Friday 30th October 2026, 5.00 p.m, Main Hall, Taylor Institution, St Giles, Oxford.
The ‘Egyptian Eyes’ in question are those of Ibrahim El Kayiar, the clerk who worked with Cavafy and gave a gossipy interview about him 30 years after the poet’s death, and the artist Mounir Ekdawi, who painted many of the landmark buildings (including Greek cafés and Cavafy’s house) in Alexandria as they still were in the 1940s, about a decade after Cavafy died and before President Nasser expelled foreigners during the 1956 Suez Crisis.
It will be argued that not only Alexandrian scenes but also Egyptian political events had an impact on Cavafy. The 1922 Egyptian Declaration of Independence, for example, had more immediate consequences for Cavafy than the Asia Minor Disaster of the same year.
