NICOS CAVADÍAS, THE GREEK POET OF THE DISTANT SEAS

Several editions in Spanish and Catalan rescue the author's verses, an 'Ulysses' in reverse due to his longing for the perpetual journey

Greek poet Nicos Cavadías.editorial tightrope walker

“I will always be an unworthy and ideal lover / of distant voyages and blue seas / and I will die one afternoon like every afternoon / without crossing the cloudy line of the horizon”.

With these verses by Nicos Cavadías, the poet of the distant seas, it would be possible to introduce his figure as a wandering writer, unique and unclassifiable, one of the greatest Greek poets of the 20th century.

Cavadías was a figure against the tide, almost a character in a Conrad novel.

Born in Manchuria in 1910, his family came from the Greek island of Cephalonia, in the Ionian Heptanese, and had moved there following the business of his father, a merchant in the confines of the Russian empire.

Cavadías's life was like that of an Ulysses in reverse, which, instead of nostalgia for returning home, always represented the yearning for the perpetual journey.

His character was marked from very early on by the mythification of the great journeys.

When his family returned to Greece, he went on to live, since the death of his father, in the megalopolis of Attica.

There he was educated, befriended young poets and artists, and published his first loose poems under a pseudonym.

But his real life begins when, just after high school, he immediately wanted to embark on a merchant ship: he wanted to avoid, without a doubt, the nostalgia for the sea, the "sickness on dry land" that he evokes in his work, and he left Piraeus with a radio operator's post to cross the oceans.

And, like the characters in his verses, he already spent relatively little time on land for the rest of his life.

since the death of his father, in the megalopolis of Attica.

There he was educated, befriended young poets and artists, and published his first loose poems under a pseudonym.

But his real life begins when, just after high school, he immediately wanted to embark on a merchant ship: he wanted to avoid, without a doubt, the nostalgia for the sea, the "sickness on dry land" that he evokes in his work, and he left Piraeus with a radio operator's post to cross the oceans.

And, like the characters in his verses, he already spent relatively little time on land for the rest of his life.

since the death of his father, in the megalopolis of Attica.

There he was educated, befriended young poets and artists, and published his first loose poems under a pseudonym.

But his real life begins when, just after high school, he immediately wanted to embark on a merchant ship: he wanted to avoid, without a doubt, the nostalgia for the sea, the "sickness on dry land" that he evokes in his work, and he left Piraeus with a radio operator's post to cross the oceans.

And, like the characters in his verses, he already spent relatively little time on land for the rest of his life.

He wanted to embark immediately on a merchant ship: he wanted to avoid, without a doubt, the nostalgia for the sea, the "seasickness on dry land" that he evokes in his work, and he left Piraeus with a job as a radio operator to cross the oceans.

And, like the characters in his verses, he already spent relatively little time on land for the rest of his life.

He wanted to embark immediately on a merchant ship: he wanted to avoid, without a doubt, the nostalgia for the sea, the "seasickness on dry land" that he evokes in his work, and he left Piraeus with a job as a radio operator to cross the oceans.

And, like the characters in his verses, he already spent relatively little time on land for the rest of his life.

In his poetry he evokes the rapid incursions into ports, the bad taverns and brothels, fleeting loves of both sexes, venereal diseases and varied drugs.

He was fascinated by the East, South America, Australia and Africa, always seen from a sordid cabin: in his poetry he evokes rapid incursions into ports, bad taverns and brothels, fleeting loves of both sexes, venereal diseases and various drugs.

Through his verses parades a gallery of misfits of various nationalities that form his crews, who, after praying chanting in foreign languages, only speak the common language of disappointment.

His figure of a sailor poet, almost a

flâneur

Baudelairean through exotic ports, is associated with the marabou, a bird of ill omen that gives its name to his first collection of poems (1933) and which, moreover, became his nickname.

This unique book opens the way to her unmistakable poetics: the mythical universe of the merchants, evoked in traditional rhyming verse, the rhythmic ten-syllable, typical of Greek since the medieval romances.

When avant-garde movements were in fashion in Greece, Cavadías remained on the fringes of literary currents, but he enjoyed the fervor of the public from that collection of poems and the two following ones,

Calima

and

De through,

which do not add up to a hundred pages……………..

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