Andolin Eguzkitza, In Memoriam

Andolin Eguzkitza, member of the Basque Academy of Letters, writer and translator, has died. Born in Santurtzi (Bizkaia) in 1953, he was Professor in the Faculty of Philology, Geography and History at the University of the Basque Country at the Gasteiz-Vitoria campus.

Eguzkitza came down from Deusto University with Latin Languages, in 1975. He took his Masters degree in General Linguistics at Iowa University in 1980. After this, he did his PhD degree at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1986. Here, up to his passing away, he was a member of the Department of Basque Studies and more recently, in 2003 to be exact, he was appointed Chair of General Linguistics there. He has bestowed to us a great number of books and articles on linguistics, especially in the field of syntax, published in Basque, Spanish, English and German.

He was a member of the Basque Academy of Letters being an associate member from 1991 and full member since 2001.

He was the President of the Association of Writers in the Basque Language between 1997 and 2002. In his facet as a writer, he published a great number of works of poetry as well as literary criticism and novels, amongst which the following deserve special mention: Lehen orenean (Elkar 1978), Orhiko mendirantz urratsez urrats (Pamiela 1986), Urkidian zehar (Pamiela, 1987), Mila urte igaro eta, ura bere bidean (Susa, 1993), Herioaren itzalpeetan (Txalaparta, 1998) and Quan plou en les entranyes/Erraietan barrena euria egiten digunean (Brosquil 2001).

As a translator, together with Olga Omatos, he published an anthology in Basque of the Greek poet, Konstandinos Kavafis (Pamiela 1995), and also a Basque translation of the work Das Treffen in Telgte/Batzarra Telgten (Alberdania 2002), by Gunter Grass.

During the last General Elections to the Spanish State Legislature (Las Cortes) he stood as a candidate for the Senate for the Aralar-Zutik Coalition.