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Nikos Kavvadias (; ; 11 January 1910 – 10 February 1975) was a Greek poet, writer and a sailor by profession. He used his travels around the world, the life at sea and its adventures, as powerful for the escape of ordinary people, outside the boundaries of reality. His poems are widely regarded as belonging to symbolism, and he has been characterized by some as a poète maudit.
In 1928, after having graduated from high school he sat an entrance exam for medical school but as his father fell sick the same year, young Kavvadias was forced to get a job as an office clerk in a shipping company to help his family. He lasted only a few months and after his father's death, he went on board the Cargo ship Agios Nikolaos (Saint Nicholas) as a sailor. For the following years he worked on freighter boats, returning home wretched and penniless. At that point he aspired to train as a captain but settled for a diploma as a radio officer instead, which he got in 1939. By that time however, World War II had started and he was sent to fight in Albania.
During the German occupation of Greece, he joined the National Liberation Front (EAM) and became a member of the Communist Party. When the war ended in 1944, he embarked again and traveled continuously, this time as a radio officer, until November 1974. These experiences at sea and the exotic ports he visited became the material for his poetry. Returning from his last trip and as he was preparing the publication of his third collection of poems, he died suddenly from a stroke on 10 February 1975 after only three months off sea. BooksInfo Website on Nikos Kavadias. Retrieved 14 December 2009
Since his death, his poetry has been popularized in Greece, partly because of Thanos Mikroutsikos who released an album with Kavvadias's poetry set to his music in his very popular albums Σταυρός του Νότου (Southern Cross) 1979 and Γραμμές των Οριζόντων (Horizons' Lines) 1991.
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| Kuroshio Current (1947) Kavvadias poems |
His other collections are titled Fog, published in 1947 and Traverso published after his death in 1975. His second short story titled "Of War", which was to be his last and was also published after his death in 1987, recounts the story of his rescue by a local during a storm. His experiences during World War II affected him profoundly and as a result, his later works became increasingly political and in support of both the communists in Greece and the general leftist movements throughout the world. One of these poems is about the death of Argentina revolutionary Che Guevara, written as an answer to the criticisms received by some of his more polemic comrades who thought that his poems over-romanticized the harsh and dangerous life of sailors who were potential symbols of class struggle.
Another is about the execution of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca by the Francoist Spain which, in the poem, is compared with the destruction of the Greek village of Distomo and the executions at Kaisariani which were carried out by the Nazi Germany that occupied Greece.
His only novel The Shift was published in 1954 and recounts the stories told by the sailors on their night shift at the ship's bridge. Images from exotic places, prostitutes, captains gone mad and memories of the war blend together, to form a dreamy world of lucid forms, part fictional, part true. He is popular among Greeks and his best poems are taught at schools. He is considered by many to embody much of the "Greek soul" because of his romantic affiliation with the sea and its journeys and for his genuinely humane outlook.
A selection of his poetry, with some of his shorter prose, translated into English by Simon Darragh, is available under the title Wireless Operator from the London Publisher Enitharmon Press.
Some of the poems that have been set to music since 1967 are:
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