Robert Fitzgerald

{{Short description|American poet, critic and translator (1910–1985)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Robert Fitzgerald

| image = Robert Fitzgerald portrait.jpg

| caption = Robert Fitzgerald in 1943, by Walker Evans

| birth_name = Robert Stuart Fitzgerald

| birth_date = {{birth date|1910|10|12}}

| birth_place = Geneva, New York, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1985|1|16|1910|10|12}}

| death_place = Hamden, Connecticut, U.S.

| education = Harvard University (BA)

}}

Robert Stuart Fitzgerald (12 October 1910 – 16 January 1985) was an American poet, literary critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students".Mitgang, Herbert (January 17, 1985). Robert Fitzgerald, 74, poet who translated the classics. New York Times He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. He also composed several books of his own poetry.

Biography

Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and graduated from The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut. He entered Harvard in 1929, and in 1931 a number of his poems were published in Poetry magazine. After graduating from Harvard in 1933 he became a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune for a year.

Later he worked for several years for Time. In 1940, William Saroyan lists him among "associate editors" at Time in the play, Love's Old Sweet Song.

{{cite book

| first = William

| last = Saroyan

| author-link = William Saroyan

| title = Love's Old Sweet Song: A Play in Three Acts

| publisher = Samuel French

| url = https://archive.org/stream/lovesoldsweetson013163mbp/lovesoldsweetson013163mbp_djvu.txt

| page = 72

| date = 1940

| access-date = 15 July 2017}} Whittaker Chambers mentions him as a colleague in his 1952 memoir, Witness.

{{Cite book| last = Chambers| first = Whittaker| title = Witness| publisher = Random House| year = 1952| location = New York| page = 478|lccn = 52005149 }}

In World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in Guam and Pearl Harbor. Later he was an instructor at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton University, poetry editor of The New Republic. He succeeded Archibald MacLeish as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard in 1965 and served until his retirement in 1981.

He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. From 1984 to 1985 he was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the United States' equivalent of a national poet laureate, but did not serve due to illness. In 1984 Fitzgerald received a L.H.D. from Bates College.{{Cite web |url=http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/fitzgerald.php |title=Robert Fitzgerald |access-date=2009-06-22 |archive-date=2009-02-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220064157/http://harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/fitzgerald.php |url-status=dead }}

Fitzgerald is widely known as one of the most poetic translators into the English language. He also served as literary executor to Flannery O'Connor, who was a boarder at his home in Redding, Connecticut, from 1949 to 1951. Fitzgerald's wife at the time, Sally Fitzgerald, compiled O'Connor's essays and letters after O'Connor's death. Benedict Fitzgerald (who co-wrote the screenplay for The Passion of the Christ with Mel Gibson), Barnaby Fitzgerald, and Michael Fitzgerald are sons of Robert and Sally.{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Fitzgerald|title=Robert Fitzgerald - American poet|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=February 1, 2019}}

Fitzgerald was married three times. He later moved to Hamden, Connecticut, where he died at his home after a long illness.

Works

=Translations=

{{cite book| title=The Alcestis of Euripides| author=Euripides| others=Translators Dudley Fitts, Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Harcourt, Brace and Company| year=1936 }}
{{cite book| title=Oedipus Rex| author=Sophocles| others= Translators Dudley Fitts, Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Faber and Faber| year=1951 }}
{{cite book| title=Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone| author=Sophocles| others=Translators David Grene, Robert Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Wyckoff| publisher=University of Chicago Press| year=1954 }}
{{cite book | title=Homer's The Odyssey | publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux | year=1961 }}
{{cite book | title=The Odyssey| author=Homer| others=Translator Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company| year=1965}}
{{cite book| title=The Odyssey| author=Homer| others=Translator Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux| year=1998| isbn=978-0-374-22438-7 }}
{{cite book| title=The Iliad| author=Homer | publisher=Doubleday|year=1974}}
{{cite book| title=The Iliad| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OT9pj8chUbQC&q=Robert+Fitzgerald| author=Homer| others=Translator Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Oxford University Press| year=1998| isbn=978-0-19-283405-8 }}
{{cite book| title=The Aeneid| author=Virgil| others= Translator Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Random House| year=1983| isbn=0-394-52827-1 }}

=Poems=

{{cite book| title=Poems| publisher=Arrow Editions| year=1935 }}
{{cite book| title=A Wreath for the Sea| publisher=Arrow editions| year=1943 }}
{{cite book| title=In the Rose of Time: Poems, 1931-1956| publisher=W W Norton & Co Inc| year=1956| isbn=978-0-8112-0279-4 }}
{{cite book| title=Spring Shade: Poems, 1931-1970| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LRklaJVc_4cC&q=Robert+Fitzgerald| publisher=New Directions | year=1971| isbn=978-0-8112-0052-3 }}

=Editor=

{{cite book| title=The Collected Poems of James Agee| editor=Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Calder and Boyars| year=1969| isbn=978-0-7145-0887-0 }}
{{cite book| title=The Collected Short Prose of James Agee| author=James Agee| editor=Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Cherokee Publishing Company| year=1976| isbn=978-0-87797-302-7 }}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL8O0mTosVUC&q=Robert+Fitzgerald| title=Mystery and manners: occasional prose| author=Flannery O'Connor| editor=Sally Fitzgerald, Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Macmillan| year=1969| isbn=978-0-374-50804-3 }}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-Sd3OkSndXQC&q=Robert+Fitzgerald| title=Everything that rises must converge| author=Flannery O'Connor| editor=Sally Fitzgerald, Robert Fitzgerald| publisher=Macmillan| year=1965| isbn=978-0-374-50464-9 }}

References

External links

{{DBCS}}
{{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2928/the-art-of-translation-no-1-robert-fitzgerald| title=Robert Fitzgerald, The Art of Translation No. 1| journal=Paris Review| date=Winter 1984| author= Edwin Frank, Andrew McCord | volume=Winter 1984| issue=94}}
[http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15938 Interview from The Poet's Other Voice]
[http://harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/fitzgerald.php Robert Fitzgerald biography and example of poetry. Part of a series of poets.]
[https://rose.library.emory.edu/ Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library], Emory University: [http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/8z9ds Sally Fitzgerald papers, circa 1930-2000]
Robert Fitzgerald Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Category:1910 births

Category:1985 deaths

Category:American poets laureate

Category:American poets of Irish descent

Category:Choate Rosemary Hall alumni

Category:Harvard Advocate alumni

Category:Greek–English translators

Category:Latin–English translators

Category:Writers from Springfield, Illinois

Category:Writers from Ridgefield, Connecticut

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:20th-century American translators