In the Studio with Paula Rego: An Interview with Anthony Rudolf, Poet, Translator and Artist's Model

Abstract

During the more than half a century since his earliest appearances in print, Anthony Rudolf has published many works in prose and verse, and also translated (and co-translated) books, mainly poetry, from the French and other languages. As a literary essayist, he has written on authors as diverse as Balzac, Byron, Borges and George Oppen, as well as several essays on Primo Levi and Yves Bonnefoy. He has also written on the work of visual artists, including Paula Rego, R. B. Kitaj, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Charlotte Salomon and Fermin Rocker, and younger artists including Haidee Becker, Jane Joseph, Jane Bustin, Arturo di Stephano, Paul Coldwell and Charlotte Hodes. In addition, he is a reviewer and obituarist and has contributed to Radio Three, Radio Four and—in English, French and Russian—the BBC World Service. Born in London in 1942, he still lives in the north-west of the city. His books include Jerzyk (2017), a study of the diary of his second cousin, the youngest known suicide of the Holocaust; Silent Conversations (2013) (a book on his reading); and European Hours (collected poems, 2017), whose eponymous prologue is a prose poem about places visited with Paula over the years.