Tarn, Nathaniel

American poet, translator, editor, and anthropologist with field work among the Highland Maya and Burmese Buddhists.

Biography

Nathaniel Tarn was born in Paris, France in 1928. His childhood in Belgium was disrupted in 1939, when the threat of World War II prompted the family's removal to England. After graduating in history and English from King's College, Cambridge, Tarn studied anthropology, first at the Sorbonne and then as a Smith-Mundt-Fulbright Scholar at the University of Chicago, where he completed his doctoral degree based on fieldwork in the Mayan region of Guatemala. Further work in anthropology followed, with extensive research on Buddhist culture in Burma. Upon his return to England, Tarn received a teaching appointment to the London School of Economics, followed by a professorship at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). In addition to his expertise in the Highland Maya area and South East Asia, Tarn has also worked in the Himalayan region, China, Japan, Cuba, and Alaska.

After publishing his first volume of poetry Old Savage/Young City in 1964 and a celebrated translation of Pablo Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu in 1966, Tarn decided to concentrate his energies on literature. He served as the General Editor of Cape Editions and the Founding Editor of Cape-Goliard Press in London from 1967 until 1969, then returned to the United States in 1970. Two years later he accepted a professorship in comparative literature at Rutgers, which he held until his retirement in 1985. Today he lives outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, remaining a creative and energetic force in modern poetry and the study of world literature.

As poet, essayist, translator, and editor, Tarn has published some twenty-five books, including an anthology of his collected essays in literary and cultural criticism, Views from the Weaving Mountain (1991). He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Guinness prize (1963), Wenner Gren fellowship (1978, 1980), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fellowship (1984), and a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.

Biography / Administrative History

Arnold Wesker gave a collection of his works to Nathaniel Tarn, in part because Tarn was a very thorough collector, but also to see what such a collection would eventually look like and perhaps, to ascertain at some point in the future what value would be ascribed to such a collection.