Ewald Osers

Ewald Osers (13 May 1917 – 11 October 2011) was a Czech translator and poet born in Prague, Austria-Hungary.

Career

He translated several important Czech poetry works of the 20th century into English, including Jaroslav Seifert, Vítězslav Nezval, Miroslav Holub and Jan Skácel. He also translated several German-language authors such as Thomas Bernhard, as well as Macedonian-language books (Mateja Matevski), poetry of the Silesian poet Ondra Lysohorsky, and two major Slovak poets, Miroslav Válek and Milan Rúfus.

Selected bibliography

Works

• Arrive Where We Started (poems), 1995
• Snows of Yesteryear (memoir), 2007

Translations

• Modern Czech Poetry: An Anthology, 1945 (with J.K. Montgomery)
• Richard Strauss, A Working Friendship: The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1961 (with H. Hammelmann)
• Paul Carell, Scorched Earth: Hitler's War on Russia, Vol. 2, 1970
• Three Czech Poets: Vítězslav Nezval, Antonín Bartušek, Josef Hanzlík, 1971 (with G. Theiner)
• Óndra Łysohorsky, Selected Poems, 1971
• Reiner Kunze, With the Volume Turned Down, and Other Poems, 1973
• Contemporary German Poetry, 1976
• Rose Ausländer, Selected Poems, 1977
• Rudolf Langer, Wounded No Doubt: Selected Poems, 1979
• Nahapet Kuchak, A Hundred and One Hayrens, 1979
• Jaroslav Seifert, The Plague Column, 1979
• Walter Helmut Fritz, Without Remission: Selected Poems, 1981
• Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler, 1983
• Jaroslav Seifert, An Umbrella from Piccadilly, 1983
• Miroslav Holub, On the Contrary, and Other Poems, 1984
• Nikola Vaptsarov, Nineteen Poems, 1984
• Voices from across the Water: Translations from Twelve Languages, 1985
• Karel Čapek, War with the Newts, 1985, new trans., 1990
• Lyubomir Levchev, Stolen Fire: Selected Poems, 1986
• The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, 1986 (with G. Gibian)
• Miroslav Holub, The Fly, 1987 (with J. Milner and G. Theiner)
• Jaroslav Cejka, Michael Cernik, and Karel Sys, New Czech Poetry, 1988
• Vladimír Janovic, The House of the Tragic Poet, 1988
• Mateja Matevski, Footprints of the Wind: Selected Poems, 1988
• Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew, 1986
• Thomas Bernhard, Cutting Timber, 1988
• Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters, 1989
• Thomas Bernhard, The Cheap-Eaters, 1990
• Miroslav Holub, Poems Before and After: Collected English Translations, 1990 (with I. Milner, J. Milner, and Theiner)
• Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, 1990
• Thomas Bernhard, Yes, 1991
• Ivan Klíma, Love and Garbage, 1991
• Josef Hanzlík, Selected Poems, 1992 (with I. Milner and J. Milner)
• Michael Krüger, The End of the Novel, 1992
• Michael Krüger, The Man in the Ice, 1994
• Heinz Piontek, Selected Poems, 1994
• Miroslav Válek, The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Selected Poems, 1996
• Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, 1997
• Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, 1997
• Jan Skácel, Banned Man: Selected Poems, 2001
• Milan Rúfus, And That's the Truth! Poems in English & Slovak, 2005

Awards

• 1971: Schlegel-Tieck Prize, for Scorched Earth by Paul Carell
• 1987: European Poetry Translation Prize, for The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert