Babette Deutsch (September 22, 1895 – November 13, 1982) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

, and

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

Background

Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Her parents were of Michael Deutsch and Melanie Fisher Deutsch. She matriculated from the Ethical Culture School and

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

, graduating in 1917 with a B.A. She published poems in magazines such as the ''

North American Review The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived a ...

'' and the '' New Republic'' while she was still a student at Barnard.

Career

During the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s, Deutsch was teaching 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 ...

, where her students included poet/publisher

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

. In 1946, she received an honorary D. Litt. from Columbia University. Deutsch translated Pushkin's

Eugene Onegin ''Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse'' ( pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform rus, Евгений Оне́гин, ромáн в стихáх, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐˈnʲeɡʲɪn, r=Yevgeniy Onegin, roman v stikhakh) is a novel in verse written by Ale ...

into English and also made some of the best English versions of Boris Pasternak's poems. Deutsch's own poems displayed what poet

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood, ...

called "her commanding stature as a poet."Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms. Funk and Wagnalls, NYC, 1969, notes in the 3rd edition.

Personal life and death

On April 29, 1921, Deutsch married

Avrahm Yarmolinsky Avrahm Yarmolinsky (January 13, 1890 – September 28, 1975) was an author, translator, and the husband of Babette Deutsch. Biography in Context. Yarmolinsky was head of the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library from 1918 to 19 ...

, chief of the Slavonic Division of The New York Public Library (1918–1955), also a writer and translator. They had two sons,

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

and Michael. Babette Deutsch died age 87 on November 13, 1982.

Works

;Poetic collections * ''Banners'' (1919, George H. Doran) * ''Honey Out of the Rock'' (1925, B. Appleton) * ''Fire for the Night'' (1930, Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith) * ''Epistle to Prometheus'' (1931, Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith) * ''One Part Love'' (1939, Oxford University Press) * ''Take Them, Stranger'' (1944, Henry Holt) * ''Animal, Vegetable, Mineral'' (1954, E.P. Dutton) * ''Coming of Age: New & selected poems'' (1959, Indiana University Press) * ''Collected Poems, 1919–1962'' (1963, Indiana University Press) * ''The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch'' (1969, Doubleday & Co.) ;Novels * ''A Brittle Heaven'' (1926, Greenberg) * ''In Such A Night'' (1927, Martin Secker) * ''Mask of Silenus: A Novel About Socrates'' (1933, Simon and Schuster) * ''Rogue's Legacy: A Novel About Francois Villon'' (1942, Coward-McCann) ;Other works * ''Potable Gold: Some Notes on Poetry and This Age'' (1929, W. W. Norton) * ''This Modern Poetry'' (1936, Faber & Faber) * ''Walt Whitman: Builder for America'' (1941, Julian Messner) * ''The Reader's Shakespeare'' (1946, Julian Messner) * ''Poetry Handbook'' (1957, Funk & Wagnalls) * ''Poetry in Our Time'' (1958, Columbia University Press) * ''Poems'' – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Babette Deutsch, illus. Jacques Hnizkovsky (1967, Thomas Cromwell) ;Translations from Russian * ''Modern Russian Poetry: an Anthology'' – trans. by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1921, John Lane) * ''Contemporary German Poetry: an Anthology'' – trans. by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1923, Harcourt Brace & Co.) * ''Eugene Onegin'' – Alexander Pushkin, illus. Fritz Eichenberg (1939, Heritage Society) * ''Heroes of the Kalevala'' – illus. Fritz Eichenberg (1940, Julian Messner) * ''Poems from the Book of Hours'' – Rainer Maria Rilke (1941, New Directions) * ''Selected Poems'' – Adam Mickiewicz, trans. Babetted Deutsch (alongside W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Rolfe Humphries and Robert Hillyer) (1955, The Noonday Press) * ''Two Centuries of Russian Verse'' – trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1966, Random House) ;Children's books * ''Crocodile'' – Korney Chukovsky, trans. Babette Deutsch (1931, J. Lippincott) * ''It's A Secret!'' – illus. Dorothy Bayley (1941, Harper & Bros.) * ''The Welcome'' – illus. Marc Simont (1942, Harper & Bros.) * ''The Steel Flea'' – Nikolas Leskov, trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, illus. Mstislav Dobufinsky (1943, Harper & Row) – revised 1964, illus. by Janina Domanska * ''Tales of Faraway Folk'' – trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, illus. Irena Lorentowicz (1952, Harper & Row) * ''More Tales of Faraway Folk'' – trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, illus. Janina Domanska (1963, Harper & Row) * ''I Often Wish'' (1966, Funk & Wagnalls)

References

External links

* *
Babette Deutsch
at FactMonster

in ''The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia'' at GeoCities.com
Babette Deutsch
at The Literary Encyclopaedia (subscription required) – no text as of 2016-07-17
Penguin Translators A–G
at Penguin First Editions – one book translated by Deutsch as of 2016-07-17 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsch, Babette 1895 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American novelists Barnard College alumni American women poets Russian–English translators American literary critics American women literary critics American women novelists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American poets Women anthologists 20th-century American translators Journalists from New York City Novelists from New York (state) American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters