By Athanasios Dimakis
LUNA PARK HOTEL TELEPHONE NO. 15-92 MEDINA
KAMEL STREET TELEGRAMS: “LUNA HOTEL”
OPPOSITE COOK’S OFFICES
CAIRO, EGYPT Cairo, 14-9-1929
My dear Cavafy,
All goes well, and if it continues to go so, please expect me on your
door step Tuesday at 9.0. I got your letter at Mombasa. Thank you so
much for it.
Yours ever
E. M. Forster.
qtd. in The Forster-Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle (ed. Peter Jeffreys, 99).
On September 14, 1929 E. M. Forster writes the above letter to C. P. Cavafy from the hospitable Luna Park Hotel in Cairo notifying the Greek poet of his fast-approaching visit to Cavafy’s “notorious” Alexandrian residence. In spite of its taciturn nature, the letter seems to constitute an extension of Forster’s “more general exploratory and heuristic relationship with Alexandria itself” (Jeffreys Forster-Cavafy Letters; 4). Through Cavafy, Forster gains access to the cultural capital of Egypt and subsequently historicizes the decadent hedonism of Alexandria and its abundant historical lore in Pharos and Pharillon. His decade-old penfriend, the Alexandrian poet himself, is indispensable to this historicizing project as the chapter “The Poetry of C. P. Cavafy” clearly suggests (91-97).
Works Cited:
Forster, Edward Morgan. (1908) Alexandria: A History and Guide, London and New
York: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. 2014.
—. (1923) Pharos and Pharillon: A Book of Essays on Alexandria, Ancient and Modern.
Richmond, Surrey: The Hogarth Press. 1923.
Jeffreys, Peter (ed.,) E. M. Forster – Κ. Π. ΚΑΒΑΦΗΣ: Φίλοι σε ελαφρήν απόκλιση.
Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Ίκαρος. 2013.
—. The Forster-Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle. Cairo and New York: The
American University in Cairo Press. 2009.
The Cavafy Archive, Onassis Foundation. © 2016-2018,
https://cavafy.onassis.org/object/forster-42/. Accessed 1 Aug. 2020.
Handwritten letter (and envelope) by E. M. Forster to Cavafy on a letterheaded paper of the Luna Park hotel, Cairo. The letter concerns their impending meeting in Alexandria.
Ref: GR-OF CA CA-SF02-S01-SS01-F18-SF001-0026 (359)
Cavafy Archive, Onassis Foundation, https://cavafy.onassis.org/object/forster-42/
Handwritten letter (and envelope) by E. M. Forster to Cavafy on a letterheaded paper of the Luna Park hotel, Cairo. The letter concerns their impending meeting in Alexandria.
Ref: GR-OF CA CA-SF02-S01-SS01-F18-SF001-0026 (359)
Cavafy Archive, Onassis Foundation, https://cavafy.onassis.org/object/forster-42/
Luna Park Hotel, Cairo by English School
Undated lithograph, Picture ID: 641037, Private Collection / bridgemanimages.com
(c) 2020 MeisterDrucke, meisterdrucke.uk.
