Ralph Manheim
Ralph Frederick Manheim was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th century, and likened translation to acting, the role being "to impersonate his author".
Early life
Manheim was born to a Jewish family in New York City. His father was a rabbi and his mother a homemaker. He lived for a year in Germany and Austria as an adolescent and graduated from Harvard at the age of 19, and spent time in Munich and Vienna before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. He also undertook post-graduate study at Yale and Columbia Universities.Career
His career as a translator began with Hitler's Mein Kampf, commissioned by Houghton Mifflin and published in 1943. Manheim endeavored to give an exact English equivalent of Hitler's highly individual, often awkward style, including his grammatical errors.Manheim translated the works of Bertolt Brecht, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, philosopher Martin Heidegger, Hermann Hesse, Novalis, and many others. His translation of Henry Corbin's work Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi could be considered a major contribution towards the understanding of Ibn Arabi's and Sufi philosophy in the English-speaking world.
In 1961, he rendered transcripts of the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann into English, and Grimm's Tales For Young and Old – The Complete Stories, published in 1977. Modern readers are familiar with his 1986 translation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was published with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, in conjunction with the release of the 1986 film Nutcracker: The Motion Picture. Lovers of children's books also admire his agile translation of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.
Later life
In the 1940s, Manheim lived on Long Island and was a neighbor of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Krasner has stated that all of the titles for the paintings in Pollock's groundbreaking first show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948 were provided by Manheim.He moved to Paris in 1950 and lived there until 1985, when he moved with his fourth wife to Cambridge, England. He died in 1992, at age 85, from complications associated with prostate cancer.
Selected translations
Efraim's Book by Alfred AnderschThe Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt BrechtBaal by Bertolt BrechtThe Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt WeillThe Guiltless by Hermann BrochJourney to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand CélineCastle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand CélineDeath on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand CélineUne saison au Congo by Aimé CésaireCreative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi by Henry CorbinThe Neverending Story by Michael EndeThe Freud/Jung LettersThe Life Before Us by Romain GaryThe Tin Drum by Günter GrassCat and Mouse by Günter GrassThe Rat by Günter GrassGrimm's Tales for Young and Old - The Complete StoriesA Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter HandkeThe Left-Handed Woman by Peter HandkeShort Letter, Long Farewell by Peter HandkeSlow Homecoming by Peter HandkeRepetition by Peter HandkeKnulp by Hermann HesseCrisis: Pages From a Diary by Hermann HesseReflections by Hermann HesseMein Kampf by Adolf HitlerThe Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. A. HoffmannThe History of the Maghrib: an Interpretive Essay by Abdallah LarouiListen, Little Man! by Wilhelm ReichFrom Lenin to Stalin by Victor SergeLast Times by Victor SergeTemptation by Jànos SzékelyAwards and honors
Manheim received the PEN Translation Prize in 1964.He received the 1970 National Book Award in the Translation category for the first U.S. edition of Céline's Castle to Castle.
He was awarded a 1983 MacArthur Fellowship in Literary Studies. He won the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, in 1988.
Manheim's 1961 translation of Günter Grass's Die Blechtrommel was elected to fourth place among outstanding translations of the previous half century by the Translators Association of the Society of Authors on the occasion of their 50th anniversary in 2008.