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338
P
Pa Chin
See BA JIN.
Pagis, Dan (1930–1986) poet
Dan Pagis was born in Bukovina, once a part of
Austria, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Today,
Bukovina is part of Ukraine and Romania. Pagis
spent his early years in the home of his grandpar-
ents. He had few friends but was a very enthusias-
tic reader from the age of six, spending much of his
time in his grandparents’ apartment library. At the
age of 11, Pagis was deported to a Nazi camp,
where he spent three years. He emigrated to Pales-
tine in 1946 and, after only four years in Israel,
began to write in his new language of Hebrew.
Said to be one of the most vibrant voices in
modern Israeli poetry, Pagis is also internationally
recognized as a major poet of his generation. He
has been called a poet of the unspeakable because
many of his poems are infused with the horror of
the Holocaust. Much of Pagis’s subject matter is
grim, containing images of genocide, but Pagis also
explores other horizons, evoking biblical texts,
centuries-old mysticism, and the medieval Iberian
peninsula. Writers of his generation were known as
the emigré writers, consisting of those born in the
Diaspora (Jewish communities outside Palestine).
Along with other Israeli writers of his genera-
tion, Pagis helped to bring a more natural collo-
quial style to Hebrew poetry. His many volumes of
poetry have been described as “a poetry of allu-
sion” in which he uses irony and plays on words to
mask sorrow. Yet, his poems also celebrate the
human spirit and contain compassion for his per-
secutors. His work remains popular and is cele-
brated not only in his home in Israel but also
around the world.
Other Works by Dan Pagis
Points of Departure. Translated by Stephen
Mitchell. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1981.
The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis. Translated by
Stephen Mitchell. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996.
Variable Directions: Selected Poetry. Translated by
Stephen Mitchell. San Francisco: North Point
Press, 1989.
Works about Dan Pagis
Alter, Robert. “Dan Pagis and the Poetry of Displace-
ment.” In Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish
Life and Thought 180, 45:4 (Fall 1996).
Jacobson, David C. “The Holocaust Survivor in
Israeli Poetry: Dan Pagis.” Paper delivered at
academic conference: Symposium on Trends in
Contemporary Israeli Literature, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1977.
Pak Mogwol (Park Yong-jong)
(1916–1978) poet, essayist, translator
Park Yong-jong was born in Kyongju in Korea’s Ky-
ongsangnam province on January 6 and was edu-
cated through middle school. He is best known for
his lyrical and nostalgic poems, which were popu-
lar with the Korean masses. His early pastoral
poems of rural beauty, such as “Green Deer” and
“The Mountain Peach Blossoms,” were sentimen-
tal and evocative of his own childhood. Many were
homages to his hometown and were infused with
patriotic sentiments. He derived his rhythms from
folk life and was deeply interested in folk culture.
Pak Mogwol moved from the countryside to the
bustling metropolis of Seoul after Korea’s liberation
from Japanese colonialism in 1945. With his move,
he made a similar shift in his poetry by moving to-
ward REALISM, depicting city life, and pitting ordi-
nary human beings against urban desolation. In
“Sketch,” for example, he tenderly describes a cast
of haggard urban dwellers. In later years, Pak Mog-
wol’s style and focus shifted once more—this time
toward spiritualism and an acceptance of death—
in poems such as “An Ordinary Day,” in which the
narrator marks his own grave.
In 1962, Pak Mogwol accepted a position teach-
ing Korean literature at Hanyang University. He
continued to write, producing essays, poems for
children, translations, and the lyrical Korean po-
etry of which he is considered by many to be the
modern master. He also edited the monthly jour-
nal, The Image. Pak Mogwol was honored with
many awards, including the Free Literature Prize in
1955 and the Republic of Korea Literary Arts Prize
in 1968. He died on March 24.
Another Work by Pak Mogwol
Selected Poems of Pak Mogwol. Translated by Kim
Uchang. Fremont, Calif.: Asian Humanities Press,
1990.
Pamuk, Orhan (1952– ) novelist
Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and
except for three years in New York, he spent his
entire life there. Pamuk studied architecture at the
Istanbul Technical University for three years but
ultimately finished formal studies at the Institute
of Journalism at Istanbul University. He began
writing regularly in 1974 and published Cevdet Bey
and His Sons in 1982, marking the beginning of his
career. The novel was a family saga written in the
REALIST
style.
