Paul Trensky (1929-2013)

SVU member, a retired professor of Russian literature and comparative drama at Fordham University, Paul I. Trensky, died on March 10, 2013 in his New Paltz, NY, home.

He was born on March 24, 1929 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia and emigrated to US in 1956, and after one year at Vienna University, earned his Ph.D. in Russian literature at Harvard in 1962. He joined Fordham University in 1964 and retired in 2008. Always interested in Czech drama and theater, he wrote Czech Drama since World War (1978). He was also a contributor to Czech theater journals on New York, Berlin, and Czech theater and cultural topics.

In 1991 his The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký was published and in 1994, it was translated into Czech. During 1990-1993, he was Editor-in-Chief of Czechoslovak and Central European Journal, now Kosmas, published by SVU.

In 1993, his reports-essays on the Salzburg Festspiele and since 2001 the Berliner Theatertreffen, were published annually in the Prague journal SaD = Svět a divadlo (The World and Theater).

He is survived by his second wife, Misha Harnick, a son from his first marriage, Michael of Connecticut, and two granddaughters.

-MR

REMEMBERING