Oskar Pastior
Oskar Pastior (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈoskar pasˈtjor]; 20 October 1927 – 4 October 2006) was a Romanian-born German poet and translator. He was the only German member of Oulipo.
Biography
Born into a Transylvanian Saxon family in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), he was deported in January 1945, [citation needed] along with many other ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, to the USSR for forced labor. He returned to Romania in 1949, and went on to study German studies at the University of Bucharest in 1955. After graduation, he worked for the German language service of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company. In 1964, he published his first collection of poems, "Offne Worte".
After having been under surveillance by the Securitate for 4 years, Pastior became an informer for the Securitate in 1961 with the alias "Otto Stein".[1] This became known in 2010, years after his death.
He was an informer until 1968, when he obtained a scholarship to Vienna and defected from Communist Romania.
Pastior left for Germany, living at first in Munich, then in West Berlin, where he lived the rest of his life. He was known for his translations of Romanian literature into German (among others, the works of Tudor Arghezi, George Coşbuc, Tristan Tzara, Gellu Naum, Marin Sorescu, and Urmuz).
He received the highly prestigious Georg-Büchner-Preis in 2006.
The Hunger Angel, the 2009 novel of Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller, is based partly upon Pastior's experiences as a forced laborer in the USSR.[2] Initially, Pastior and Müller had planned to write a book about his experiences together, but he died in 2006.[3]
Herta Müller was "horrified" and "bitter" after the revelations about her colleague and friend Pastior. She was initially shocked, even angry, then felt sympathy and sadness. She said in an interview that it was terrible when you learn something dark and barely comprehensible about someone you thought you knew that was kept from you. But she also thought that Pastior, as a homosexual, was vulnerable and susceptible to blackmail. In Romania, homosexuality was punishable by several years in prison.[4]
Selected works
- Pastior, Oskar; Mathews, Harry; Middleton, Christopher; Waldrop, Rosmarie; Yau, John (2001). Many glove compartments : selected poems. Providence, R.I.: Burning Deck. ISBN 1-886224-44-7. OCLC 48569855.
- Pastior, Oskar; Green, Malcolm (1990). Poempoems. London: Atlas Press. ISBN 0-947757-37-6. OCLC 37726173.
References
- ^ "Der Dichter Oskar Pastior war IM der Securitate". Frankfurter Allgemeine. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
- ^ "Nobel laureate discusses writing about dictatorships". 29 May 2012. Retrieved 26 July 2020 – via in.reuters.com.
- ^ Online, FOCUS. "Der Vorwurf ist absurd". FOCUS Online. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
- ^ ""Die Sprache sollte schön sein"". 26 January 2019.
External links
- The spell of a tender eel, on 2006 prizewinner Oskar Pastior
- "Oskar Pastior", at the 2007 International Literature Festival, Berlin
- Articles with short description
- Short description is different from Wikidata
- Use dmy dates from November 2021
- Pages with Romanian IPA
- All articles with unsourced statements
- Articles with unsourced statements from July 2012
- Articles with FAST identifiers
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with BIBSYS identifiers
- Articles with BNF identifiers
- Articles with BNFdata identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with J9U identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with Libris identifiers
- Articles with NKC identifiers
- Articles with NLA identifiers
- Articles with NTA identifiers
- Articles with CINII identifiers
- Articles with ADK identifiers
- Articles with DTBIO identifiers
- Articles with Trove identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- German writers in French
- Romanian poets
- German male poets
- German gay writers
- Romanian male writers
- Romanian translators
- Romanian writers in French
- People from Sibiu
- German people of German-Romanian descent
- German defectors
- Romanian defectors
- Transylvanian Saxon people
- University of Bucharest alumni
- Oulipo members
- Georg Büchner Prize winners
- Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
- Securitate informants
- 1927 births
- 2006 deaths
- 20th-century German translators
- 20th-century German poets
- German male non-fiction writers
- All stub articles
- German poet stubs
- German translator stubs