Pamuk’s novels are very popular and at the
same time highly controversial. His novel Kara
Kitap (The Black Book, 1995), about a week in the
life of the lawyer Galip whose wife Ruya has left
him, became both a best-seller and an object of
condemnation. Its postmodern style and ambigu-
ous politics angered leftists and fundamentalists
alike.
Pamuk’s works have been translated into more
than 20 languages. He is the recipient of major
Turkish and international literary awards, includ-
ing the 1984 Madarali Novel Prize for his second
novel, Sessiz Ev (The Silent House, 1983); here,
Pamuk shifted from the realist style of his first
novel to a more in-depth psychosociological style.
Pamuk won the 1991 Prix de la Découverte Eu-
ropéenne for the French translation of Sessiz Ev.
His most notable subjects are Istanbul, Turkey’s
culture and politics, and human rights, and his
novels, when taken as a whole, show a mixture of
modern and traditional styles. In “Orhan Pamuk,”
Andrew Finkel states that “The point [of Pamuk’s
novels] seems to be that a person does not have to
abandon the past in order to be part of the future.”
Another Work by Orhan Pamuk
The White Castle. Translated by V. Holbrook. New
York: George Braziller, 1991.
Pardo Bazán, Emilia de (1851–1921)
short-story writer, novelist
Pardo Bazán was born in La Coruña, Galicia. Her
parents encouraged her studies, and her father’s li-
Pardo Bazán, Emilia de 339
brary supplied her with a great variety of reading
material. She was fascinated by books about the
French Revolution and loved Don Quijote, the
Bible, and Homer’s Iliad. She began to write poetry
as a young child. Taught by private tutors, she re-
fused to take music classes or to play the piano, as
was traditional for young women; instead, she
spent time reading and writing. Married at age 17,
she moved to Madrid, where she became part of
the social scene. Later, she went to France and trav-
eled through Europe, learning French and Ger-
man. She was influenced by French literature. In
1876, she gave birth to the first of three children
and dedicated her only book of poems to this
child. Her first novel, Pascual López (1879), was
written on the birth of her second child. In 1880,
she contracted hepatitis and went to Vichy to recu-
perate. There, she met the French poet and novel-
ist Victor HUGO.
La Cuestión Palpitante (1883), a collection of ar-
ticles explaining
NATURALISM, (the theory that
human behavior is controlled by instinct, emotion,
and social and economic determinism), created a
scandal, and her husband asked her to stop writing
and to retract several statements. Two years later, in
1884, she left him and published La Ama Joven
about matrimonial crises. La Tribuna, (1882), her
third novel, is considered to be her first naturalist
work. It is a study of the environment and workers
in the cigar factories in La Coruña, similar to
works by Benito
PÉREZ GALDÓS (1843–1920). The
two authors had a romantic relationship lasting
some 20 years.
In 1890, she established the magazine El nuevo
teatro crítico. At this time, denouncing educational
differences between the sexes, she began a lifelong
campaign for female emancipation. In 1906, she
won a major battle in this area, becoming the first
woman to preside over the literary section of the
Ateneo of Madrid (a pioneer cultural institution)
and the first female professor of literature at the
Central University of Madrid. Only one student at-
tended her class.
Pardo Bazán was given the title of condesa
(countess) for her literary achievements.
Other Works by Emilia Pardo Bazán
The House of Ulloa. Translated by Lucia Graves.
New York: Penguin USA, 1991.
The Tribune of the People. Translated by Walter
Borenstein. Cranbury, N.J.: Bucknell University
Press, 1999.
The White Horse and Other Stories. Translated by
Robert M. Fedorchek. Cranbury, N.J.: Bucknell
University Press, 1993.
Torn Lace and Other Stories. Translated by Maria
Cristina Urruela. New York: Modern Language
Association of America, 1997.
Works about Emilia Pardo Bazán
Gonzalez-Arias, Francisca. Portrait of a Woman
As Artist: Emilia Pardo Bazán and the Modern
Novel in France and Spain. New York: Garland,
1992.
Hemingway, Maurice. Emilia Pardo Bazán: The Mak-
ing of a Novelist. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1983.
