# poetry achilles patroklos baroque egypt alexandria elegant alex اسكندرية الإسكندرية Αλεξανδρεία worldpoetryday

"As you set out for Ithaka
Hope your road is a long one"
- Constantine P. Cavafy

In my opinion, it's the best opening line in poetry, playing on expectations built of Homeric epic and then reversing them into completely opposite meaning. Only journey matters, only moment shines.

1 8
2023-03-27

J.M. Whistler: “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” (1864), modelled by Christina Spartali, part of the Cavafy family circle in London, and a painting Cavafy was likely to have known. Cavafy was to be photographed in front of an oriental screen at home in Alexandria 1929.

11 31
2022-09-21

Two postcards to Cavafy depicting works by the artist Theodore Ralli (“Aphrodite”, “Les dernières lueurs”) from the 1904 Salon, one of which bears a handwritten note of thanks by the artist to Cavafy. Cavafy Archive.

9 36
2022-09-13

“At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone.”

– Andreas Georgiadis (b.1972), “Portrait of Cavafy at an Advanced Age”.

29 96
2022-06-17

"Mrs. Zambaco" (1870)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

C.P. Cavafy’s cousin Maria Zambaco (1843–1914), born Marie Terpsithea Cassavetti, artist and model.

18 59
2022-01-21

"I think of five grey-suited gentlemen: Constantin Cavafy, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Luis Borges. They are the ones who have renewed the language and shown us the way forward."
- Gabriel Josipovici
T. S. Eliot by Edward Sorel

1 6
2021-09-27

“Mohammed Aly Square is my aunt. Rue Cherif Pacha is my first cousin and the Rue de Ramleh my second. How can I leave them?”

– C.P. Cavafy, when asked late in his life if he was willing to leave Alexandria.

35 114
2020-06-15

Automedon with the Horses of Achilles - Henri Regnault - 1868

C. P. shed new light on the angst that drives the horses of to tears upon the epic death of in the Trojan War


4 13
2020-05-22

I remember saying only that I was haunted by his face — the horrifyingly sad gentle face of the last photograph.

— Lawrence Durrell, on the Old Poet of the City,

28 90
2019-09-02

Happy - my favourite poetry adaptation is ITHAKA by C.P. Cavafy https://t.co/kFbeA6ilmH

11 23
2017-03-22