Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and dead in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882, became one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century American literature. He was at once a poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, religious dissenter, and public moralist, though no single title entirely contains him. His greatest influence lay in his ability to make philosophical inquiry sound urgen…
“For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace
Constantine Peter Cavafy, universally known as C. P. Cavafy, was born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria, Egypt, on 29 April 1863, and died there on 29 April 1933, his seventieth birthday. The coincidence has naturally encouraged a Cavafian reading of his life: a date returning with a measured inevitability, an ending that seems to complete a private design. Yet Cavafy’s achievement was anything but neat or pr…
“The poet must be above all things a man of the world.”
Neighbourhood:
Greek Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing