Nadas Rastenis

Nadas Rastenis (16 January 1891 – 10 May 1980) was a Lithuanian poet, translator, and lawyer. Rastenis translated numerous well-known Lithuanian poems to English, such as The Seasons and The Forest of Anykščiai, as well as English poems to Lithuanian, such as Venus and Adonis, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and The Raven. For his pacifist 1941 poem War's Curse, Rastenis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but did not win.

Biography Nadas Rastenis was born on 16 January 1891 in the village of , then part of the Russian Empire, to Antanas Rastenis and Domicelė Rastenienė née Juršėnaitė. Rastenis's grandfather moved to Stagalėnai after the emancipation reform of 1861. Having been able to read from an early age, Rastenis attended a Russian-language primary school in Linkmenys. However, Rastenis's father fell ill, and Rastenis soon returned to his father's farm. For three years, Rastenis lived in various northeastern cities and worked in weavers' shops. From 1912, Rastenis participated in the Lithuanian Freedom Ploughmen Self-Help Society and the Lithuanian American Socialist Society. In 1918, Rastenis was naturalized, and that same year conscripted in the United States Army, Additionally, he acted and sang in the operettas of his cousin Mikas Petrauskas. In 1949, Rastenis published a larger poem entitled Trijų rožių šventė (Three Roses Festival), which he illustrated himself.

War's Curse & Noble Peace Prize nomination Rastenis wrote his most famous work, War's Curse, in 1941. The pacifist poem was published in periodical publications, but did not garner significant attention. It gained popularity only after Congressman Edward Garmatz published it in the Congressional Record in 1966.