To lli ve r, J oy ce . Cigar Smoke and Violet Water:
Gendered Discourse in the Stories of Emilia Pardo
Bazán. Cranbury, N.J.: Bucknell University Press,
1999.
Park Yong-jong
See PAK MOGWOL.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1922–1975) director,
writer, poet, novelist, critic
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna, Italy, to
Carlo Alberto Pasolini, an Italian army officer, and
Susanna Colussi, a grade-school teacher. He at-
tended the University of Bologna as an art history
major before he switched to literature. He wrote
his thesis on the poet Giovanni Pascoli. Pasolini
was drafted into the Italian army in 1943 in the
middle of his studies but served only a week. When
his army unit was captured by the Germans, Pa-
solini escaped into the Italian countryside, after
which he began to write poetry. During this time,
he discovered he was homosexual.
340 Park Yong-jong
Pasolini began to write novels in the 1950s. His
early novels included The Ragazzi (1955), about
poor young people in the slums of Rome, and
A Violent Life (1959), which expresses his radical
political beliefs. The former, a portrayal of the
underside of Roman life, was considered so
graphic and controversial that it led to charges of
pornography.
In the 1960s, Pasolini turned to writing for film.
He preferred the medium of film to paper, having
once said, “Since Chaplin’s Modern Times, movies
have anticipated literature....The movie has
much more freedom.” One of his key films is The
Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), which fea-
tures his mother in the role of the older Virgin
Mary. His final film was One Hundred and Twenty
Days of Sodom (1975), which uses sex as a
metaphor for the class struggle; this film stirred
up controversy for its portrayal of Italian hedonis-
tic society.
Pasolini was brutally murdered under ambigu-
ous circumstances. Some believe a teenage prosti-
tute bludgeoned Pasolini to death and then ran
over him with Pasolini’s car. Others believe he was
assassinated, perhaps for his political beliefs. A
provocative and controversial artist, writer, and
filmmaker, Pasolini gained popularity after his
death. Several of his works were released posthu-
mously.
Other Works by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Petrolio. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Pan-
theon, 1997.
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poems. Translated by Norman
MacAfee. New York: Noonday Press, 1996.
Roman Poems. Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and Francesca Valente. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1986.
Works about Pier Paolo Pasolini
Friedrich, Pia. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Boston: Twayne,
1982.
Rohdie, Sam. The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Lon-
don: British Film Institute, 1996.
Pasternak, Boris (1890–1960) novelist,
poet, translator, short-story writer
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow
to Leonid Pasternak, a celebrated painter, and Rosa
Kaufman, a concert pianist. The family was estab-
lished in the intellectual and cultural circles of
Moscow. Indeed, Leo
TOLSTOY was a family friend
and played a role in the formation of Pasternak’s
literary style. An excellent student, Pasternak re-
ceived the Russian equivalent of valedictorian rank
and in 1908 began to study law at Moscow Uni-
versity. While there, he became very interested in
philosophy and decided to pursue his studies at the
University of Marburg in Germany in 1912.
Pasternak successfully completed his studies and
in 1914 published his first volume of poetry, The
Twin in the Clouds. Two subsequent collections,
Over the Barriers (1916) and My Sister, Life (1917),
established his reputation as a major Russian poet.
His poetic works combined the elements of
SYMBOL-
ISM and FUTURISM, with verse that is lyrical and emo-
tional, and contains some of the most profound
images and metaphors found in Russian poetry.
At first, Pasternak supported the Bolshevik rev-
olution, but he soon was disenchanted with the
failed promises of the communist regime. During
the 1920s, he began his prolific career as a fiction
writer. In The Childhood of Lovers (1924), Paster-
nak explores the psychological makeup and emo-
tions of a young girl. He published a short
autobiographical work, Safe Conduct (1931), and
a brilliant collection of poetry, Second Birth (1932).
Because of his interest in exploring ethical themes
and his political disillusionment, he came under
repeated attacks from the government during the
1930s and was forbidden to publish. He supported
himself by translating English and German poets
into Russian. During these years, Pasternak gained
the respect of Russian intellectual circles.
Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in literature
in 1958 as a result of his most celebrated work, Doc-
tor Zhivago (1957). The epic novel recounts the ex-
periences of a young doctor, Yuri Zhivago,
during the upheavals of the early 20th century.
