Edouard Roditi

Poet, essayist, and translator Edouard Roditi was born in Paris to American parents. He studied at Oxford University and earned his BA from the University of Chicago. His books of poetry and prose included Thrice Chosen (1981), The Confessions of a Saint (1977), The Delights of Turkey (1977), Meetings with Conrad (1977), Emperor of Midnight (1974), New Hieroglyphic Tales: Prose Poems (1968), Dialogues on Art (1960, 1980), Poems 1928–1948 (1949), Oscar Wilde (1947), Prison within Prison: Three Hebrew Elegies (1941), Poems for F. (1934). An art critic for the French journal L’Arche for roughly 30 years, Roditi was closely associated with the Surrealist movement, and he was the first to translate the writings of the French surrealist Andre Breton into English. He lived most of his life in Paris, though he spent time in the United States and worked as a translator at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He died in Spain in 1992.