Home

Kavvadias 1910 - 1975 (65)

Always the perfect, unworthy lover of the endless voyage and azure ocean


QUOTES

Kuro Siwo

That first trip - a southern freight, by chance - no sleep, malaria, difficult watches. Strangely deceptive, the lights of the Indies - they say you don't see them at a first glance.

Nikos Kavvadias (Greek: Νίκος Καββαδίας) (January 11, 1910 – February 10, 1975) was a Greek poet and writer. He was born in a small town in Manchuria by Greek parents from Cefallonia. When he was young, his family returned to Greece, first in Cefallonia, then in Pireus, (Athens' port, 1921). He wrote his first poems as a pupil at the elementary school; after finishing high school in 1929, he started working as a clerk in a shipping office.

Few months later he went on board a freighter as a sailor. Over the next few years he continued to travel as a sailor, until he decided to get a diploma as a wireless operator. 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. He embarked again in 1944 and spent all his life travelling all over the world until November 1974. Three months later, on February 10, 1975 he suffered a fatal stroke. During his lifetime wrote one novel Vardia, (first published in 1954, and 3 collection of poems Marabou (1933), Pousi (1947), and Traverso (1975) and alsoa book with short stories, "Li" (published 1987)

SONGS with lyrics by Nikos Kavvadias