The novel’s insights into the Communist regime
Pasternak, Boris 341
quickly brought about government criticism and
censure. It was first printed in Italy in 1957, fol-
lowed by an English translation in 1958 and its
publication in 1959 in the United States. Forced by
the Soviet government to refuse the Nobel Prize,
Pasternak was expelled from the Soviet Writers’
Union and exiled to an artists’ community outside
Moscow. He died virtually abandoned by everyone
except close friends. Critical acclaim for his work
did not come in Russia until years after his death.
Pasternak is now recognized as one of the great-
est writers of the 20th century. He left a legacy of
courage and genius that is still admired today. He
sacrificed his life for his work, to which his own
countrymen were denied access until the 1970s.
A Work about Boris Pasternak
Barnes, Christopher. Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biog-
raphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Paton, Alan (1903–1988) poet
Alan Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal,
South Africa. His father was James Paton, a Scot
who had migrated to South Africa in 1895, and his
mother was a descendant of English immigrants.
His parents were not highly educated, but they were
staunchly religious, and Paton grew up reading the
Bible. His strict father often beat his sons when they
were young, and the trauma of Paton’s childhood
deeply affected his views about authority and cor-
poral punishment. His father’s influence is not al-
together negative, however; he encouraged Paton to
love books and nature. Paton was an avid reader of
literature, such as the works of Charles Dickens,
Walter Scott, and Rupert Brooke. He attended high
school at the Maritzburg College from 1914 to 1918
and completed his college education at Natal Uni-
versity College in 1924. Paton worked as a teacher
at the Ixopo High School for White Students, where
he met his first wife. In 1935, Paton was appointed
principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for young
offenders. This experience formed the basis of his
political consciousness. Paton resigned from his job
and, in 1953, formed the South African Liberal
Party (disbanded in 1968).
Paton’s most famous novel is Cry, the Beloved
Country, which was published in 1948. By the time
of Paton’s death, the book had sold more than 15
million copies worldwide. It was also adapted into
two films. Kumalo’s journey in the book reflects
Paton’s concern with major themes that influenced
his life, such as authority, racial discrimination,
and religion. Paton’s empathetic portrayal of Ku-
malo, a black Anglican priest, led many white
South Africans to criticize his work for being too
sentimental. At the peak of apartheid in South
Africa, his disdain of racial discrimination and his
idealized vision of eventual reconciliation of the
two racial groups were deemed too revolutionary.
Paton was a sort of liminal figure because he stood
on the line that borders the two worlds of white
and black South Africans. Most of the white
Afrikaners rejected him for his sympathy for the
black Africans, and some of the latter viewed his
writing with suspicion, evidently shown in the
mixed reactions to his portrayal of characters and
interracial relationships in Cry, the Beloved Coun-
try. Paton’s next international success, Too Late the
Phalarope (1953), further explores the themes of
racial and political inflexibility.
Paton’s work against apartheid won him the an-
nual Freedom Award in 1960. His other works in-
clude autobiographies and biographies of famous
political figures such as Jan Hofmeyer, the cabinet
minister. Paton’s main contribution to African lit-
erature lies in his balanced perspective and opti-
mism, untainted by the bitterness that often
accompanies other African writings.
Other Works by Alan Paton
Journey Continued: An Autobiography. New York:
Scribner, 1988.
Save the Beloved Country. New York: Scribner, 1989.
Towards the Mountains. New York: Scribner, 1980.
Works about Alan Paton
Alexander, Peter F. Alan Paton: A Biography. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994.
342 Paton, Alan
Chapman, Michael. South African Literatures. Lon-
don: Longman, 1996.
Pavese, Cesare (1908–1950) novelist, poet,
translator
Cesare Pavese was born in Santo Stefano Belbo,
Italy, to Eugenio Pavese, a clerk at a law court in
Turin, and Consolina Mesturini. His rural Italian
roots are a big part of his identity, and his poetry
and fiction are infused with images connected to
his poor beginnings. As a young boy, he spent
summers in the country and the rest of the year in
Turin. When Pavese was six, however, his father
died of a brain tumor. His mother, determined to
give him a good education, enrolled him in the
Liceo Massimo D’Azeglio school. Augusto Monti,
his Italian and Latin teacher there, became an in-
fluential mentor in his life. Monti encouraged his
bright pupil to read the works of Vittorio Alfieri,
an 18th-century Italian dramatist whose works ex-
plored themes of political freedom and the dangers
of tyranny. Monti introduced Pavese to politics,
specifically the need for civic awareness, and
helped instill in him a disdain for totalitarianism.
