About the event
Watch the video recording of this event here or below:Burton Pike (1930-2022) was a translator of German and French, known particularly for his work on Robert Musil, including the translation, with Sophie Wilkins, of The Man Without Qualities (1996). He was, as well, a scholar of literature, culture, and translation, author of Robert Musil: An Introduction to His Work (1961) and The Image of the City in Modern Literature (1981),
which was translated into Japanese. A beloved and influential professor and mentor, who numbered Paul de Man and Tomi Ungerer among his friends, Burton was for many years chair of Comparative Literature and German at the CUNY Graduate Center. A Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies, and Fulbright Fellow, he was awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2012 for his translation of Gerhard Meier's Isle of the Dead, and later received the Friedrich Ulfers Prize for his work championing German literature in the United States. He was also awarded the Medal of Merit by the City of Klagenfurt, Austria, for his work on Musil.
Please join us Fri, Nov 17th at 6:00 pm in the Skylight Room at the CUNY Graduate Center, when friends, colleagues, former students, and admirers of Burton will pay tribute to his memory and celebrate the newly published Underlying Rhythm, an anthology of writing and translation that honors his life, work and friendship.
Participants will include Ammiel Alcalay, Esther Allen, David Auerbach, Evelyn Barish, Susan Bernofsky, Roger Celestin, Peter Constantine, Robert Cowan, Genese Grill, Norma Hurlbut, Mark Mirsky, David Rios, Ekaterina Sukhanova, Peter Wortsman, and others.
This celebration event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, the Ph.D. Program in Comparative
Literature, and the MA in Liberal Studies Literary Translation
Concentration at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as World Poetry
Books, The Center for Fiction, Fiction Magazine, and the Goethe Institute.
