“Authors, Books, Ideas
A collaboration between the Hellenic Foundation for Book and Culture and the Athens Concert Hall, within the Megaron Plus programme”
Biographing C.P. Cavafy
The Greek-American professor Gregory Jusdanis co-authors, together with Peter Jeffreys, the new biography of C.P. Cavafy, published in Greek under the title “Konstantinos Cavafy: The Man and the Poet” (Metaichmio Publications, translation by Michalis Makropoulos). Who was the poet? What was his daily life like? Who was the public and who the private Cavafy? How did his life intertwine with his art? What were his literary and reading influences? And above all: how does one write the biography of a legendary poet today? What new insights has archival research revealed?
Gregory Jusdanis will be in conversation with author and journalist Ilias Maglinis.
Gregory Jusdanis, Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor at Ohio State, teaches Comparative Literature and Modern Greek. The author of six books — The Poetics of Cavafy, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture, The Necessary Nation, Fiction Agonistes: A Defense of Literature, A Tremendous Thing. Friendship from the Iliad to the Internet, and Constantine Cavafy. A New Biography — he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
He has served as visiting professor at Kwara State University in Nigeria, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Cartagena, and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. He has also been invited to lecture throughout the United States and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East.
The discussion will be conducted in Greek.
Following the event, the author will be signing copies of his book at the M Shop.
In collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Book and Culture (HFBC)
The lecture series is supported by Bodossaki Lectures on Demand (BLOD), the Bodossaki Foundation’s online lecture library (www.blod.gr).
