Czech Poet Miroslav Holub Had Oberlin Ties
By David Young
Miroslav Holub, 1923-1998 PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF
DAVID YOUNG S EPTEMBER 11, 1998Miroslav Holub, the Czech poet and scientist who died unexpectedly in Prague July 14, had important literary ties to Oberlin College. Frequently short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Holub, who was 74, often lived, taught, and worked at Oberlin during his visits to the United States . Holub enjoyed a relationship with the school and the town that grew out of his close friendship with his American translators. , poet Stuart Friebert, professor emeritus of creative writing, and me. With Holub's sudden and unexpected death we have lost one of the stalwart spirits of our century, a man who was able to survive first Nazism, then Stalinism, while managing to keep alive the rigorous self-corrections of the practicing scientist and the fierce, unquenchable spirit of artin other words, the two domains of the human spirit that our century's tyrannies and horrors have not been able to destroy. Oberlin College Press published three of Holub's collections in its distinguished Field Translation Series: Sagittal Section (1980)the work of Stuart Friebert, professor emeritus of creative writing, who was Holub's first American translator; | |
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