Kavafis. introduction to three epistolaries. the lost epistolaries

Abstract

This article is an introduction to an ongoing research on three corpora of letters sent by John Kavafis, Mikes Ralis and Stephanos Skilitzis sent mainly between 1882 and 1885. Unfortunately no letters sent by the poet at that time of his youth have been preserved. His answers to the 154 letters here analyzed have been lost. This article contains references to the fragments published by M. Peridis and St. Tsirkas on the fifties and sixties. Then a profile of the three correspondents and a description of each corpus is provided. Finally, the issues most relevant to the study of these three epistolaries are sketched.