In 1927, Pavese enrolled in the Faculty of Letters
at the University of Turin. He wrote his thesis on
U.S. poet Walt Whitman and graduated with a de-
gree in literature in 1930. Other writers played a
key role in Pavese’s career as he translated many
works of famous writers, beginning in 1931 with
his translation of Sinclair Lewis’s Our Mr. Wrenn.
Other notable translations include Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick (1932), Daniel Defoe’s Moll
Flanders (1938), and Charles Dickens’s David Cop-
perfield (1939).
Pavese did not, however, limit himself to trans-
lating. Hard Labor, his collection of verse, was
published in 1936. In her biography Cesare
Pavese, Aine O’Healy says the collection is “one
of Pavese’s most challenging and ambitious
works, and it contains the nucleus of all the
thematic preoccupations of his subsequent writ-
ing,” such as rural versus urban life, parenthood,
and work.
Heavily influenced by Whitman and other
poets, Pavese set out to create serious narrative po-
etry. His poem “South Seas,” for example, is a re-
counting of a walk in the countryside with his
cousin; yet, it takes on epic proportions.
Pavese’s entry into novel writing took place to-
ward the end of his life. His first novel, The Beau-
tiful Summer (written in 1940), is a coming of age
story about a working-class girl in Turin. Among
Single Women, a novel that studied the “false tragic
world of the upper class,” followed in 1949. Pavese
returns to the coming-of-age story in The Devil in
the Hills (1948), but this time uses three young
men as his characters and human freedom and
limitation as his themes. These collective works
earned Pavese the Strega Prize for fiction in 1950.
Pavese’s contributions in the areas of poetry
and fiction are noteworthy. His novels, translated
into many languages, helped establish Italian neo-
realism, a movement in art, literature, and film
characterized by its preoccupation with everyday,
working-class life and leftist politics. In addition,
his translations helped American classical litera-
ture reach a wider Italian audience. When he com-
mitted suicide in 1950, Pavese left this diary entry:
“I have done my public share—as much as I could
do. I have worked. I have given people poetry. I
have shared the sufferings of many.”
Another Work by Cesare Pavese
The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese. Translated by
R. W. Flint. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1968.
A Work about Cesare Pavese
Áine O’Healey. Cesare Pavese. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Pavlova, Karolina Karlovna
(1807–1893) poet, novelist
Karolina Pavlova was born in Yaroslavl, Russia, but
spent her childhood and most of her adulthood in
Moscow with parents of German origin. Her fa-
ther, Karl Yanish, was a professor of chemistry
and physics, a physician, an amateur astronomer,
Pavlova, Karolina Karlovna 343
and a scholar of literature and painting. Pavlova
received a marvelous education as a child: She was
an avid reader, was fluent in four languages by age
12, and often helped her father collect astronomi-
cal data.
Pavlova began her literary career in the late
1820s, translating Aleksandr PUSHKIN’S poetry into
German and French. When she began to compose
poetry, she also did so in French and German. Her
translations were quite popular in the fashionable
salons of Moscow, and Pavlova was inspired to
compose poetry in Russian.
In 1836, she married N. F. Pavlov, a mediocre
writer who was in constant trouble with authori-
ties because of his political activities. Pavlova’s po-
etry was at its most popular in the 1840s, and in
1848 Pavlova successfully published a novel, A
Double Life. She soon found herself bankrupt, as
her husband gambled away her inheritance. Indig-
nant, Karl Yanish wrote a letter to government of-
ficials, fully describing the antigovernment
activities of Nikolay Pavlov, who was subsequently
imprisoned and sentenced to exile. Public indigna-
tion forced Pavlova to leave Moscow in 1853. She
briefly settled in St. Petersburg until she finally left
Russia in 1861 and settled in Drezden, Germany.
Her poems were collectively published only
once during her lifetime, in 1863, but were over-
looked. In 1915, however, Valery
BRYUSOV edited a
collection of her poems, and Pavlova’s work be-
came popular and appreciated, especially in liter-
ary circles. A Double Life is the only work of
Pavlova translated into English. In the West,
Pavlova’s work is not well known, although some
scholars have begun to reexamine her poetry, par-
ticularly in the context of feminism.
