Kourelis Cavafy Updated

Al of ithe HELLENIC BD 414. nr) C) lit .4% a semiannual scholarly review keyed to the Greek experience of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 2015

This article offers a critical discussion of photographic projects based on Cavafy's poetry. It begins with an overview of the theoretical implications of photographing poetry within the wider framework of photography and literature as fields interconnected in their narrative concerns. To establish the link between photographic and other visual adaptations, the article goes on to discuss Cavafy in painting; this dicussion proves that gay agendas that framed the project of such photographers as Duane Michals or Dimitris Yeros, had already appeared in the work of painters, notably David Hockney. In its second part, the article examines in detail the most important photographic adaptations of Cavafy's work from 1978 to the present day, placing them in two large categories: the 'gay' adaptations, which focus on issues of body, sexuality and LGB rights, and those (more recent ones) that identify Cavafy with modernity, aestheticism and memory. The proliferation of photographic projects based on Cavafy points to his transformation from literary figure to a creative field inviting artists to self-expression.

Journal of Greek Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (2015), pp. 227-252. Special issue, Pop Cavafy: Readings of C.P. Cavafy in Popular Culture, ed. Eleni Papargyriou and Demetris Papanikolaou

Two portraits commissioned by C. P. Cavafy a few years before his death have become the dominant images of the poet's posthumous legacy. An Asian tapestry framing the poet's head is critical in understanding Cavafy's self-representation and artistic sensibilities. The tapestry connects Cavafy with the British Aesthetic movement of the 1870s that he witnessed through the social circle of painter James McNeill Whistler and his Greek patrons. The article also argues that the erotic sensibilities of the tapestry were intentionally suppressed in the dissemination of the artist's image by Greek modernism of the 1930s. The photographic background affirms the complex associations between domestic space, photography and closeted iconographies in the life of a poet who did not leave behind a rich body of writing on the visual arts. Foregrounding this photographic background opens up a new dimension to the artistic universe of Cavafy and his impact in the visual history of portraiture.

Principia, 2008

This article explores the sexual aesthetics of Cavafy’s poetry from a literary perspective; it draws attention to two crucial but largely overlooked models which are instructive vis-à-vis Cavafy’s appreciation of the role of sex in literature beyond his personal sexual orientation. First, I argue that Cavafy reworks the motif of militant Eros, found amply in Straton’s anthology of epigrams known as the Musa paidike (which survives mainly in book 12 of the Greek Anthology), by glossing it with a distinctive Roman elegy twist. Cavafy interweaves the themes of militia and servitium amoris, so typical of Latin elegy and reinterprets servitium amoris as dutiful, determined service in the name of sensual pleasure rather than inevitable enslavement to the force of erotic passion which the poet cannot resist. Roman elegiac poets, especially Propertius, with whom Cavafy was thoroughly familiar, are typically understood to have employed the motif to convey the crushing weight of their amorous affliction and their inability to break free from their unworthy object of affection. This turn occurs characteristically in Cavafy’s prose poem The Regiment of Pleasure (or of the Senses, as often translated). The mature language of the poem has led Savidis to date it between 1894 and 1897; during this early period Cavafy embraced the model of the Parnassiens while also being influenced by the movement of symbolism. Savidis’ dating of the poem is also supported by the fact that Cavafy reworks numerous motifs introduced here in his later poems, dated from 1904 to 1917, as I will point out in my analysis of the Regiment. Second, I wish to explain the Regiment as Cavafy’s response to Baudelaire’s rejection of the avant garde in his Mon coeur mis à nu (My heart laid bare). Baudelaire composed the poem in Paris in the early 1860s, shortly before his death, and it was published posthumously in 1877. Although Cavafy’s appreciation and creative competition with Baudelaire has been thoroughly acknowledged in the bibliography, to my knowledge, this connection has not been identified to date. My reading of the Regiment and its models aims to review Cavafy’s sexual aesthetics which I perceive as homoerotic but not exclusively homosexual; thus, I ought to make a few methodological distinctions prior to my analysis of the poem.

Synthesis, 2013

C. P. Cavafy"s dramatic monologues "Going Back Home from Greece" and "Philhellene" are approached by way of their form: the genre of the dramatic monologue that the Greek poet adopted and adapted from Victorian sources, which delimits and historicises the poetic utterance by staging it in a dramatic frame. Drawing on a theory of Michel Foucault, the two texts" discursive context of Hellenism is construed as part of their speakers" binding situation, the social and historical environment (i.e. the literary representation of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods) that is shown to both condition and enable their respective utterances. Furthermore, it will be argued that the speakers" attempts to assert and/or construct their identities involves a complex, tense process of subjection and simultaneous resistance to restraining definitions inherent to the discourse of Hellenism that have persisted throughout the latter"s long history, such as its selfconstitutive, inexorable, division between Greek and barbarian. This essay exploits and explores the prevalent critical assumptions about how C. P. Cavafy, in his mature poetry, utilised and experimented with the Victorian legacy of the dramatic monologue, that is, poetic texts whose utterance is framed and contextualised by a dramatic situation (social and/or historical) and performed by a "speaker" who is other than the poet, "generally addressing an audience (though this itself may be an ambiguous entity), accompanying his or her speech with appropriate gestures, varying intonations, and a range of theatrical strategies" (Pearsall 19). Special critical attention has been given to Cavafy"s affinity with Robert Browning. 1 Indeed, the characteristic usage of syntax and punctuation that http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e

