[Rarebooks] FS: Archive of Letters from Eva Hesse to Archibald MacLeish

[Charles Agvent]

[MacLEISH, Archibald] HESSE, Eva. ARCHIVE OF THREE TYPED LETTERS SIGNED 
(TLSs) TO ARCHIBALD MACLEISH. Munich, 1965-1966. Three typed SIGNED 
letters, single-spaced on onion-skin paper totaling 4 pages, to MacLeish 
about translating his play HERAKLES into German, all SIGNED as Eva. 
Informative letters about translating for a German theater audience with 
insights also into her previous translation of MacLeish's Pulitzer Prize 
winning play J.B. Some excerpts: "First and foremost I like the poetry 
in HERAKLES which is, as was that of J.B., a delight to my translating 
heart.... Yet I must admit to a few minor misgivings which need to be 
worried over before doing a German version.... I may be wrong, but it 
seems to me that American directors of poetic drama call for simplicity 
where German directors are vitally interested in having the same amount 
of complexity that American directors expect only of psychological 
dramas. This difficulty was bypassed in the case of J.B. because I was 
able to use your excellent first and second drafts instead of the 
Broadway acting version." Hesse discusses in detail various points about 
the play's characters and plot and the difficulties translating the play 
would present. In the last letter, she states, "My miserable failure to 
grasp your intentions was due to certain preconceptions about the 
character of Herakles.... You are no doubt quite right in everything you 
say, yet my inborn tropisms still make my mind shrink from visualizing 
an image of Herakles as a moral hero with the right measure of sympathy, 
so that quite apart from the tricky problem of production over here I 
don't think I could effectively help to transform him into a credible 
character." Hesse concludes with a mention of Ezra Pound: "You may be 
interested to hear that Mary writes that, on visiting with Ezra in 
Rapallo over Christmas, she found him reading your POETRY AND 
EXPERIENCE. I'm glad he has taken to books again, at long last." Light 
wear. Near Fine.
Eva Hesse, essayist and translator, translated others aside from 
MacLeish including Ezra Pound who once wrote to her, "Dam it! Don't 
translate what I wrote. Translate what I meant to write!" She also 
translated Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, Robinson 
Jeffers, and E.E. Cummings. (#020631)        $350

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/020631/archibald-macleish-eva-hesse/archive-of-three-typed-letters-signed-tlss-to-archibald-macleish

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