Francis Golffing (November 10, 1910 – January 9, 2012) was an Austrian-American poet, essayist, teacher, and translator.

Life

Born in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, to a family of industrialists, Franz Karl Golffing studied philosophy, art history, and literature in Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Freiburg, and finally Basel, where he obtained a doctorate in 1934 for his dissertation on the poetry of

Friedrich Rückert Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert (16 May 1788 – 31 January 1866) was a German poet, translation, translator, and professor of Oriental languages. Biography Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was born 16 May 1788 in Schweinfurt and was the e ...

. After post-graduate work in Grenoble he returned to Vienna where he worked as a journalist and radio commentator. He published his first volume of poems in 1938. During the political upheavals in Germany in 1938, Golffing's family lost everything. The Nazis seized the family's factories and jailed Golffing's uncle. His younger brother Peter Conrad Golffing emigrated to America in 1938. Family lost their factory managed by his uncle, who was thrown into camp. Although Golffing had trouble obtaining a visa at first, in 1939 he was able to leave Austria for England, where he worked as a tutor. In 1940 he emigrated to the United States for a tutorial position at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. At Stanford, Golffing met the poets

Yvor Winters Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic. Life Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and Pasadena, where his grandparents ...

J. V. Cunningham James Vincent Cunningham (August 23, 1911 – March 30, 1985) was an American poet, literary critic and teacher. Background Cunningham is described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist. His poetry was distinguished by its clarity, brevity and t ...

, and Barbara Gibbs (1912-1993). Gibbs and Cunningham were married, but they divorced in 1942, and Golffing married her soon after. He took a position at

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...

, where he taught French, Latin, and Greek, and worked also as French instructor as Central High School. Through Brewster Ghiselin and Ray West, who curated a literary circle in Salt Lake City, he met the poet Ellis Foote, who would be a lifelong friend. Years later, Foote would credit Golffing with encouraging his work during several decades of withdrawal from the literary world: :My renascence in poem writing (after a 22-year death in city management) began a year ago… I was writing poems of a far more somber if not serious nature, partly from life … and partly from correspondence, particularly with two dear old friends and poets who had kept the faith over the years, Francis and Barbara Golffing. Golffing and his wife also broadcast a daily cultural program on radio station

KLO Klo or KLO may refer to: * Kalibo International Airport (IATA: KLO), Philippines * Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, India * Karabakh Liberation Organization (), Azerbaijan * Korea Liaison Office, an American intelligence unit in the Korean War * ...

. He was drafted during WWII and served as a French translator. In 1948, Golffing accepted a position at

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932,

, where he would teach French, English, philosophy, and semantics alongside writers including

Stanley Edgar Hyman Stanley Edgar Hyman (June 11, 1919 – July 29, 1970) was an American literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary texts. He was the husband of writer Shirley Jackson. L ...

Howard Nemerov Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. Nemerov was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis. He was twice ...

Bernard Malamud Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish ...

Claude Fredericks Claude Fredericks (October 14, 1923 – January 11, 2013) was an American poet, playwright, printer, writer, and teacher. He was a professor of literature at Bennington College in Vermont for more than 30 years, from 1961 to 1992. In the la ...

Ben Belitt Ben Belitt (May 2, 1911 – August 17, 2003) was an American poet and translator. Besides writing poetry, he also translated several books of poetry by Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca from Spanish to English.Kenneth Burke Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke ...

during the school's golden age. He remained at Bennington for twenty years, with occasional leaves to teach in Berlin (where he headed the American Institute) and Heidelberg. During the summers, he served as director of the Cummington School of the Arts. The poet

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political acti ...

, who was one of his students, later reminisced, “I would sit in on Francis Golffing's class on Rilke simply to hear the German read out loud, though I couldn't understand it.” Among his many students was the illustrator

Norman Rockwell Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of Culture of the United States, the country's culture. Roc ...

