Tuesday 25 February 2014

Nikos Kavvadias at work

Looking back over readership for the past two weeks or so, and assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that people look at the blog again when something they liked was on it during the previous couple of days, it seems to me you people out there rather like Nikos Kavvadias. So here today is the cover of my translation of his autobiographical novel Βάρδια. The photograph shows him doing what it would be incorrect to call his 'Day Job' of  ship's wireless operator. For one thing, short wave radio works better at night, and for another he made no separation between his two vocations of poet and sailor. The picture was given to me by Kavvadias's niece.

 
Looking at the picture again, I can see that it was fairly obviously posed, and Nikos is doing what the photographer, who evidently knew little about wireless operation, told him to do. Nikos's left hand is on a control - probably fine tuning or RF gain - of a powerful receiver. His right hand is on a Morse key, presumably connected to the transmitter one can see behind his head. A wireless operator, even or especially an experienced one like Kavvadias, would not try to send and receive at the same time.

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