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Paul Celan, Can poetry save the earth?, Translating Neruda, Paul Celan - Nelly Sac, The lies of art
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Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, Ketil Bjornstad, David Darling
John Felstiner 1936-2017 Copland
Can You Save the Earth?
John Felstiner (July 5, 1936 – February 24, 2017), Professor Emeritus of English at Stanford University, was an American literary critic, translator, and poet. His interests included poetry in various languages, environmental and ecologic poems, literary translation, Vietnam era poetry and Holocaust studies.
Felstiner was born in Mount Vernon, New York and grew up in New York and New England. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1958, and Harvard University, Ph.D., 1965.
From 1958 to 1961, he served on the USS Forrestal, in the Mediterranean. Felstiner came to Stanford University in 1965 and was a professor of English at Stanford until his retirement in 2009. While at Stanford, he was three times a fellow at Stanford Humanities Center; a Fulbright professor at University of Chile (1967–68); visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1974–75); and visiting professor of Comparative Literature and English at Yale University (1990, 2002).
His collection of Paul Celan’s manuscripts, letters, and widespread context, along with Felstiner’s own translation archive, are housed at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
John and his wife, the writer, historian and professor Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, have two children: Sarah and Alek, and also two grandchildren.
Selected works
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories by Henry James, edited with an introduction, biography, and notes by John Felstiner, 1966, Scholastic Book Services, ASIN B000V51Y68
Max Beerbohm and the Wings of Henry James, 1967
The Lies of Art: Max Beerbohm's Parody and Caricature, 1972, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0394472270
The Dark Room and Other Poems, by Enrique Lihn, co-translator John Felstiner New Directions, 1978, ASIN B002SMJFNG
Heights of Macchu Picchu / Alturas de Macchu Picchu, by Pablo Neruda, translator John Felstiner, with photographs by Edward Ranney, Limited Editions Club, 1998, ASIN B000WW5FYM
Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, Co-editor, W.W. Norton, 2000, ISBN 978-0393048094
Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, editor and translator, W.W. Norton, 2001, ISBN 978-0393322248
this dust of words: Elizabeth Wiltsee, Stanford Magazine, Sept.- Oct. 2001
Paul Celan Meets Samuel Beckett, American Poetry Review, July - August 2004
Writing Zion: An Exchange between Celan and Amichai, The New Republic, 12 June 2006
'Lure of the God': Robert Duncan on Translating Rilke. (with David Goldstein), Jacket 31, October 2006
'Earth’s Most Graphic Transaction': The Syllables of Emily Dickinson, American Poetry Review, Mar.- Apr. 2007
Nature vs. Man: For Robinson Jeffers, it wasn’t even close, The Weekly Standard, 28 May 2007
'It looks just like the Cascades': Gary Snyder’s Eye for the Real World, Jacket 34, October 2007
First Kenyon Review Prize in Criticism, for Max Beerbohm and the Wings of Henry James (1967)
National Endowment for the Arts Literature and Translation Fellowships (1969, 1971, 1984, 2002)
Rockefeller (1980), Guggenheim (1983), and National Endowment for the Humanities (1971, 1989) fellowships, and Bellagio Center (Rockefeller Foundation) Residency (1996)
Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu won the California Commonwealth Club Gold Medal for Non-fiction.
Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew won the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award and the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell prize.
Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan won translation prizes from the American Translators Association, Modern Language Association, and PEN West.
Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005.
Selected Interviews, Book Reviews, and Articles
Audio: An Author Asks: ‘Can Poetry Save The Earth’ from KQED "Forum" with Michael Krasny on NPR
this dust of words Stanford Magazine, September/October 2001
Felstiner on poetry, environmentalism Stanford University News, April 1, 2009
How Jews used ‘creative resistance’ to oppose the Nazis Stanford University News, April 30, 2010
Attentiveness – Natural Prayer of the Soul: Interview with John Felstiner by Ilya Kaminsky, In Posse Review
This Dust of Words A film by Bill Rose based on the memoir by John Felstiner
Paul Celan, John Felstiner, and the Soul of Beauty by Cynthia Haven, The Book Haven, October 21, 2012
Farewell to John Felstiner, critic, translator, poet: “an exemplary life in literature” by Cynthia Haven, The Book Haven, March 3, 2017
