Michael Henry Heim (January 21, 1943 – September 29, 2012) was a professor of Slavic languages at the
University of California at Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
. He was an active and prolific translator, and was fluent in Czech, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, French, Italian, German, and Dutch. He died on September 29, 2012, of complications from melanoma.
Biography
Heim was born in Manhattan, New York City on January 21, 1943. His father, Imre Hajdu, was Hungarian, born in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
; before moving to the US in 1939 where he was a music composer and master baker. In New York, Imre was working as a piano teacher when he was introduced to Blanche, Heim's mother, whom he married shortly thereafter. Shortly after
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the ...
, Imre joined the US Army. At the time of Heim's birth, Imre was stationed in Alabama.
Heim's father died when he was four, and he was raised by his mother and step-father in Staten Island. In 1966, he was drafted into the US Army during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. When it was discovered that he was the sole surviving son of a soldier who had died in service, he was relieved from the draft.
During the Soviet invasion of
in 1968, Heim was in Prague employed as translator by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
. When the tanks rolled into Prague, he was in the unique position of being able to translate between Czech and Russian, thereby facilitating communications between the Soviet soldiers and the Czechoslovaks on the streets. With his knowledge of German, he was also able to assist a West German television crew in navigating the occupied city and interviewing ordinary Czech citizens, and to warn potential victims that Soviet agents were looking for them.
He was married for thirty-seven years to his wife, Priscilla Smith Kerr, who brought three children of her own, Rebecca, Jocelyn and Michael, into the family from a previous marriage. He died on September 29, 2012 of complications from melanoma.
Education
Heim graduated from
Curtis High School
Curtis High School, operated by the New York City Department of Education, is one of seven public high schools located in Staten Island, New York City, New York. It was founded on February 9, 1904, the first high school on Staten Island.
Histo ...
on Staten Island, where he studied French and German. He double-majored in Oriental Civilization and Russian Language and Literature, studying Chinese and Russian at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
as an undergraduate, and worked with
Gregory Rabassa
Gregory Rabassa, ComM (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016), was an American literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens College.
Life and career
Rabassa was born in Yonkers, ...
, an acclaimed translator. As an American citizen, he had no chance of visiting China after his graduation, so he decided to concentrate on Russian at the postgraduate level. He received his PhD in Slavic Languages from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
in 1971, under the mentorship of
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,
Career
Heim was one of the finest and most prolific translators of his age. He was also a faculty member of the
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures for nearly 40 years, being promoted prior to his death to UCLA Distinguished Professor.
Every two years, Heim taught a workshop in literary translation at UCLA's Department of Comparative Literature, which was highly regarded by his students.
Heim served as editor of a translation series published by
Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism ...
, and was several times a juror for the
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
.
After Heim's death, it was revealed with his wife's permission that he was the secret donor behind the PEN Translation Fund, which was set up in 2003 with his gift of $730,000.
Awards and recognition
Heim garnered unusually wide recognition for his translations, and was considered one of the foremost literary translators of the late twentieth century. He won the 2005
Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize
The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize named for the German–American publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff "honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English" published in the USA the previous year ...
for German-to-English translation of
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
’s ''
Death in Venice
''Death in Venice ''(German: ''Der Tod in Venedig'') is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1912. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a Poli ...
'' (''Der Tod in Venedig''). He received the
PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, named in honor of U.S. translator Ralph Manheim, is a literary award given every three years by PEN America (the U.S. chapter of International PEN) to a translator "whose career has demonstrated a commit ...
in 2009. In 2010, he received the
PEN Translation Prize
The PEN Translation Prize (formerly known as the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize through 2008) is an annual award given by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to outstanding translations into the English language. It has been p ...
for his translation from the Dutch of ''Wonder'' (''De verwondering'', 1962) by
Hugo Claus
Hugo Maurice Julien Claus (; 5 April 1929 – 19 March 2008) was a leading Belgian literature, Belgian author who published under his own name as well as various pseudonyms. Claus' literary contributions spanned the genres of drama, the novel, a ...
. The same book was also short-listed for Three Percent's
Best Translated Book Award
The Best Translated Book Award is an American literary award that recognizes the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is conferred by Three Percent, the onlin ...
.
Besides his celebrated translations, Heim was lauded for his research on 18th-century Russian writers and their philosophies of translation, at a time "when the process of literary creation occurred largely through the prism of translation."
Heim was inducted into the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 2002, and received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
in 2006.
Published work
Translations
List taken from Heim's UCLA Faculty page.
From Russian
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*Ageyev, M (October 28, 1998). Novel With Cocaine. Northwestern University Press. p. 204.
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