Milan Rúfus was a Slovak

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, essayist, translator, children's writer and academic.

He was born in Závažná Poruba

Závažná Poruba

Závažná Poruba is a village and municipality in Liptovský Mikuláš District in the Žilina Region of northern Slovakia.-History:In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1263.The Slovak poet Milan Rufus was born in the village in 1928....

, in the Zilina

Žilina

Žilina is a city in north-western Slovakia, around from the capital Bratislava, close to both the Czech and Polish borders. It is the fourth largest city of Slovakia with a population of approximately 85,000, an important industrial center, the largest city on the Váh river, and the seat of a...

 region. As a student at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

 he studied Slovak language and literature, and history. From 1952 to 1989 he lectured at the university on the history of Slovak and Czech literature. From 1971 to 1972 he taught at a university in Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

. He retired in 1990 and lived with his family in Bratislava

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

. At age 80 he died at University Hospital in that city.

Rúfus published his first poems in the 1940s and his first collection, Až dozrieme ("When We Grow Mature") in 1956. Another 20 poetry books followed. A children's book, Modlitbičky ("Little Prayers") has been called his most successful work. Toward the end of his life he also published Báseň a čas ("Poem and Time") and Vernosť ("Fidelity").

In a book of essays, Človek, čas a tvorba ("Human, Time and Creation"), he examined questions of poetry and its relation to truth, homeland and time.

As a translator he produced a Slovak version of Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

's Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...

.

Awards and recognition

Rufus, whose works have been translated into 15 languages, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times since 1991. He became the first winner of the international Crane Summit Award for poetry 2008. As part of the award, his poems will be translated into Chinese.