NASH, Ralph (Lee) 1925-

PERSONAL: Born February 22, 1925, in Sullivan, IN; son of Cecil E. and Flossie F. (Raines) Nash; married Berta Struman (a scholar of Renaissance bibliography), December 17, 1949; children: Thomas, Richard. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Duke University, A.B., 1945, M.A., 1946; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1951. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Home—Huntington Woods, MI. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Wayne State University Press, 4809 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48201-1309.

CAREER: University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, instructor in English, 1948-50; Washington University, St. Louis, MO, assistant professor of English, 1950-54; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, instructor, 1955-58, assistant professor, 1958-61, associate professor, 1961-65, professor of Renaissance literature, 1965-88, assistant chair, 1965-68, chair, Department of English, 1968-71.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, American Association of Teachers of Italian, Renaissance Society of America, North Central Renaissance Society.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1966.

(Translator) T. Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1986.

(Translator and author of commentary) The Major Latin Poems of Jacopo Sannazaro, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Contributor to books, including Studies in Honor of John Wilcox, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1958. Contributor of articles, poetry, and reviews to scholarly journals. Poetry editor, Perspective, 1950s.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A verse translation of Seven Odes of Horace; verse translations of the late plays of Sophocles, Philoctetes and Oedipus Coloneus.

SIDELIGHTS: Ralph Nash told CA: "I have always been primarily interested in writing poetry and secondarily interested in discussing poems. I stopped publishing poems, partly because of my wife's twenty-five-year illness resulting from brain surgery, partly because I didn't want to publish poems to further what we call 'a career.'

"I have come to realize that my poems have been consistently concerned with the puzzling and conflicting problems arising from the human race's origins as a herd animal that became, through the development of a remarkable brain, the top predator in the world, threatening to destroy the world as we have known it. One who reads the works I have chosen to translate will probably see that the same thread runs through those poems. I used to call this 'political versus pastoral,' but it's not a dichotomy—it's deep within us all."

Nash reads Italian, French, German, Spanish, Latin, and Greek.