Modern Greek Studies, 2012

These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses. T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages Throughout his literary career Cavafy was concerned with the thematic classification and arrangement of his poems. The arrangement of the poems in the thematic collections which Cavafy himself distributed has already been examined in detail by one of the present authors (Hirst, 1995). The purpose of this article is to attempt, and to comment on, reconstructions of the unpublished thematic catalogues which are known to be in the Cavafy Archive. It is unfortunate that such an attempt is necessary and nothing would please us more than to see our reconstructions promptly rendered superfluous by the fun publication of the relevant material from the Archive. Until such time as this happens, we believe that our necessarily incomplete reconstructions will be of interest and use to readers and interpreters of Cavafy's poems. When Cavafy died in 1933 "his papers", in L'Ie words of George Savidis, "were found in perfect order" (MK~l : 423). Those papers became the property of his heir, Alekos Sengopoulos. In the early forties some were entrusted to Michalis Peridis, and later others to Giorgos Papoutsakis (MKa: 32-9, MK~: 395). The remaining papers, the greater part of the Archive, were entrusted to Savidis at the end of 1962 (MK~: 394), and in January 1963 Savidis took over from Sengopoulos the responsibility for the investigation and editing of the Archive (MKa: 38). For the time being the Archive remained in lSavidis' works on Cavafy, and the volumes of Cavafy's poems edited by Savidis are referred to by the Greek initials of their titles, in capitals. Lower case alpha and beta as suffixes indicate "vol. I" and "vol. 2" respectively. A full list will be found in the bibliography under the heading "Cavafy", where the publications are cited by abbreviation. Other works are cited by author and date. All Greek in the bibliography is monotonic. In the text we have used the poly tonic system for titles of, and quotations from, Cavafy's poems and other texts, but monotonic for all other Greek.

Studies in the Literary Imagination, 2015

Photography & Modern Architecture. Alexandra Trevisan, Maria Helena Maia and César Machado Moreira (ed.). Porto: CEAA, pp. 126-142, 2015

This text was co-funded with FEDER funds by the Operational Competitiveness Programme – COMPETE and national funds by FCT – Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the project Photography, Modern Architecture and the “School of Oporto”: Interpretations Around Teofilo Rego Archive (PTDC/ ATP-AQI/4805/2012 - FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028054) ABSTRACT: During his studies at the Technical University of Munich, Aris Konstantinidis (Άρης Κωνσταντινίδης; Athens, 1913-1993) came into contact with the conceptions of Modernism. His early works reflected this affiliation, but he soon built a type of architecture that does neither renounce to the modern condition, nor to establish a close relationship with both the tradition and the genius loci of his country. Together with his work as an architect, he started to practise photography, using this resource to document and promote his architecture. But he did not stop there, since he was able to fully exploit the possibilities that photography offers. During his life, he used photography as a tool to research and to get to know his surroundings, as well as a composition created through the lens of the camera, that is to say, as art created by looking. This paper studies the features of Konstantinidis' pictures of Greek landscapes and vernacular architecture on his books Elements for Self-Knowledge. Towards a True Architecture (Στοιχεία αυτογνωσίας. Για μιαν αληθινή αρχιτεκτονική, 1975) and God-Built (Θεόκτιστα, 1992), together with their final design and layout. RESUMEN: Durante sus estudios de arquitectura en la Universidad Técnica de Munich, Aris Konstantinidis (Άρης Κωνσταντινίδης; Atenas, 1913-1993) entra en contacto con las concepciones del Movimiento Moderno. Sus primeras obras reflejan esta afiliación, pero pronto construye una arquitectura que no renuncia a la condición moderna, ni tampoco renuncia a establecer una estrecha relación con la tradición y el genius loci de su país. Junto con la práctica de la arquitectura, desarrolla una actividad fotográfica, utilizando la fotografía como documentación y promoción de su obra arquitectónica. Pero no se queda sólo ahí, utiliza la fotografía en todas sus posibilidades. A lo largo de su vida la va a utilizar como un instrumento de investigación y conocimiento de su entorno y como construcción de la cámara, es decir, como arte de la mirada. Esta ponencia estudia las características de las imágenes de Konstantinidis sobre el paisaje griego y la arquitectura vernácula en sus dos libros titulados Elementos de auto-conocimiento. Hacia una verdadera arquitectura (Στοιχεία αυτογνωσίας. Για μιαν αληθινή αρχιτεκτονική, 1975) y Construido por Dios (Θεόκτιστα, 1992), así como su presentación final en el diseño de los libros.