A Work about Karolina Pavlova
Fusso, Susanne, ed. Essays on Karolina Pavlova.
Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Paz, Octavio (1914–1998) poet, essayist
Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City, Mexico. His
father, Octavio Paz, Sr., a lawyer, diplomat, and
journalist, had represented the Mexican revolu-
tionary Emiliano Zapata when he was tried in the
United States. His mother, Josefina Lozano, was a
first-generation Mexican born to Spanish parents.
Paz was educated in his early years in a French
school. In addition, his aunt tutored him in French
and recommended French books for him to read.
As a boy, his favorite authors were Victor
HUGO and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This affinity with French
culture stayed with Paz throughout his life and in-
fluenced both his poetic style and his thought.
In his 20s, Paz’s poetry was noticed by Pablo
NERUDA, and he was invited to Spain to attend the
Second Antifascist Writers Congress. He traveled
in Europe and befriended André BRETON,French
surrealist writer from whom Paz absorbed the
ideas and psychological and philosophical con-
cepts of surrealism. Paz approached these ideas
with classical sensibility and measured logic.
In Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), a collection of
essays, Paz speculates on the sociology of the Mex-
ican national character. He finds that Mexico is a
nation yet to arrive at a final national identity. It is
a culture fragmented by the conflicts between the
old world and the new. Because the culture is frag-
mented, its citizens are unable to connect with
each other, and they find themselves trapped by
solitude. Paz proposes a solution, which he takes
directly from surrealism: The only way to escape
solitude is through romantic love as an act of the
imagination. Paz goes on to say that, for escape to
be possible, Mexican women must be allowed
more freedom to develop their own identities.
Labyrinth of Solitude, thus, has an international
appeal.
Though Paz’s essays have come to be appreci-
ated as much as his poems, his first success and lit-
erary impact was as a poet. His poem Sun Stone
(1957) is perhaps the apex of his poetic vision and
his powers of formal design. Its structure is cyclical
and is metaphorically based on the famous Aztec
calendar stone, a cosmological object that repre-
sents the Aztecs’ religious and physical conception
of the universe. It also has a practical purpose in
that it can be used to help a person calculate the
344 Paz, Octavio
seasons. Paz, in essence, tried to create a poem that
would represent analogously the universe of mod-
ern consciousness in all its grandeur and, at the
same time, be accessible to an individual on a very
personal level.
In both his poetry and his essays, one of Paz’s
primary concerns is how individuals connect to
their society. He applied his formidable critical
powers to the art of literature in his collection of
essays The Bow and the Lyre (1953). His analysis
explores poetic language, the role of the writer, and
the social importance of literature. The book is
filled with learned detail that Paz uses as he strives
to synthesize poetry’s historical and universal as-
pects.
In 1990, Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize in lit-
erature. He was considered a mentor to many
Mexican authors in the generation that came after
him, most importantly to Carlos FUENTES. The two
Mexican authors shared the qualities of a power-
ful imagination and a deep concern for history.
Another Work by Octavio Paz
A Draft of Shadows, and Other Poems. Edited and
translated by Eliot Weinberger, with translations
by Elizabeth Bishop and Mark Strand. New York:
New Directions, 1979.
Works about Octavio Paz
Grenier, Yvon. From Art to Politics: The Romantic Lib-
eralism of Octavio Paz. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2001.
Ivask, Ivar. The Perpetual Present: The Poetry and
Prose of Octavio Paz. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Quiroga, Jose. Understanding Octavio Paz. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
p’Bitek, Okot (1931–1982) poet
Okot p’Bitek was born in Gulu, northern Uganda.
He attended Gulu High School and King’s College
in Budo before taking a two-year course at the
Government Training College in Mbarara in 1952.
He taught English and Religious Knowledge at Sir
Samuel Baker’s School near Gulu, where he was
also the choirmaster. His interest in music began
around this period and continued throughout his
life. P’Bitek became increasingly interested in his
African heritage and tradition. In 1962, he moved
to Oxford University to pursue a degree in social
anthropology and examine closely the richness of
the African tradition. P’Bitek became active in pol-
itics, especially during the 1960s when a movement
was established to gain independence for Uganda.
