Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek ( born 1918 in Montreal, † 2001 ) was a Canadian poet, university lecturer, essayist and literary critic. He is considered a pioneering founder of modernism in Canada.

Born in 1918 in the second generation of Polish immigrants in Francophone part of Montreal, he was raised bilingual: Polish and English. He also learned French, the official language of Quebec, as well as Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Spanish, Italian and German. From 1939 he studied at McGill University in Montreal, literature and wrote for the university magazine McGill Daily, which also published his first poems. After his graduation (BA ) in 1944, he moved to New York and received his PhD in English Literature and Comparative Literature at New York's Columbia University. From 1951 to 1982, he then taught at McGill University in Montreal, European literature and literary history. Along with Raymond Souster and Irving Layton, he founded in 1952 the publishing house "Contact Press", in the predominantly Canadian poets were published. But also in other newspapers and magazines, he was instrumental. In 1983 he was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honor for civilians.

Among his major works " Zembla 's Rocks " (1986), " Infinite Worlds" (1988 ), " Europe" ( 1954/1991 ), " The Caged Tiger " (1997), The " Poetry of Louis Dudek - Definitive Edition" (1998 ) and " The Surface of Time" ( 2000). Most of his writings are now housed in the Canadian National Library. First time in 2006 was translated into German and published a selection of his poems.

German translations

• Louis Dudek: For you, you - For you, Gov. Selected Poems. English - German. Translated by Philip Christian and Joachim Sartorius; edited and with an afterword by Bernhard Beutler, Ivory Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-932245-79-4.