Background
He was born in Závažná Poruba in a bricklayer family, in the Žilina region.
He was born in Závažná Poruba in a bricklayer family, in the Žilina region.
After graduation at grammar school in Liptovský Mikuláš in 1948 he went to the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava and studied Slovak language, literature, and history.
From 1952 to 1989 he lectured at the university on the history of Slovak and Czechoslovakian literature. From 1971 to 1972 he taught at a university in Naples. He retired in 1990 and lived with his family in Bratislava.
At age 80 he died at University Hospital in that city.
Rúfus, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature many times since 1991. He became the first winner of the international Crane Summit Award for poetry 2008. As part of the award, his poems have been translated into Chinese. and introduced in Bratislava on his birthday, 10 December 2008. In 1998, a minor planet 33158 Rúfus was named after him.