POPULAR POET Dan Pagis Biography : ISRAELI POET

 

Dan Pagis

Dan Pagis was born into a German-speaking family in Radauti, Bukovina in Romania (now the Ukraine), in what was once a multi-cultural part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also the birthplace of poet Paul Celan and Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, among other well-known Jewish writers. Critic Robert Alter has said that Pagis “would probably have never known Hebrew, never have had any serious connections with Israel or the Jewish cultural heritage, had he not been expelled from Europe by [Nazism’s] ghastly spasm of historical violence and cast, for lack of any other haven, into the Middle East”.

 

Pagis earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he later taught Medieval Hebrew literature.[3] 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 Israel on June 29, 1986.His most widely cited poem is "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car".