Pierre Jolis, a poet and translator who worked on some of the most difficult poems of the 20th century, passed away on February 27th at his Brooklyn home, incorporating the intricate works of German Roman poet Paul Serran. He was 78 years old.
His wife, Nicole Peilafite, said the cause was a complication of cancer.
Mr. Joris was the author of dozens of volumes of his own poems and prose. However, much of his life's work was spent working on Seran's poems, which many critics thought.
But its greatness comes with a hitch for readers. The lyrics were formed and transformed by the Crucible of the Holocaust – as Seran called “what happened.” Both his parents were murdered by the Nazis in what is now Romania. Less than 30 years later, Serin ended his own life in France and in 1970 he jumped into the Seine at the age of 49.
Meanwhile, he felt that he had to invent a new version of German, a cultural language that he was raised as a member of the Jewish bourgeoisie of Czernowitz (part of present-day Ukraine). But it had to cleanse the Nazis' wildness.
The result is “a true invented German,” as I wrote in the introduction to Jolis (pronounced Jorsis)'s “Inspiration to Brestern” (2014) and in the introduction to the translation of Seran's later works.
The release of Seran's most famous work, the hypnotizing “Fooga of Death,” was inspired by the New York State Writers' Institute in 2014 and the murder of Seran's mother in 1942, and was “epiphany” for Joris as a 15-year-old high school student in his hometown of Luxembourg.
“My hair was standing on the edge,” recalls Joris.
The poem begins, as Joris translated.
Morning black milk drinks you at dusk
We drink you at noot time, dawn will drink you at night
We drink and drink
However, “Fooga of Death” was an early job, and was later partially denied by Seran. It is a mysterious poem from his last year that Joris decides to take on.
In a 2016 review of the New York book, Adam Kirsch, the poet and critic, said that most of Joris' works were favorable reviews, written by poet and critic Adam Kirsch, “they cannot be translated in critical debate.”
Joris tried. “He did it impossible because it is impossible to translate Seran,” Romanian-American poet Andrey Kodresk said in an interview.
In eight volumes published over 50 years when he was an undergraduate at Bird College in 1967, Joris tried to render in an experiment with the English Seran language.
Seran's poem is “the works that have come out of the mid-20th century deal most directly with the disasters of Western culture,” Joris told a 2021 Los Angeles book review.
“Absolute poetry – no, it certainly cannot exist, it cannot exist,” Seran said in his famous speech, which won the 1960 literary award in Germany. And Seran's translators had latitudes, which Mr. Yoris used.
Seran's “confined to destabilizing the concept of poetry as a fixed, absolute artifact,” Joris commented in his introduction to “Breathtoon.”
On the level of the words themselves, translators may choose what Joris calls “an elegant, easy to read, and accessible version of German.” He refused that approach.
Instead, Princeton critic Michael Wood pointed out and cited many other examples, “Starry Sky,” “Ensamel,” “Night Clad,” “Daymave,” “World Down,” and “More heartfelt,” he tried to recreate many of Seran's amazing new schools in English.
“There are some words I'm still looking for, but I haven't found them yet,” Joris told author Paul Astor in 2020 during a public dialogue at the German House in New York.
While some critics found this approach to force, Wood praised Joris for his adventurousness. “The poet himself is not afraid of the oddity of the dictionary,” Wood wrote in a 2021 London book review. He takes us very close to Serang at work and shows that he is following them and being led by them, as Serang himself explains the process. ”
In an interview with poet Charles Bernstein in 2023, Joris called Cellan a “poem for the 'witness' for witnesses, hurt, tired, suspicious survivor who likes to communicate through poetry.”
Growing up in Luxembourg, Jolis was a small principality sandwiched between France and the German-speaking world, and was equated with the linguistic confusion of Seran's own upbringing among the Germans and Romanians. Jolis spoke not only German and French, but also the local Germanic dialect of Luxembourg. (He called French the “language of the bourgeoisie.”
Luxembourg told the general president that “it has the same complex language as Seran grew up in.”
“The nature of the polyglots of ceran cultivation, we share that,” he added.
Pierre Joseph Jolis was born in Strasbourg, France on July 14, 1946 to Roger Jolis Jolis, a surgeon, and Nora Jolis Singen, who helped her husband practice as an administrator. He graduated from the Lyce Classic in Diquilch, Luxembourg in 1964, studied medicine briefly in Paris to grant his parents' wishes, and in 1969 he received his bachelor's degree from Bird.
In 1975 he received his master's degree from the University of Essex in the theory and practice of literary translation. From 1976 to 1979 he taught in the English Department at Constantine University University in Algeria. He received his PhD. He taught in 1990 in Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, New York State University, New York, and from 1992 to 2013 at SUNY Albany.
In addition to translations of Seran, Joris has published several volumes of his own poems, including Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (2001) and Balzaf: Poems 2000-2012 (2014). An essay book that includes “Nomad Poetics” (2003). Translations by Lilke, Edmund Jabes and other poets. He also compiled anthology, along with Jerome Rosenberg (1995 and 1998), including two volumes of Poetry of the Millennium: Books of Contemporary and Postmodern Poetry, University of California.
In addition to his wife, a performance artist, he was survived by his son, Miles Joris Pierrafitt. son-in-law, Joseph Mustantouno; and sister, Miku Joris.
Joris spoke to regular Arabic literature in 2011 when asked to explain why he was attracted to translation.
