Édouard Roditi (6 June 1910 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France – 10 May 1992 in Cadiz, Spain) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, short-story writer, critic and translator.

Literary career

A prolific writer, Édouard Roditi published numerous volumes of poetry, short stories, and art criticism starting with ''Poems for F'' (Paris: , 1935). He was also well regarded as a translator, rendering into English original works from French, German, Spanish, Danish, Portuguese and Turkish. He was, for instance, one of the first to translate the work of French poet

Saint-John Perse Alexis Leger (; 31 May 1887 – 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (; also Saint-Leger Leger), was a French poet, writer and diplomat, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the ev ...

into English, in a volume published in 1944. In 1961, he translated

Yaşar Kemal Yaşar Kemal (; born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 – 28 February 2015) was a leading Turkish writer of Kurdish descent, who wrote in Turkish and a human rights activist. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candid ...

's epic novel ''İnce Memed'' (1955) under the English title ''

Memed, My Hawk ''Memed, My Hawk'' () is a 1955 novel by Yaşar Kemal. It was Kemal's debut novel and the first novel in his İnce Memed tetralogy. The novel won the Varlık Prize for that year (Turkey's highest literary prize), and earned Kemal a national reput ...

''. This book was instrumental in introducing the famed Turkish writer to the English-speaking world. ''Memed, My Hawk'' is still in print. Roditi was a cousin of Kemal's wife, Thilda Serrero. Roditi also translated Robert Schmutzler's ''Art Nouveau'' (1964) into English, in an edition that is still in print. He also translated such authors as C.P. Cavafy,

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; born Paul Antschel; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a German-speaking Romanian poet, Holocaust survivor, and literary translation, literary translator. He adopted his pen name (an anagram of the Romanian spelling Ancel ...

Albert Memmi Albert Memmi (; 15 December 1920 – 22 May 2020) was a French-Tunisian writer and essayist of Tunisian Jewish origins. A prominent intellectual, his nonfiction books and novels explored his complex identity as an anti-imperialist, deeply re ...

Fernando Pessoa Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (; ; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, and publisher. He has been described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th c ...

. In addition to his poetry and translations, Roditi is perhaps best remembered for the numerous interviews he conducted with

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

artists, including

Marc Chagall Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...

Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...

Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright and teacher, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expre ...

, Philippe Derome and

Hannah Höch Hannah Höch (; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar Republic, Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collag ...

. Several of these have been assembled in the collection ''Dialogues on Art''. Reflecting his wide reading of works on sexuality as well as his personal experience, Roditi also published a book-length essay in French on homosexuality titled ''De l'homosexualité'' (Paris: Société des Éditions Modernes/SEDIMO, 1962). The work assesses historical, sociological, religious, medical, legal and literary approaches to the subject; it closes with a seven-page bibliography of sources in French, English and German.

Upbringing, schooling & early jobs

Édouard Roditi's father was a

Sephardi Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

Jew from Istanbul who became an American citizen. His mother was of

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

and Flemish Catholic descent, and a British citizen. He was born in Paris, where his parents had already been living for a number of years. Roditi grew up in France and attended public school there before going on to study in England at

Elstree School Elstree School is an English preparatory school for children aged 3–13 at Woolhampton House in Woolhampton, near Newbury, in the English county of Berkshire. The school is co-educational. History 1848–1938 in Elstree, Hertfordshire The s ...

Charterhouse Charterhouse may refer to: * Charterhouse (monastery), of the Carthusian religious order Charterhouse may also refer to: Places * The Charterhouse, Coventry, a former monastery * Charterhouse School, an English public school in Surrey London ...

and briefly at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and aro ...

. In 1929, he moved back to Paris, where he frequented the proponents of

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and became a partner in the Surrealist publishing house Éditions du Sagittaire. During this period, he visited the celebrated salon of

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...

, whom he found "incredibly pretentious" and "rather offensive." Roditi traveled to the United States in 1929 and 1932, meeting members of the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the ti ...

as well as novelist and photographer

Carl van Vechten Carl Van Vechten (; June 17, 1880December 21, 1964) was an American writer and Fine-art photography, artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary estate, literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame ...

. He returned in 1937 to take a bachelor's degree in Romance languages at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, then went on to do graduate work at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. During World War II, he served in the French short-wave broadcast unit of the

United States Office of War Information The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...

and as a translator for the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

and the

Defense Department A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divided ...

. Following the war, he served as a multilingual interpreter for the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Charter Conference in San Francisco. He subsequently returned to Europe to work as a freelance interpreter for international organizations and conferences, including the International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. In 1950, during the " Lavender Scare", he was fired from that job. Roditi was part of the Benton Way Group with Charles Aufderheide.

Personal life

Édouard Roditi had recognized that he was attracted to other men from an early age, and he actively explored the homosexual milieu of dance halls, bars, bathhouses and public cruising areas in Paris starting in his teen years and continuing in other places where he lived thereafter. Among Roditi's close friends in France in the early 1930s was the American homosexual poet

Hart Crane Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Inspired by the Romantics and his fellow Modernists, Crane wrote highly stylized poetry, often noted for its complexity. His collection '' White Buildings'' (1926), feat ...

. In the United States in the late 1930s, Roditi befriended a fellow gay Jewish writer

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (September 9, 1911 – August 2, 1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the ...

. Roditi's first book, ''Poems for F.'', printed in 250 copies in 1935, was inspired by a two-year affair with a married man, probably an Austrian painter, 20 years older than the poet. Roditi kept the identity of F. secret to the end of his life. In his romantic life, Roditi followed an early-20th-century pattern of seeking out partners among men who did not identify as gay. In a 1984 interview, he recalled, "Personally, I have never been particularly attracted to outright homosexuals, and most of my more enjoyable and lasting relationships have been with bisexual or otherwise normal men in whose love life I was an exception." He considered himself "thrice chosen" by being Jewish, homosexual, and epileptic, as expressed in his anthology titled ''Thrice Chosen'' (1981).

Journal articles

References

* Michael Neal's Édouard Roditi Archive. Cayeux-sur-Mer. France. * Edouard Roditi, "Éloges and other poems, Saint-John Perse", Contemporary Poetry, Baltimore, vol. IV, no. 3, Autumn 1944 * Edouard Roditi, Inventions and Imitations: Tradition and the Advanced Guard in the Work of Edouard Roditi. Interviewer, Richard Candida Smith. Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles. 1986.

External links

*http://glbtqarchive.com/literature/roditi_e_L.pdf *

Edouard Roditi Papers, 1910-1992
at the Charles E. Young Research Library,

University of California Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Cal ...

.
Guide to the Papers of Edouard Roditi (1910-1992)
at the

Leo Baeck Institute, New York The Leo Baeck Institute New York (LBI) is a research institute in New York City dedicated to the study of German-Jewish history and culture, founded in 1955. It is one of three independent research centers founded by a group of German-speaking J ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Roditi, Edouard 1910 births 1992 deaths People educated at Charterhouse School Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American people of Turkish-Jewish descent Jewish American poets American LGBTQ poets French–English translators German–English translators Danish–English translators Turkish–English translators Spanish–English translators 20th-century American poets 20th-century American translators American male poets 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American LGBTQ people French expatriates in the United Kingdom French emigrants to the United States