#constantine p. cavafy

[mournfulroses]

Constantine P. Cavafy, from The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy; "A Love,"

[daweyt]

Constantine P. Cavafy, from “Modern Greek Poetry; ‘The Bandaged Shoulder’”, tr. Kimon Friar.

[eucanthos]

Alexandria, 4 Kavafi street (once poet's residence), Egypt

Constantine P. Cavafy (Alexandria, April 29, 1863 - 1933, Alexandria)

Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης

Ἡ Πόλις

Καινούριους τόπους δεν θα βρεις, δεν θάβρεις άλλες θάλασσες. Η πόλις θα σε ακολουθεί. Στους δρόμους θα γυρνάς τους ίδιους. Και στες γειτονιές τες ίδιες θα γερνάς, και μες στα ίδια σπίτια αυτά θ’ασπρίζεις. Πάντα στην πόλι αυτή θα φθάνεις.

The City is a well known Greek philosophical poem by Constantine Cavafy. Written August 1894, originally entitled “Once More in the Same City,” it was published April 1910.

In this poem, Alexandria is the symbol of the past that follows the protagonist everywhere. It is presented as the sign of failures, troubles and mistakes that people experience in their lives, brought upon themselves or not.

https://www.lifo.gr/tropos-zois/travel/i-alexandreia-toy-mythoy-kai-pera-apo-ayton

[artisthomes]

Home of Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, also known as Constantine P. Cavafy, in Alexandria, Egypt

[trailofleaves]

Constantine P. Cavafy Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon — don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind — as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't 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'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

[nebylitsa]

constantine p. cavafy, trans. aliki barnstone

[thesherries]

"رجلٌ عجوز"

- Constantine P. Cavafy (Greek poet)

[stanestreet]

C. P. Cavafy, “The God Forsakes Antony” (trans. Rae Dalven)

[onenakedfarmer]

CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY “Morning Sea”

Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while. The morning sea and cloudless sky a brilliant blue, the yellow shore: all illuminated, beautiful and grand.

Here let me stop. Let me pretend that these are what I see (I really saw them for a moment when I first stopped) instead of seeing, even here, my fantasies, my recollections, the icons of pleasure.

Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

[myownprivate]

So Much I Gazed

So much I gazed on beauty, that my vision is replete with it.

Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs. Hair as if taken from greek statues; always beautiful, even when uncombed, and it falls, slightly, over white foreheads. Faces of love, as my poetry wanted them.... in the nights of my youth, in my nights, secretly, met....

Constantine P. Cavafy   C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation) by Constantine P. Cavafy

[oxydation]

I never found them again -- the things so quickly lost.... the poetic eyes, the pale face.... in the dusk of the street.... I never found them again -- the things acquired quite by chance, that I gave up so lightly; and that later in agony I wanted. The poetic eyes, the pale face, those lips, I never found again.

[mournfulroses]

Constantine P. Cavafy, from The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy; "A Love,"

[quotesengage]

As much as you can

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,

at least try as much as you can

not to degrade it

by too much contact with the world,

by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,

taking it around and exposing it so often

to the daily silliness

of social events and parties,

until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

C. P. Cavafy

[keplercryptids]

I WENT

I did not tether myself. I let go entirely and went, I went into the luminous night, to those pleasures that were half real, and half wheeling in my brain. And I drank of potent wines, as only the valiant of voluptousness drink.

Constantine P. Cavafy, from The Complete Poems of Cavafy

[trailofleaves]

An Old Man by Constantine P. Cavafy

At the back of the noisy café bent over a table sits an old man; a newspaper in front of him, without company.

And in the scorn of his miserable old age he ponders how little he enjoyed the years when he had strength, and the power of the word, and good looks.

He knows he has aged much; he feels it, he sees it. And yet the time he was young seems like yesterday. How short a time, how short a time.

And he ponders how Prudence deceived him; and how he always trusted her -- what a folly! -- that liar who said: "Tomorrow. There is ample time."

He remembers the impulses he curbed; and how much joy he sacrificed. Every lost chance now mocks his senseless wisdom.

...But from so much thinking and remembering the old man gets dizzy. And falls asleep bent over the café table.

[nebylitsa]

constantine p. cavafy, trans. aliki barnstone