Yvan Goll

Born Isaac Lang in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges on March 29, 1891, he became known as Yvan Goll and built a career in both French and German. He studied law in Strasbourg and Paris, and although French was his first language, some of his early writing appeared in German. That bilingual life would become one of the defining features of his work.

Goll is remembered as a poet, playwright, and prose writer connected to both German expressionism and French surrealism. He moved in major literary circles of the early 20th century and is also associated with the competing surrealist manifestos published in 1924. During World War II, he and his wife, the writer Claire Goll, lived in exile in New York before returning to France after the war.

In his later years he continued writing while ill, and his final poems are often noted for their intensity and awareness of mortality. He died near Paris on February 27, 1950. Today he stands out as a distinctly European writer whose work crossed languages and traditions without belonging to just one of them.