Serge Gavronsky (born 1932) is an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and translator.
Life
Gavronsky was born in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. He fled
Nazi-occupied France
The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...
in 1940. Gavronsky received his A.B. in European History and French in 1954 from Columbia College and an M.A. in European History in 1955 and a Ph.D in European Intellectual History in 1965 from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, and is now professor emeritus in the French department at
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
. He lives in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Gavronsky is currently working on his sixth novel and in the process of co-translating, with
François Dominique, writer, the majestic poem "A" by
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...
.
Awards
* 1979
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
* 1980 Camargo Foundation Fellowship
* 1990 Sole judge appointed by the Academy of American Poets for the Harold Morton Landon Prize in Translation
* 1991 French Government, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques
* 1997 French Government, Officier dans l'
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...
Works
Novels
* ''The German Friend'', a novel (New York, SUN, 1984.)
* ''The Name of the Father'', a novel (Spiralli, 1993) Translated into Italian with a preface by
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
.
* ''L'Identita, a novel'', a novel (Spiralli, 2006.) Translated into Italian.
* ''The Sudden Death of…'', a novel (NY: Spuyten Duyvil, 2009.)
* ''Silence of Memory'', a novel'' (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014.)
Poetry
Books of Poetry:
* ''AndOrThe: Poems Within a Poem'' (Talisman House, 2007)
Gavronsky has appeared in over thirty French and American poetry magazines including:
* ''Lectures et compte-rendu, poèmes''. Coll. "Textes," Flammarion, 1973.
* ''Je le suis, poème'', illustrations by Michel Kanter, artists’s edition, 1995.
* ''L’interminable discussion'', poem with six original woodcuts by
JM. Scanreigh. Editions Philippe Millereau, 1996.
* ''Reduction du tryptique'', poem with 4 original woodcuts by JM. Scanreigh, Philippe Millereau, 1996.
* ''Il était un dire'', poem for
artist's book
Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.
Overview
Artists' books have employed a ...
by
Patricia Erbelding (Mémoires Collections, 2007)
Translation
A selection of books in translation:
*
*
* ''Serge Gavronsky, ''Francis Ponge: The Power of Language''. (1979). University of California Press.
* ''Le mecanisme du sens'' (Paris: Maeght, 1979).
* ''Joyce Mansour, Cris/Screams, trans. with an Introduction by Serge Gavronsky'' (Sausolito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1995.)
*
*
* ''Translator and author of introduction, Joyce Mansour Essential Poetry and Prose'' (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2008.)
* ''Co-Translator with
François Dominique, writer, "Louis Zukofsky’s “A” – 13 - 18 (Dijon: Virgile, 2012).''
* ''Co-Translator with
François Dominique, "Louis Zukofsky’s “A” – 19 - 23 (Dijon: Virgile, 2014).''
A selection of anthologized poems in translation:
* ''Jean Follain, Modern European Poetry, Bantam Classics, 1967.''
* ''René Depestre, The World, Special Translation Issue, 1973.''
* ''Aragon, For Neruda/For Chile, Beacon, 1975.''
* ''Francis Ponge, Contemporary World Poetry, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979.''
* ''Marcelin Pleynet, André Frénaud, Francis Ponge, Random House Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, 1982.''
* ''Monique Buri, The Defiant Muse, French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present, The Feminist Press, 1986.''
* ''Jean Frémon, Denis Roche and Marcelin Pleynet in Violence of the White Page: Contempo-rary French Poetry, Tyuonyi, 1992.''
* ''Francis Ponge, Against Forgetting, Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, Norton, 1993.''
* ''Francis Ponge, "The Sun...," Poems for the Millenium, The University of California Press, I, 1995.''
* ''Francis Ponge, "Rhetoric," World Poetry, Norton, 1998.''
* ''Francis Ponge, “The Object is Poetics,” in Mary Ann Caws, ed. Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Nebraska University Press, 2001.''
Criticism
* ''The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War. (New York, The Humanities Press, 1968.)''
* ''Francis Ponge and the Power of Language. (Berkeley, California, The University of California Press, 1979.)''
* ''Culture/Ecriture, essais critiques. (Rome, Bulzoni, 1983.)''
*
*
* ''Towards a New Poetics (Berkeley, California, The University of California Press, 1994.)''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gavronsky, Serge
1932 births
Living people
American male poets
American male novelists
People who emigrated to escape Nazism
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Barnard College faculty
French–English translators
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
20th-century translators
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from New York (state)
French emigrants to the United States