The 2020 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, the American writer Louise Glück, died this Friday at the age of 80, as reported to the dpa agency by the director of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Glück, author of twelve collections of poetry, addressed issues ranging from childhood and family to loneliness or death, drawing inspiration from ancient mythology and his own life. She made her literary debut in 1968 with ‘Firstborn’ and was soon hailed as one of the most prominent poets in contemporary American literature.
The writer, one of the most famous in the United Stateshas achieved the most important literary awards throughout his career: from the Pulitzeer for ‘The Wild Iris’ (1992) to the National Book Award for ‘Faithful and Virtuous Night’ (2014).
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature went to the American poet for her “unmistakable poetic voice, which, with an austere beauty, makes individual existence universal.” Thus, many of her poems developed practically like confessions or conversations between two people, as in “Night Song”, which ended: “Tonight you are like me, one of the lucky ones. / You will get what you want. You will obtain your oblivion.
Trajectory
Glück was born in 1943 in New York and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Aside from her writings, she was a professor of English at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
From his literary career, ‘Averno’ (2006) stands out, a visionary interpretation of the myth of the descent of Persephone to hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death.
In one of Glück’s most praised collections, ‘The Wild Iris’ (1992), the American poet describes the miraculous return of life after winter in the poem ‘Snowdrops’.
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His collection of essays includes ‘Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry’ for which he received the Martha Albrand Prize for Nonfiction Literature from the world writers’ association PEN Club International.
The Valencian publishing house Pre-Textos is the main responsible for the publication of Glück’s work in Spanish. Among his titles, ‘The Wild Iris’, ‘Ararat’, ‘Averno’, ‘The Seven Ages’, ‘Vita Nova’ or ‘Praderas’.