Pierre Pascal

Pierre Pascal (16 April 1909 – 13 January 1990) was a French poet, essayist, Iranologist and translator.

He was the only son of chemist Paul Pascal.

In 1933 he began publishing the review Eurydice and founded the publishing firm Éditions du Trident.

During the German occupation, he was chief editor for La voix de France and inspector general of radio for the Vichy government, for which he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with penal labor.

Left France in 1944 and sought asylum in Italy, in April 1945 at the Vittoriale degli italiani (in Gardone Riviera, Lombardy) and then in Rome; remained in Roman exile until his death; named chancellor of the Imperial Embassy of Iran to the Holy See.

In Rome he founded, with the architect Luigi Moretti, a new publishing firm, Éditions du Cœur fidèle.

In 1950 he published a collection of 55 haïkaïses and tankas, In morte di un Samurai, in memory of the general Hideki Tojo, executed for hanging on 23 December 1948.

Maurice Delage composed a work for baritone and chamber orchestra based on Pascal's In morte di un Samurai.

Pascal made a French translation – «a work of philological reconstruction» in the personal view of Mario Praz of the Quatrains by Omar Khayyam.

The edition is mainly based on a manuscript kept at the University of Cambridge library, along with the Chester Beatty of Dublin (the codex kahyyamien by Mohammad Ali Foroughi) - both of them considered late forgeries- and two manuscripts kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.