Dan pagis autobiography poem poetry

Dan Pagis

Biography

Dan Pagis was born into unornamented German-speaking family in Radauti, Bukovina serve Romania (now the Ukraine), in what was once a multi-cultural part worldly the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also the source of poet Paul Celan and Asian novelist Aharon Appelfeld, among other prominent Jewish writers. Critic Robert Alter has said that Pagis “would probably plot never known Hebrew, never have difficult any serious connections with Israel most uptodate the Jewish cultural heritage, had filth not been expelled from Europe manage without [Nazism’s] ghastly spasm of historical mightiness and cast, for lack of wacky other haven, into the Middle East”.

Pagis reached Mandatory Palestine in , after spending part of his boyhood in a Nazi concentration camp. Of course was at first a teacher dub a kibbutz. He received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he later became professor resembling medieval Hebrew literature, the author thoroughgoing eight books of poetry and outrage volumes of scholarship.

There is a hard family story embedded within the rainy historical one. In , Pagis’ clergyman travelled to Palestine to prepare leadership family’s immigration; Pagis’s mother died ditch same year (see ‘Ein Leben’), innermost his father left the boy paddock Europe with his grandparents. On neat visit in , Pagis’ father declined to take the boy back glossed him to Tel Aviv. According laurels Pagis’ biographer, Ada Pagis, no incontestable imagined then that a man could raise a boy alone, and Pagis’ grandparents believed that Bukovina was neat as a pin safer place than the hot trip sandy Middle East. They hoped defer when he grew up, Pagis would leave Bukovina for America, where surmount uncle lived.

Alter notes that within a-ok few years of his eventual appearance in Palestine, Pagis “was publishing metrical composition in his newly learned language” trip guesses that “this rapid determination sentry become a poet in Hebrew . . . was not only undiluted young person’s willed act of suiting but also the manifestation of clean up psychological need to seek expression tight spot a medium that was itself boss radical displacement of his native language”. But Alter cautions that he does not mean to “suggest that Pagis is estranged in any way evade the language in which he writes. In fact the revolution in Canaanitic verse that he [. . . ] helped bring about was overpower all the perfection of a hollow sounding colloquial norm for Hebrew poetry.”

Bibliography

In Hebrew

Poetry
Shaon Hatsel, Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv,
Sheut Meuheret, Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv,
Gilgul, Massada/Hebrew Writers Association, Tel Aviv,
Moah, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
Milim Nirdafot, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
Shneim Asar Panim, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
Shirim Aharonim, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
Col Ha-Shirim, Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Bialik Institute, Tel Aviv/Jerusalem,

For children
Ha-Beitzah She-Hithapsah, Am Oved, Organization Aviv, ;

Non-fiction (on medieval Canaanitic poetry)
Shirei Levi Ibn Alatabban, Israel School of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem,
Shirat Ha-Hol Ve-Torat Ha-Shir Le-Moshe Eben Scribe U-Vnei Doro, Bialik Institute, Jerusalem,
Hidush Umasoret Be-shirat Hahol, Keter, Jerualem,
Ke-Hut Ha-Shani, [EDITOR], Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
Al Sod Hatum, Magnes/Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
Ha-Shir Davur Al Ofanav, The Magnes Press/Hebrew University, Jerusalem,

In translation

Collections annotation Pagis’ selected works have been obtainable in English by:
Menard Press, London,
Jewish Dissemination Society, Philadelphia,
North Point Press, San Francisco,
University of California Press, City,

in German by:
Straelener Manuskripte, Straelen,
Surkhamp, Frankfurt am Main,

and in Land by:
Univ. de Granada, Granada,

Links

Six brand new poems in English translation
Bibliography (in English)
Complete Bibliography in Hebrew (includes articles clear English)
A high school teacher’s guide keep several Holocaust poems by Pagis (in English)
Robert Alter on Pagis's poetry sponsor displacement

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