Felix Pollak (writer)

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Felix Pollak in 1984

Felix Pollak (born November 11, 1909 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died November 19, 1987 in Madison , Wisconsin ) was an Austro-American librarian, writer and translator.

Life

Felix Pollak was a son of the engineer Geza Pollak and Helena Schneider. From 1930 he studied law at the University of Vienna and became interested in the theater, so that he broke off his studies and attended Max Reinhardt's theater seminar from 1934 . Reinhardt commissioned him to direct the Midsummer Night's Dream at the Salzburg Festival . Under the pseudonym Felix Anselm he published his first poems and aphorisms in the Neue Presse . In 1936 he took up law training again. When Austria was annexed in 1938, he fled to the USA. His parents and brother also managed to escape.

Pollak first had to learn the language, got by with odd jobs and lived on the support of the Jewish Refugee Committee . Then he began training as a librarian and graduated from the University of Buffalo with a bachelor's degree in 1941 . During the Second World War he was drafted into the US Army in 1943 and used in Europe as a translator in POW camps for captured Wehrmacht soldiers. After the war, thanks to the GI Bill , he was able to continue his studies at the University of Michigan and received a master's degree in 1949. Pollak married Sara Allen in 1950. He received his doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in 1953.

Pollak worked until 1959 as a librarian for Rara (rare books) at Northwestern University and then in a similar position at the University of Wisconsin until his retirement in 1974. He expanded the Little Magazine Collection , in the small poetics magazines, avant-garde literary magazines and Underground magazines are collected.

Pollak continued to write poetics on the side, he published a large number of poems and essays in magazines and seven volumes of poetry over the years. His poem Speaking: The Hero has been quoted many times. He himself presented it in 1969 at a demonstration against the Vietnam War . Pollak's literary themes are always his hometown Vienna and his progressive blindness. He obtained a collection of his own translations and appropriations of German poems, which was also published posthumously in Germany. His correspondence with Anaïs Nin was published in 1999.

Works (selection)

  • The castle and the flaw. Poems . La Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1963
  • 28 poems . 1966
  • Say when . Lacrosse: Juniper, 1969
  • Ups and downs: the underground presses . 1970
  • Voyages to the inland sea, II: essays and poems 1972
  • Essays and poems . 1972
  • Ginkgo . La Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1973
  • Subject to change . Lacrosse: Juniper, 1978
  • Prose and cons . Lacrosse: Juniper, 1983
  • Tunnel visions: poems, short prose, translations . Peoria: Spoon River Poetry Press, 1984
  • Benefits of doubt: selected poems . Peoria: Spoon River Poetry Press, 1988
    • On the benefit of the doubt . Poems. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1989
  • Reinhold Grimm, Sara Pollak (Ed.): Signs of life. Aphorisms and marginalia . Vienna: Publishing House for Social Criticism, 1992 ISBN 3-85115-167-4
  • Gregory H. Mason (Ed.): Arrows of longing: the correspondence between Anaïs Nin and Felix Pollak, 1952-1976 . 1998

literature

  • Norbert Greiner : Felix Pollak in the German biography
  • Andreas Wittbrodt: Multilingual Jewish Exile Literature, Authors of the German-Speaking Area: Problem Outline and Selected Bibliography . Aachen: Shaker, 2001 ISBN 3-8265-9336-7 , pp. 83-89; P. 250
  • Peter R. Frank: Felix Pollak: Portrait . In: Communications from the Society for Book Research in Austria , 2001, Issue 1, pp. 22–24
  • John M. Spalek (ed.): German-language literature in exile since 1933. Vol 4. bibliographies. Writer, journalist and literary critic in the USA: Part 3. N-Z . Bern: Francke, 1994 ISBN 3-907820-47-9 , pp. 1486-1491
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 916
  • Klaus L. Berghahn : Pollak, Felix. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , p. 408f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus L. Berghahn: Pollak, Felix , 2012, p. 408
personal data
SURNAME Pollak, Felix
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anselm, Felix (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-American writer, translator and librarian
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1987
Place of death Madison (Wisconsin)