SOURCE: “Constantine Cavafy: A European Poet,” in Nine Essays in Modern Literature, edited by Donald E. Stanford, Louisiana State University Press, 1965, pp. 36-62.

In the following essay, Ruehlen posits that Cavafy was a European poet because of his firm grounding in Western culture and his continued relevance to European readers.

On the twenty-ninth of April 1933, Constantine Cavafy died on his seventieth birthday. A few days before, he had jotted down for a friend to read—cancer of the throat had deprived the poet of the ability to speak—“And I had twenty-five more poems to write!”

In 1963 Greece, the world, celebrated the centennial of Cavafy's birth and the thirtieth anniversary of his death. A tasteful new edition of his poems, by G. P. Savidis, has marked the occasion.¹ This new edition follows (for the first time) the scheme set out by the poet himself for an arrangement of...