The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation by Michael Henry Heim

by Michael Henry Heim

When Michael Henry Heim—one of the most respected translators of his generation—passed away in the fall of 2012, he left behind an astounding legacy. Over his career, he translated over sixty works from more than eight different languages, including books by Milan Kundera, Dubravka Ugresic, Hugo Claus, and Anton Chekov. But Mike, as he was known to his legion of friends, was much more than that. His classes at UCLA on translation inspired a new generation of translators, and his work altering the way translation is viewed in the university will impact the livelihood of translators for decades to come. If that weren't enough, upon his death it was revealed that Heim was the anonymous donor responsible for the PEN Translation Fund—the largest fund in America supporting up-and-coming translators. Hundreds of people in the literary community were impacted by Heim's life and actions, and this book is a small way of honoring this quiet, humble man who, among many other things, is responsible for the title The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and all its variants) entering the English idiom. Comprising a number of different sections—a short autobiography, pieces from authors he worked with, essays detailing his impact on literary culture— The Man Between opens a window onto the life and teachings of Michael Henry Heim, and, similar to David Bellos's Is That a Fish in Your Ear? , will be of great interest to anyone interested in language, international culture, and the art of translation. Esther Allen translates from Spanish and French and has worked to promote a culture of translation in the English-speaking world, most notably by directing the PEN Translation Fund from 2003 to 2010 and helping launch the PEN World Voices Festival. Sean Cotter teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas and translates Romanian poetry and fiction, including Nichita Stanescu's Wheel with a Single Spoke for which he received the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. Russell Scott Valentino is the current president of the American Literary Translators Association. He is also a professor at Indiana University, a translator, and the founder of Autumn Hill Books. He previously ran the Iowa Review.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published September 22, 2014

About the author

Michael Henry Heim (January 21, 1943 – September 29, 2012) was a Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He was an active and prolific translator, and was fluent in Czech, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, Italian, German, and Dutch.

Winner of the The Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation 2009.

Reviews

[Lee Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The estimable/awesome Open Letter Books offered a copy of this to me after I received a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award for my work on Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. I accepted the offer, received the book, misplaced it for months (toddler pushed it behind bookshelf!), found it recently, just read it, and now feel indebted and innocent. Indebted (or maybe more so, ignorant) because I never really knew what a force Heim was behind the scenes, a major artistic/academic figure in the proliferation of translated literature that I've always read (and generally preferred) and considered a given. Everything extracurricular I loved when young was translated: Kafka, Borges, Gunter Grass's "The Tin Drum." My roommate first year out of college essentially made me read Carver and Steinbeck after noticing that everything I read was European, Japanese, South American. At that point (mid-'90s), Heim's influence had been at work for a while. And, without knowing it, I've read so much of his work since: Kundera, Hrabal, Mann. But his work extended beyond his translations. It's clear he was a larger-than-life presence, as "at home" throughout the world as he was in so many languages (~10). I also feel innocent because a book like this opens doors a little wider for me on the world of translation. I'm well aware of the writing world, too aware probably of the "fiction" side of things, its issues and arguments, the craft cliches, the ughful business side of it, the sort of things you need to say to yourself to cancel the noise of ambition so you can pursue the pure tones of art -- I feel like I've more or less internalized it all after years of willful immersion and done my best to willfully "forget" most of it in an effort to regain the lost paradise of initial composition, when the act of writing activated some glowing gooey swirling enzyme in my brain. Translation involves a similar yet separate set of issues and arguments -- I sensed them as I worked and tried to articulate some of them to my wife, for example, after translating all day on a weekend or a day off -- but for the most part I feel like I'd like to try, like Heim, to keep theory at a distance and err on the side of artistic/editorial intuition. I loved the part of the long interview where Heim says something like the source language is less important than the target language (English). When translating, I felt like all my language skills were in play: a few decades of Spanish for the first time really at play with all that time spent composing/editing my own words, not to mention honing others' writing and reading so much of the best possible prose I've been able to find (thanks in large part since 2007 to so many of y'all on here). Anyway, Michael Henry Heim was clearly a saint of capital-L Literature. He may not have been a fan of kids these days listening to hypnotic rock music on headphones, but I'll forgive him for that and thank him so deeply for his generosity in every sense of the word. Reading this made me think I need to be more active in looking for something new to work on, rather than waiting for the right opportunities to appear. All hail Heim! And many thanks to Open Letter, too.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's great to see a collection honoring someone who, professionally, was primarily a literary translator and a fomenter of literary translation. Following on translator-written books such as those by Suzanne Jill Levine, Gregory Rabassa, and Edith Grossman, this book takes another step toward treating literary translators as artists worthy of studying and honoring.