He returned briefly to Uganda to change the
agenda of the Ugandan Cultural Center in Kam-
pala and then moved to Nairobi to teach at the
university. He finally returned to Makerere Univer-
sity as a professor of creative writing in 1982 but
died tragically five months later.
P’Bitek’s poetry shows the rich influence of his
interests in traditional African song, music, and
oral tradition. He wrote his first poem, “The Lost
Spear” (1952) while he was still a student in
Mbarara. The poem retells the traditional Lwo folk
story regarding the spear, the bead, and the bean.
P’Bitek’s writings also express his concern with
contemporary political issues and display his re-
sourcefulness in blending these concerns with his
musical talent. In Song of Lawino (1966), for ex-
ample, p’Bitek employs strong imagery and lyrical
rhythms to denounce Africans, especially politi-
cians, who embrace Western ideology and discard
their African heritage.
P’Bitek did not reject technological advance-
ment and progress in Uganda, but he disagreed
that these should come at the cost of losing Acoli
cultural values. P’Bitek’s contribution to world lit-
erature lies in his belief and efforts in bringing na-
tive language to the forefront of poetry writing in
Africa, and his works express his concern that
African nations be built on the basis of African be-
liefs, culture, and values, not on Western ones.
Other Works by Okot p’Bitek
African Religions in Western Scholarship. Kampala:
East African Literature Bureau, 1970.
Hare and Hornbill. London: Heinemann, 1978.
The Horn of My Love. London: Heinemann, 1974.
p’Bitek, Okot 345
Works about Okot p’Bitek
Heron, G. A. The Poetry of Okot p’Bitek. London:
Heinemann, 1976.
Ofuani, Ogo. “The Poet as Self-Critic: The Stylistic
Repercussions of Textual Revisions in Okot
p’Bitek’s Song of Ocol.” Research in African Litera-
tures 25, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 159–75.
Pederson, Knut
See HAMSUN
, KNUT.
Perec, Georges (1936–1982) novelist
Georges Perec was born on March 7 in Paris, where
he lived for most of his life. His father was killed
in 1940 in World War II. Perec and other members
of his family sought refuge in the country, but his
mother disappeared from Paris in 1942, and it was
later discovered that she died at Auschwitz. Perec
was raised by his aunt and uncle, served in the
army, married, and published his first works in
magazines.
Perec’s first novel, The Things (1965), was
awarded the Prix Renaudot. He followed this
achievement with 20 more books, no two of them
having the same pattern. He joined a Paris-based
writing group, OULIPO, the Workshop of Poten-
tial Literature, whose main goal was to expand lit-
erary possibilities by borrowing from the fields of
mathematics and logic. Perec became intrigued by
the palindrome, a sentence or word that reads the
same both forward and backward. Perec wrote
one palindrome consisting of more than 5,000
letters.
Perec’s literary output includes novels, short sto-
ries, and word games. He also composed a 466-word
text using a as the only vowel. This experiment led
to his fascination with the lipogram, a text in which
one or more letters may not appear. La Disparition
(1969) is a novel lipogram in E, meaning that the
letter e is never used. This made translating difficult,
as the literal English title, The Disappearance, would
contain the forbidden letter. It was translated in
1994 by Gilbert Adair as A Void.
Largely secretive with regard to his private life,
Perec did publish W, or The Remembrance of Child-
hood (1975), an odd assortment of memoirs inter-
spersed with sections about a dystopian island
called W, where life revolves around sports. His
masterpiece, however, is Life, A User’s Manual
(1978), which tells stories about the residents of an
apartment building. Perec built the work based on
a complex system detailing the number and the
length of the chapters, as well as the appearance of
certain random elements within each of the sto-
ries. Life, A User’s Manual was awarded the Prix
Medici.
Another Work by Georges Perec
53 Days. Translated by David Bellos. London: Harvill,
1992.
A Work about Georges Perec
Bellos, David. Georges Perec: A Life in Words. London:
Harvill, 1993.
Peretz, Isaac Lieb (1852–1915) poet,
novelist, playwright
Isaac Lieb Peretz was born in Zamosc, Poland.
