Milan Rúfus

Milan Rúfus ( born December 10, 1928 in Závažná Poruba, Czechoslovakia, † January 11, 2009 in Bratislava, Slovakia) was a Slovak poet, literary historian, translator and essayist.

Life

Milan Rúfus was born the son of a mason's family. He attended elementary school in his hometown and high school in Liptovsky Mikulas. In the years 1948 - 1952 he studied Slovak and history at the Comenius University in Bratislava.

After the end of his university studies, he taught at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University until 1989, Slovak and Czech literary history. In the years 1971 and 1972 he also worked as a visiting professor at a university in Naples, where he taught Slovak language and literature.

In 1990, he went into retirement, and lived until his death with his family in Bratislava.

Work

His first poems he published in the 1940s, the first collection of poems AZ dozrieme ( Until we mature ) 1956. Was followed by more than 30 books. The children's book Modlitbičky ( Little Prayers) is considered his most successful work, but probably also his last volumes bases A čas ( poetry and Time, 2005) and vernost ( faithfulness, 2007)

The work of evangelical Christians is characterized by religious poetry, he repeatedly thematized values ​​such as humanity, humility and secular and divine love. At the time of communism he was, like most authors, only tolerated. His poems in German paraphrase published by Gollenstein Verlag ( Blieskastel, Germany ) in 1996 under the title Strict bread.

As part of his translation work, he handed 1966 Henrik Ibsen Peer Gynt into Slovak, further works by František Hrubín, Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, Mikhail Lermontov Jurjewitsch and Josef Tyl Kajetán.

Awards

Rúfus, whose works have been translated into 15 languages ​​, was nominated from 1991 every year for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In Slovakia, he has been awarded several prestigious awards, including the National Prize for Literature ( 1970), the TG Masaryk Medal (1991) and the Ľudovít - Stur Medal, First Class (1995).

Most recently, he won the International Crane Summit Award for Poetry in 2008, his poems are translated in Mandarin in consequence.