“Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863, and died in the same city on 29 April 1933. His most important poetry was written after his 40th birthday. He published 154 poems, but dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form.
His family was a wealthy merchant family from Constantinople. After the early death of his father, Peter John Cavafy, in 1872, Cavafy was brought to England and lived in Liverpool for five years. But, apart from three years in Constantinople, from 1882 to 1885, he spent the rest of his life in Alexandria.
When his family’s prosperity declined, Cavafy worked for 34 years, on-and-off, as a journalist, broker, and in the Irrigation Service, interspersed with short trips to Athens, France, England and Italy, until he retired in 1922. He died in Alexandria on his 70th birthday, 29 April 1933.
The Alexandria Cavafy writes about has now mostly vanished, and there are few Greeks left in the city, where his apartment is maintained as a museum and library by the Greek government.
As I visited his former apartment, I was told again how, in his dying days, Cavafy had asked: “Where could I live better? Under me is a house of ill repute, which caters to the needs of the flesh. Over there is the church, where sins are forgiven. And beyond is the hospital, where we die.””
