A Greek poet, published only about 200 privately printed poems. Cavafy has come in recent years to be regarded as a the greatest Mediterranean poet of modern times.Constantine P. Cavafy was born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (or Kabaphs) in Alexandria, Egypt, into a wealthy merchant family. Originally the family came from Constantinople, Turkey, where Cavafy lived from 1880 to 1885. After his father's death in 1872 he was taken to Liverpool, England, for five years. Apart from the years in Istanbul (1882-85), he spent the rest of his life in Alexandria. "Whatever war-damage it's suffered, however much smaller it's become, it's still a wonderful city," Cavafy once wrote of his cosmopolitan home town - perhaps not without ironic attitude. When the family's prosperity declined, Cavafy worked 34 years intermittently as journalist, broker and in the Irrigation Service, from which he retired in 1922.Cavafy's poems have been translated into English, French, Italian, German and several other languages. The 1963 Nobel laureate George Seferis was his ardent admirer, E.M. Forster persuaded T.S. Eliot to publish several Cavafy's lyrics in The Criterion in 1924. The English novelist John Fowles has remarked that Cavafy is for him the great poet of the Levant.
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