It is this quality that links his verse not so much to the sophisticated, cosmopolitan poets of his day, but to the versifiers of the rebetika songs». He realized that his life made him an outsider in the literary world, but he shared with many outcasts and misfits a certain pride in his difference combined with a confused nostalgia for the joys and comforts of the ordinary world of the landlubber. To use Holst-Warhaft words in the introduction of the book: « Kavadias accepted the sea as a vocation demanding his complete loyalty. Kavadias’ poems are widely regarded as belonging to symbolism, and he has been characterized by some as a poète maudit. Scrupulously translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft, The collected poems of Nikos Kavadias offers insight on how the poet used his travels around the world as a sailor, and life at sea and its adventures as powerful metaphors for the escape of ordinary people outside the boundaries of reality. Reading Nikos Kavadias fills this emptiness. But what do we know about shipboard life? Not much. Modern Greeks dominate the world's merchant marine ancient Greeks like Homer's Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean and beyond.
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