John Felstiner | |
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![]() Felstiner at Stanford University in 2009 | |
Website | canpoetrysavetheearth.com |
John Felstiner (July 5, 1936 – February 24, 2017), Professor Emeritus of English at Stanford University,[1] was an American literary critic, translator, and poet. His interests included poetry in various languages, environmental and ecologic poems, literary translation, Vietnam era poetry and Holocaust studies.[2] John Felstiner died in February 2017 at the age of 80. He had been suffering from the effects of progressive aphasia at his time of death, at a hospice near Stanford.
Felstiner was born in Mount Vernon, New York[3] and grew up in New York and New England. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy,[4] Harvard College, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1958, and Harvard University, Ph.D., 1965.[2]
From 1958 to 1961, he served on the USS Forrestal, in the Mediterranean.[5] Felstiner came to Stanford University in 1965 and was a professor of English at Stanford until his retirement in 2009. Felstiner is also known for writing, non academically but very movingly, of a former student of his, Elizabeth Wiltsee, in the late 60’s at Stanford. Pretty, precocious “Liz” Wiltsee had been a brilliant literature student, who declined into mental illness and homelessness, never fulfilling her great promise. She died around the age of 50, under mysterious circumstances.[5] While at Stanford, Felstiner was three times a fellow at Stanford Humanities Center; a Fulbright professor at University of Chile (1967–68); visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1974–75); and visiting professor of Comparative Literature and English at Yale University (1990, 2002).[2]
His collection of Paul Celan’s manuscripts, letters, and widespread context, along with Felstiner’s own translation archive, are housed at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.[6]
John and his wife, the writer, historian and professor Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, have two children: Sarah and Alek, and also two grandchildren.[7]