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Greek Pianist Plays Cavafy Poems as Part of the 2017 Cavafia in Egypt

October 20, 2017
Photo Credit: Stefanos Korkolis Official Website

Greek music composer and pianist Stefanos Korkolis concluded the events of the 14th International Literature Symposium, Cavafia 2017, in Alexandria, Egypt on October 13 until October 15. In celebration of the poetry of the renowned Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, Korkolis performed pieces of Cavafy’s famous poems such as Desires, Faraway, An old man and the Land of Ionia. Cafavy (1863-1933) was born to Greek parents in Alexandria and would become one of the most important figures in the revival of the Greek poetic canon. However, to Alexandria, he, together with British writers Laurence Durrell and E.M. Forster, came to play a more important role in the creation and maintenance of the image of the city as a cosmopolitan melting-pot of different languages and cultures. These three European writers became the foremost literary representatives of the so-called cosmopolitan Alexandria. Critics highlight their elitist perspective on the city, particularly, how their writings first and foremost focus on the city’s European inhabitants while excluding the indigenous Egyptians. Some, such as Alexandrian literature professor Hala Halim, even go so far as to call their literary productions “a quasi-colonial historiographical narrative of Alexandria’s cosmopolitanism” – a fantasy that merely helps reproduce the illusion of a supposed…


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