We are thrilled to announce that the Onassis Foundation (Íδρυμα Ωνάση) has become a Content Provider for Archives Portal Europe with the Cavafy Archive, the Singopoulo archive, and other fonds.
This is a description of the archives by Marianna Christofi, Onassis Archives Manager
The Cavafy archive – including the correlated Singopoulo archive – consists of more than 2,000 archival items that include manuscripts, photographs and personal effects of the celebrated poet Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (or C.P. Kavafy in English), the most important Greek poet of the 20th Century. Amongst the archival items are manuscripts of Cavafy’s poems, hand-compiled printed editions, prose literary works, articles, and notes by the poet. There are also translations of poems and notes of both a literary and a personal nature, not least the poet’s personal archive, rich in correspondence, texts that read like diary entries, photographs, and more.
The Cavafy archive was acquired by the Onassis Foundation in 2012. The subsequent additions of relevant archival material were successively made by the Foundation between 2013 to 2022. It is a fairly complete archive, free from physical decay and inconsistencies – these are traits ensuring the chronological continuity of the items contained therein, in terms of both order and frequency of appearance. These traits make the Cavafy fonds a unique literary archive.
Besides, the poet himself collected and archived his work on a systematic basis. His poems, both manuscripts and in print, in the form of homemade books or printer’s copies, the distribution lists of volumes and collections, the prose texts and the poet’s personal and literary notes, together with translations, texts and studies of the poet’s work by others, make up the section of the fonds that relates to Cavafy’s intellectual activity.
The poet’s private life is outlined in the rich collection of his personal and family letters, of diary-type texts, of the various family items and, finally, in the important collection of personal and family photographs.
In his personal notes Cavafy records his thoughts about his work, poetry and art in general, as well as his everyday life, as for example his activities in gambling or his personal and love life. During the last years of his life, when he could no longer speak as a result of his illness, such notes were the poet’s only means of communication.
Personal relations and journeys, contacts with prominent figures and intellectuals are all included in the items of the fonds and complement Cavafy’s physiognomy by integrating it in the context of the poet’s era.
Alekos Singopoulo and his wife Rica were close friends and literary heirs of Cavafis, as well as first curators of his archive (from 1926 to 1939). Their fonds, composed of materials relating to the poet collected by Alekos and Rica Singopoulo, forms a distinct archival unit containing materials regarding the literary and art journal "Alexandrini Techni", edited by A.G. Symeonidis and Rica Singopoulo under the frequent guidance of C. P. Cavafy. More specifically, the files of the fonds include texts by Alekos and Rica Singopoulo that shed light on Cavafy’s personality and poetic work, the correspondence between the Singopoulos and the poet as well as with others, and Singopoulo’s correspondence with a British publisher (The Hogarth Press) relating to the first collective publication of Cavafy’s work in English. It also includes items related to other activities of the Singopoulos as well as personal documents. The fonds is complemented by a collection of photographs in the possession of Alekos and Rica Singopoulo as well as by a file of sketches (or reproductions of sketches) depicting Cavafy, originally in the possession of Alekos Singopoulo.
Lastly, the Alexandrini Techni archive consists almost exclusively of manuscripts (prose works and poems) that had been sent to the journal for publication, of letters of authors and scholars addressed to the editors of the journal and of handwritten lists with the names of authors and publishers in Athens.
The Alekos and Rica Singopoulo fonds, as well as the Alexandrini Techni archive, were acquired as a single entity by the Onassis Foundation in 2012, along with the C. P. Cavafy fonds. This acquisition safeguarded the archive’s continued presence in Greece and prevented a potential fragmentation. The Onassis Foundation’s mission is to provide free and open access to researchers as well as the wider public, and to promote Cavafy’s work and the international character of his poetry.
