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"I'll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my hear… - Konstantinos P. Cavafy
"I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.
English
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About Konstantinos P. Cavafy
Constantine P. Cavafy, also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes (Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης) (29 April 1863 – 29 April 1933) was a Greek poet who is often ranked among most important literary figures of the 20th century.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης
Alternative Names:
Constantine kavafy
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C. P. Cavafis
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Constantin Cavafy
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K. P. Kavaphēs
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K. P. Kavafis
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C. P. Cavafy
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Konstantine Kavafy
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Constantinos Cavafis
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Konstantino Kavafis
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Constantino Kavafis
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Konstantin Kavafis
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Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis
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Kōnstantinos Petrou Kavaphēs
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Kavafis
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Kōnstantinos Petrou Kabaphēs
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Kawafis
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Konstandinos Kavafis
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Konstantinas Kavafis
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C.P. Cavafy
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Constantine Peter Cavafy
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Kōnstantinos P. Kavafīs
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Additional quotes by Konstantinos P. Cavafy
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and 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 and 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 the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen 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 gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not 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 will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?<p>Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come. And some of our men who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.<p>Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you’ve been,
remember how much your imagination created for you.
This first, and then the rest — the lesser loves — that you experienced and enjoyed
in your life: the more real and tangible.
Of loves like these you were not deprived — C.P. Cavafy, “Hearing of Love,” Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. (Princeton University Press 1992)
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