Dan Pagis


[Image:Dan_Pagis.jpg|right|thumb|Dan Pagis]
Dan Pagis was an Israeli poet, lecturer, and Holocaust survivor.

Biography

Image:Belzec oboz zaglady pomnik ewa abel.JPG|right|thumb|Dan Pagis' poem at the Bełżec Museum and Memorial Site
Dan Pagis was born in Rădăuţi, Bukovina in Romania and imprisoned as a child in a concentration camp in Ukraine. He escaped in 1944 and immigrated to British Palestine in 1946.
Pagis earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he later taught Medieval Hebrew literature. His first published book of poetry was Sheon ha-Tsel in 1959. In 1970 he published a major work entitled Gilgul – which may be translated as "Revolution, cycle, transformation, metamorphosis, metempsychosis," etc. Other poems include: "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car," "Testimony, "Europe, Late," "Autobiography," and "Draft of a Reparations Agreement." Pagis knew many languages, and translated multiple works of literature.
Pagis died of cancer in Jerusalem on June 29, 1986.
His most widely cited poem is "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car".
The literary scholar Nili Gold has described Dan Pagis as an example of a writer whose work reveals the influence of "Mother Tongue" oral and written culture on their Hebrew writing. She has situated Pagis in this way among a group of Hebrew-language writers that includes Yoel Hoffman, Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, and Aharon Appelfeld.

Published works

Poetry

The Shadow Dial Late Leisure Transformation Brain Double Exposure Twelve Faces Last Poems
  • ''Collected Poems''

Books for children

  • ''An Egg in Disguise''

Non-fiction

The Poems of Levi Ibn Al-Tabban Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory: Moses Ibn-Ezra and his Contemporaries Change and Tradition in Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy The Scarlet Thread – Hebrew Love Poems from Spain, Italy, Turkey and the Yemen A Secret Sealed
  • ''Poetry Aptly Explained – Studies and Essays on Medieval Hebrew Poetry''

Books in translation

Selected Poems,
  • German: An beiden Ufern der Zeit, Tr. Anne Birkenhauer, Straelen, Straelener Manuskripte, 2003, ; Erdichteter Mensch, Tr. Tuvia Ruebner, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, Juedischer Verlag 1993,
  • Spanish: The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, Variable Directions, Tr. Stephen Mitchell Poems, Tr. Stephen Mitchell