Considered one of the founders of modern Yiddish
literature, he was largely self-educated, gaining
much of his knowledge through extensive read-
ing. A career as a successful lawyer left little time
for Peretz to write until a false accusation forced
him to seek new employment. He was hired as a
cemetery official for the Jewish cemeteries in War-
saw, Poland.
Peretz’s career change left him with ample
time to pursue his writing. He published fiction,
plays, and poems and inspired younger writers to
pursue their goals. He became active in socialist
spheres and was often accused of radicalism.
Attracting negative attention from the authori-
ties, he was imprisoned once for his socialist
activities.
A voice for the Jewish Enlightenment in Poland,
a movement that stressed understanding and em-
bracing Jewish heritage and culture, Peretz wrote
346 Pederson, Knut
his early work in Hebrew and his later work in
Yiddish. Much of his work makes the point that,
although Jews in Poland were materially poor,
their lives were spiritually rich. He glorified the
worker and showed compassion for the poor. For
example, Stories and Pictures (1900; translated
1906), considered his finest work, is a series of Ha-
sidic sketches in which Peretz offers a sympathetic
look at Jewish life. With a tone that is sometimes
loving, sometimes critical, he describes situations
common not only to the Polish Jews of his time
but also to all of humanity.
Peretz’s heroes are the oppressed and the suffer-
ing who exemplify virtue, faith, and unselfishness
that are often lacking in humanity as a whole. The
hero of the short story “Bontsche the Silent” (in
Man’s Search for Values [translated by A. S. Rap-
poport, 1987]), for instance, is a virtuous man who
spends his entire life suffering in silence. He re-
ceives his reward in the afterworld, where he is told
that he can have whatever he desires; however, all
the man can think of requesting is a hot roll and
fresh butter for breakfast every morning. In this
way, Peretz also exemplifies the simple pleasures
of life that are most often taken for granted.
Another Work by Isaac Lieb Peretz
Selected Stories. Translated by Eli Katz. New York:
Zhitlowsky Foundation for Jewish Culture, 1991.
A Work about Isaac Lieb Peretz
Wisse, Ruth R. I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern
Jewish Culture. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1991.
Pérez Galdós, Benito (1843–1920)
novelist, playwright, historian
Benito Pérez Galdós was born on Grand Canary
Island. He was the youngest of 10 children, and his
mother was determined that he would be a lawyer,
thereby bringing middle-class respectability to the
family. Though an intelligent child and very tal-
ented in both the literary and visual arts, he did
not apply himself at school and had no interest in
being a lawyer. Nevertheless, when he was 18, his
mother sent him to the University of Madrid to
study law. Madrid was a true awakening for the
young writer. Though Pérez Galdós had spent
most of his youth in the Canary Islands, it was
Madrid that became the focus of his novels, and he
eventually became the quintessential writer of that
city in the 19th century.
In 1865, he abandoned law school and became
a journalist for the newspaper The Nation. His
years reporting on the news of Madrid served as a
literary apprenticeship in that the skills he ac-
quired later helped him to develop his incredible
REALISM. After Madrid, Pérez Galdós spent some
time in Paris, where he began his first novel, The
Shadow (1871), an odd phantasmagoric novel of
psychological investigation. Its use of fantasy was
uncharacteristic for Pérez Galdós and the realist
style he would develop.
In 1873 Pérez Galdós wrote the first of a series
of five works entitled National Episodes, in which
he dramatizes events from 19th-century Spanish
history as a way to explore issues of morality. In his
concern for the moral character and national iden-
tity of Spain, he can be seen as a precursor and in-
fluence on the writers of the GENERATION OF
1898
.
Pérez Galdós’s historical interest became the
major direction of his later works. Almost all of
this series 46 novels depict the reality of his time or
the recent past while commenting on how the
forces of history affect individual lives. The Disin-
herited Lady (1881) is a perfect example. On the
surface it is a realistic account of a woman’s life in
late 19th-century Spain; however, it is also a sym-
bolic meditation on how the Spanish tendencies of
self-deception and dreaming have led to certain
political tragedies.
Later in his career, such novels as Compassion
(translated 1962) would turn to examine more
closely issues of the spirit and faith. Pérez Galdós
continued to write in the realist mode, of which
he was an exceptional master, but now, instead of
layering his realism with political and historical
ideas, his books began to focus on the metaphysi-
cal forces behind life.
Pérez Galdós, Benito 347