Nikos Kavvadias: "The poet of the seas and unfulfilled love". 1910 -1975

Nikos Kavvadias was born in 1910 in a small town in Manchuria near Harbin, by Greek parents from Cefallonia. When he was very young, his family returned to Greece.

They lived in Cefallonia for a few years and later from 1921 to 1932 in Pireas, where Nikos Kavvadias finished elementary school and then the Gymnasium. He wrote his first poems as a pupil at the elementary school. In 1929, he started working as a clerk in a shipping office and a few months later he went on board a freighter as a sailor. Over the next few years he continued to travel on the freighters, returning home wretched and penniless, only to take off again shortly after. This went on until he decided to get a diploma as a wireless operator.

At first he wanted to become a captain, but he had already lost too many years wandering around and the wireless operator's diploma was the quicket way out. He got it in 1939 -- but World War II started, he became a soldier and fought in Albania, and, throughout the German Occupation he lived in Athens, landed.

He embarked again in 1944 and travelled continuously, as a wireless operator, all over the world, until November 1974 -- three months before the fatal stroke he suffered on February 10, 1975.

Vardia, his only novel, was published for the first time in 1954. His collection of poems Marabou was published in 1933, Pousi in 1947, and Traverso in 1975. His short stories Li and Of the War/On my Horse were published in 1987. "Li" was produced as a film in 1995 with the title "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea".

 In the history of Greek literature, Kavvadias is the poet of the seas and unfulfilled love. But he is also the poet of the morals deriving from the relationships between the seamen and the harbor women, between people of different cultural backgrounds. 

A contemporary Odysseus, with the difference that Kavvadias never dreamed of returning back to land. He never looked for his Ithaca. On the contrary, the poet wanted to be buried one day in "some deep sea of the distant Indies", but this did not happen as he died on dry land in 1975. He traveled continuously as a wireless operator on cargo-boats all over the world always in love with the sea. Kavvadias also loved harbors and harbor women. The friend and brother of sailors did not praise Greece, nor the landscapes, the history and the people of his country. The poet does not describe what was going on in his country during the period 1930-1970. We only find references in 2 or 3 poems, which are not part of his poetic collections. 

He won't be found either in the Aegean Sea or in a Greek island. Kavvadias was always on the move. He traveled from Peru to the Far East, from Africa to Western Europe. The poet faced the people of the world, the dreams of the people whose homeland was the ship, living between the sea and the sky. 

His writing, a poetic material based on personal experience, is influenced by many different cultures. It has an international and cosmopolitan character. In Kavvadias' lines we find references to the oil paintings by Goya, the figures of Modigliani and the paintings of Giorgione. Moreover, we can find poems devoted to Lorca and Che Guevara. 

Mal du Depart-Nikos Kavvadias

(translated by: Simon Darragh)

Always the perfect, unworthy lover
of the endless voyage and azure ocean,
I shall die one evening, like any other,
without having crossed the dim horizon.

For Madras, Singapore, Algeria, Sfax,
the proud ships will still be setting sail,
but I shall bend over a chart-covered desk
and look in the ledger, and make out a bill.

I'll give up talking about long journeys,
My friends will think I've forgotten at last;
my mother will be delighted: she'll say
"A young man's fancy, but now it's passed."

But one night my soul will rise up before me,
and ask, like some grim executioner, "Why?"
This unworthy trembling hand will take arms
and fearlessly strike where the blame must lie.

And I, who longed to be buried one day
in some deep sea of the distant Indies
shall come to a dull and common death;
shall go to a grave like the graves of so many.