, who enrolled as an adult to take a writing class with him in 1952. In 1968, he resigned from Bennington in frustration over his low salary (Malamud expressed his sympathy), and moved to Peterborough, New Hampshire to become director of Humanities at

Franklin Pierce College Franklin Pierce University is a private university in Rindge, New Hampshire, United States. It was founded as Franklin Pierce College in 1962, combining a liberal arts foundation with coursework for professional preparation. The school gained un ...

. Upon his retirement in 1977, he founded The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies. He spent his final years in Waldoboro, Maine. A wide-ranging intellectual, Golffing published in the fields of poetry, philosophy, literary criticism, art criticism. His major works include ''Gedichte'' (1938), ''Poems, 1943-1949'' (1949), ''Aphorisms'' (1967), ''Collected Poems'' (1980), and ''Possibility: An Essay in Utopian Vision'', with Barbara Gibbs (1963, 1991). His translations include Kandinsky's ''Concerning the Spiritual in Art'' (1947), and Nietzsche's ''The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals'' (1956). He contributed poems, translations, and essays to a wide variety of publications, including ''New Directions in Prose and Poetry'' (1941), ''Noonday'' (1958), ''Art International'', ''Centennial Review'', ''Commentary'', ''Ethics'', ''Euphorion'', ''Germanistik'', ''Hudson Review'', ''Nation'', ''Parnassus'', ''Partisan Review'', ''Poetry'', ''Sewanee Review'', ''Southern Review'', and ''The New Yorker''. He also pursued the visual arts, and mounted exhibitions of his paintings and drawings. An archive of Francis Golffing's papers was sold by the

antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...

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, Carpe Librum.

Books and pamphlets

Poetry

*''Gedichte'' (Vienna: Saturn Verlag, 1938) *''Poems, 1943–1949'' (Cummington: Cummington Press, 1949) *''American Letters'' (Villiers Publications, 1957) *''Selected Poems'' (New York: Macmillan, 1961) *''Aphorisms'' (Amherst: Green Knight Press, 1967) *''To a Fair Detective and other poems'' (Amherst: Green Knight Press, 1972) *''Collected Poems'' (Omaha: Abattoir Edition, 1980), 1/252 copies *''Women’s Movement'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1980), 1/50 copies *''Women’s Movement II'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1981), 1/50 copies *''The Malcontent'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1982), 1/35 copies *''Neobule’s Soliloquy: After Horace, Odes III, 12'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1983) *''New Poems'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1984) *''Poems, 1984–1986'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1983), 1/40 copies. *''Finger Exercises'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1990), 1/15 copies. Broadside. *''Neobule’s Soliloquy: After Horace, Odes III, 12'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1992), 1/20 copies *''Object Lesson'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1997), 1/35 copies *''A Glimpse of Montenegro'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1999), 1/60 copies

Criticism

*''Friedrich Rückert als lyriker: ein Beitrag zu seiner Würdigung'' (Vienna, 1935) *''Possibility: An Essay in Utopian Vision'', with Barbara Gibbs (Amherst: Green Knight Press, 1963) *''Possibility: An Essay in Utopian Vision'', with Barbara Gibbs, rev. ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 1991)

Translations

*Wassily Kandinsky, ''Concerning the spiritual in art: and painting in particular, 1912'', with Michael Sadleir (Wittenborn, Schultz, 1947) *Friedrich Nietzsche, ''The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals'' (Doubleday, 1956). *''Likenesses: Translations'' (Francestown, NH: Typographeum, 1979), 1/75 copies. *Georg Trakl, ''Seven Poems of Georg Trakl'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1985), 1/60 copies *Else Lasker-Schüler, ''Five Poems of Else Lasker-Schüler'' (Francestown, NH: R. T. Risk, 1986), 1/50 copies *Johannes Bobrowski, ''Boehlendorf: A Short Story and Seven Poems by Johannes Bobrowski'' (Francestown, NH: Typographeum, 1989), 1/125 copies in cloth

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Golffing, Francis 1910 births 2012 deaths Austrian emigrants to the United States Stanford University staff Bennington College faculty American essayists American male poets Translators of Friedrich Nietzsche American men centenarians