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Dan Pagis
Question
I am doing a thesis on Holocaust poetry and am looking for
critical material on the poet Dan Pagis that is written in English. If
anyone knows of any articles that have been written I would appreciate
it if you could give me the references.
Harry W. Mazal OBE answers:
I am one of the persons who responds to questions sent to
the Holocaust History Project. There are a number of resources
that you might want to investigate for your research on Dan
Pagis. The following web-sites are a good place to start:
- http://www.biu.ac.il/HU/tr/anne0518.html#publications
Anne Birkenhauer has recently published a study.
- http://www.writer.org/pac/pac23.htm
Dan Pagis -- Transformations. This major Israeli poet reads his work
in both English (trans. by Stephen Mitchell) and Hebrew. Recorded at the
Harvard Poetry Room. Watershed, 1979. 51 mins. Order No. C-1139 --
$13.95.
- http://www.cesjds.org/course.htm
Students in these courses are exposed to original Hebrew literature.
They study different literary styles, such as poetry, prose, short
stories, a novel, articles, etc. Students read works by Y.L. Peretz,
Rahel, Lea Goldberg, Zelda, Amichay, Amos Oz, Natan Shahar, Natan Shaham
and Dan Pagis. In addition students develop their writing skills,
critical analysis and reading comprehension skills. They are also
exposed to the Jewish/Israeli experience.
- http://www.dowco.com/gor_books/worldliterature/jewish.html
The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis (Literature of the Middle East)
Usually ships in 24 hours Dan Pagis, et al / Paperback / Published 1996
Our Price: $14.95
- http://www.poets.org/poets/aap/prog/landon.htm
Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
This $1,000 award recognizes a published translation of poetry from
any language into English. Founded in 1976, the award was originally
biennial. It has been given annually since 1984. A noted translator
chooses the winning book.
Year: 1990
Translator: Stephen Mitchell
Book: Variable Directions, Dan Pagis
Judge: Serge Gavronsky
- http://users.aimnet.com/~upb/upb1/vault/old/O10_96.html
Pagis, Dan, The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis.
Univ of California Press, Paper $14.95.
- http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/contempdp.htm
Jewish Themes in Contemporary Literature
The division offers a study program in comparative Jewish literature,
encompassing comparative studies of modern Jewish literature as an
imaginative discourse on the Jewish experience. Publications include a
book on the Holocaust and the literary imagination and numerous articles
on reflections of the Holocaust in Israeli culture generally and
specifically in the writings of S.Y. Agnon, Aharon Appelfeld and Dan
Pagis. A book on the articulations of displacement, exile,
territoriality and homecoming in the modern Jewish imagination is being
prepared.
- http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Judaic_Studies/faculty/jacob.html
Biographical information for David C. Jacobson. Papers Delivered at
Academic Conferences:
1977 - "The Holocaust Survivor in Israeli Poetry: Dan Pagis,"
Symposium on Trends in Contemporary Israeli Literature,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
- http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/facts/culture/lit/pagis.html
Dan Pagis was born in Bukovina in 1930. During World War II he was
interned for several years in a concentration camp. In 1946 he
immigrated and began to teach school on a kibbutz. He received his Ph.D
from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he was later made
professor of medieval Hebrew literature. His publications include
important studies on the aesthetics of medieval secular poetry, as well
as a critical edition of David Vogel's collected verse. He died in
Jerusalem in 1986.
Called "a poet of the unspeakable" much of Dan Pagis' best-known work
deals with the Holocaust, but, in the words of Robert Alter "his
imaginative landscape extends from the grim vistas of genocide to the
luminous horizon of the medieval Iberian peninsula." Writing in Hebrew
only four years after his arrival in Israel, Pagis helped bring a more
natural colloquial norm to Hebrew poetry. There is an element of
distance to Pagis' work, through which he conveys a sense of horror
while avoiding "the shrillness of hysteria." Drawing on biblical texts
and centuries-old mysticism, he gives voice to the experience of a
generation. His work has been described as "a poetry of allusion," his
sorrrow frequently hiding behind irony and plays on words. Shulamith
Hareven says of Dan Pagis, "his work has the discipline of the adult and
the freshness of the child: his compassion brings tears to one's eyes."
- http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jasonsc/Pagis.html
The Life and Times of Dan Pagis
- http://sachair.ucsc.edu/judaism/Fall96.html
Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought Issue No.
180 / Volume 45 / Number 4 / Fall 1996.
Dan Pagis and the Poetry of Displacement, Robert Alter
- http://www.jewishculture.org/writers/about/bios/ezrachi.html
Sidra Ezrahi teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has
written broadly in the areas of comparative Jewish literature. Following
her study of the literary reflections of the Holocaust, By Words Alone,
she wrote on the poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis, the prose of S.Y.
Agnon and Aharon Appelfeld and theoretical questions of representation
at the limits of human experience. Her book on exile and homecoming in
the modern Jewish imagination, Booking Passage, will appear in 1998 from
University of California Press.
I hope that these few leads will help you find the information that
you are seeking.
Harry W. Mazal OBE
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