This is a mishmash of interviews, reminiscences, essays on translation, a Heim bibliography, and an essay on literary translation by Heim himself. A friend of Heim’s and an editor of his translation, I most enjoyed the interviews, because I learned a lot about him that I didn’t know.

I was disappointed that no one focused on how freewheeling Mike was in his approach to translation. He is portrayed as humble and generous, but in his translation he was not so humble, and his generosity involved the sharing of his ability to interpret and write, to be faithful by being less faithful. Too much is made about his linguistic breadth, but what made him a great translator was the fact that he was less a linguist than a very confident and accomplished writer in English, no matter the depth of his knowledge of the original language.

Speaking of humility, Mike would definitely have changed the “The” in the title to “A.”

[Chad Post · Rating 5 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER: I am the publisher of the book and thus spent approximately two years reading and editing and working on it. So take my review with a grain of salt, or the understanding that I am deeply invested in this text and know it quite well. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would purchase this book, since it would benefit Open Letter directly.
I'm so proud to be publishing this amazing book about one of the most incredible people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. Made up of a biography of Michael Henry Heim, a series of personal rememberings from his friends, and a section highlighting his lasting importance to translation--or rather, to the enjoyment and expansion of literature as a whole--The Man Between is consistently fascinating and, at times, for those of us who knew him, kind of heart-wrenching. This isn't your typical book on translation! Which is why everyone who's ever read a book would get something out of this. (And every humanities professor--whether they specialize in languages, English, comp lit, translation--should own a copy of this.

[Kevan Houser · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book with some valuable information, but one difficult to categorize, and I'm not certain who the target audience is exactly.

This is a collection of essays (about 17 essays plus a bibliography of Heim's work). I'd generally classify it as an ad hoc biography/celebration of the life of Michael Henry Heim (January 21, 1943 – September 29, 2012), a talented, prolific, well-respected and well-liked professor, translator, and man. It sounds incredible to me, but he translated literature from at least eight languages including Russian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, German, Dutch, French, Romanian, and Hungarian.

I say it's difficult to pinpoint a target audience, as MHH certainly isn't a household name, and I doubt many people would search out his biography, beyond of course his friends, students, former collaborators, and perhaps those who are familiar with his numerous literary translations (of his 60 or so translated works, the most well-known is perhaps "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, which came out in 1984 and was later adapted into a major motion picture).

I found some of the essays regarding MHH's personal life quite personal, and it made me feel rather like I was trespassing in a private celebration of his life intended for his family and close friends. Other essays were more academic in tone and focused on MHH's work both as a translator and as a proponent of translators and literature in translation. (He was exceptionally active and productive and had a profound effect on numerous lives, both directly and indirectly, and did much to promote both translation as a highly skilled profession as well as translated literature in the Anglophone world in general.)

So the book could be legitimately aimed at those in the translation field, even those who weren't lucky enough to have ever met or worked directly with Michael. That is, in fact, the category to which I belong. As a literary translator, I am always looking for further insights in the craft, and I found some interesting tidbits here. I'll cite one example (from page 71):

Regarding footnotes in translated works Heim is quoted: "I don't like footnotes at all, because they transform a literary work—something very different from research—into a scholarly article." He goes on to say: "I think however of the real audience, the real reader, who deserves the same book its first reader read. And that work had no footnotes. Furthermore, it is too easy to explain things in footnotes. A translation should be more creative."

That had been my general feeling regarding footnotes in translated literature as well, and seeing my stance not only validated, but with such a clear and succinct rationale, inspired a measure of confidence in my original instincts.

(Translators would also find points of interest in Andrzej W. Tymowski's valuable essay beginning on page 166.)

Certainly the oddest chapter of any biography I've ever read was the one entitled "The Un-X-able Y-ness of Z-ing (Q): A List with Notes" in which Sean Cotter riffs on the myriad plays on the title of the Kundera novel previously cited, and lists seemingly hundreds of variations "found in the wild."

My greatest criticism of the book is its cover, which I feel doesn't do the book any favors.