Ithaca (poem)

Based on the homeward journey of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, the poem is titled after its namesake island of Ithaca.

Ithaca gained a global audience upon its 1994 reading at the funeral of former first lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

[3] Cavafy had written a number of poems inspired by traditional works of ancient Greek literature in his early years as a poet, but by 1903 had largely shifted his focus to more obscure elements of Ancient Greek history, including far-flung outposts such as in Persia.

Cavafy describes Odysseus seeing amazing things, without clearly caring for the destination, as he is advised: "don't hurry your trip in any way".

Τοὺς Λαιστρυγόνας καὶ τοὺς Κύκλωπας, τὸν θυμωμένο Ποσειδῶνα μὴ φοβᾶσαι Sa vgeis ston pigaimó gia tin Itháki, na éfchesai nánai makrýs o drómos, gemátos peripéteies, gemátos gnóseis.

He writes that the destination described in "Ithaca" is death, and emphasizing the activity of life without considering the end resonated in American popular culture.

Mendelsohn analyzes the placement of the poem in that collection as signaling a shift in its mood from "pessimism to optimism, from death to life".

Scholar Peter Jeffreys describes this widely watched moment as presenting Cavafy's work to "a global audience that he could never have imagined".