik: engleski)