Dan Pagis (October 16, 1930 – June 29, 1986) was an Israeli poet, lecturer and Holocaust survivor.

Biography

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 (soon-to-be Israel) 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 ("The Shadow Clock") 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". 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

Books for children

Non-fiction

Books in translation