Eithne Wilkins (born Ethne Una Lilian Wilkins; 12 September 1914 – 13 March 1975) was a

Germanic Studies Germanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective. The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary te ...

scholar, translator and poet from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Life and work

She was born in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

to Edgar Wilkins, an

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

doctor, and his wife Eveline (Whittaker); her younger brother was the Nobel laureate Maurice Wilkins. In 1923, when she was almost nine, she moved to Dublin with her family and shortly after they moved again to London, followed again by a move to Birmingham, where her father started work as a school doctor. She studied languages and literature at Somerville College, Oxford and later worked as a journalist and translator in London and Paris before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. During the war, she taught at the Emanuel School, which evacuated to

Petersfield Petersfield is a market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is north of Portsmouth. The town has its own railway station on the Portsmouth Direct line, the mainline rail link connecting Portsmouth a ...

in 1939. From the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Wilkins wrote poetry, publishing about 40 poems in various literary journals, including the poetic sequence "Oranges and Lemons". Several of her poems were included in Kenneth Rexroth's anthology ''The New British Poets'', published by New Directions in 1949. In 1941 in Petersfield, she married the Austrian writer and translator

Ernst Kaiser Ernst David Kaiser (3 October 1911 – 1 January 1972) was an Austrian writer and translator. Early life Ernst David Kaiser was born in Vienna. His father, a Jewish merchant, came from the Slovak part of Hungary, and his mother from Brno. At bir ...

. They collaborated together on translations and the study of the works of Robert Musil, including the first English translation of ''

The Man Without Qualities ''The Man Without Qualities'' (german: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften; 1930–1943) is an unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various drafts, by the Austrian writer Robert Musil. The novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in ...

''. In 1953 she had a research fellowship at Bedford College in London, then went to Rome with Kaiser on a grant from the

Bollingen Foundation The Bollingen Foundation was an educational foundation set up along the lines of a university press in 1945. It was named after Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung's country home in Bollingen, Switzerland. Funding was provided by Paul Mellon and his wife ...

to study Musil's estate. In 1967 or 1968, she was appointed as a professor at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

and established the Musil Research Unit with her husband. Eithne Wilkins died in 1975.

Bibliography

* with Ernst Kaiser: ''Robert Musil. Eine Einführung in das Werk'' (1962) * ''The Rose-Garden Game: The Symbolic Background to the European Prayerbeads'' (Gollancz, 1969)

Translations

Louis Aragon Louis Aragon (, , 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littérature''. He ...

: '' Aurelien'' (1947) *

René Barjavel René Barjavel (24 January 1911 – 24 November 1985) was a French author, journalist and critic who may have been the first to think of the grandfather paradox in time travel. He was born in Nyons, a town in the Drôme department in southeastern ...

: '' The Tragic Innocents'' (1948) *

Maxence Van der Meersch Maxence Van der Meersch (4 May 1907 – 14 January 1951) was a French Flemish writer. Life Maxence, of delicate health, came from a relatively well off family — his father was an accountant. On 27 October 1918, he lost his sister, Sarah, who w ...

: ''Bodies and Souls'' (1948) *

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly , ; born Honoré Balzac;Jean-Louis Dega, La vie prodigieuse de Bernard-François Balssa, père d'Honoré de Balzac : Aux sources historiques de La Comédie humaine, Rodez, Subervie, 1998, 665 p. 20 May 179 ...

: '' A Bachelor's Establishment'' (1952) *

Haroun Tazieff Haroun Tazieff (Warsaw, 11 May 1914 – Paris, 2 February 1998) was a Tatar, Belgian and French volcanologist and geologist. He was a famous cinematographer of volcanic eruptions and lava flows, and the author of several books on volcanoes. He ...

: ''Craters of Fire'' (1952), translation of ''Cratères en feu'' * Bruno Erich Werner: ''The Slave Ship'' (1953), translation of ''Die Galeere'' *

Alphonse Daudet Alphonse Daudet (; 13 May 184016 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée, Léon and Lucien Daudet. Early life Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the ...

: ''Sappho: A Picture of Life in Paris'' (1954)

Translations with Ernst Kaiser

Ernst Wiechert Ernst Wiechert (18 May 1887 – 24 August 1950) was a German teacher, poet and writer. Biography Wiechert was born in the village of Kleinort, East Prussia, (now Piersławek, Poland). He was one of the most widely read novelists in Germany ...

: ''The Girl and the Ferryman'' (1947) *

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

: ''Truth and Fantasy from My Life: A Selection'' (1949) * Robert Musil: ''

'' (in three volumes: 1953, 1955, 1961) *

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

: ''

Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings ''Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings'' is a collection of writings by Franz Kafka translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins with notes by Max Brod (Schocken Books, 1954). The title derives from Kafka's Letter to His Father, which be ...

'' (1954) * Robert Musil: ''

Young Törless ''Young Törless'' (german: Der junge Törless) is a 1966 German film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, adapted from the autobiographical novel '' The Confusions of Young Törless'' by Robert Musil. It deals with the violent, sadistic and homoeroti ...

'' (1955) *

Lion Feuchtwanger Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht. Feuchtwanger's J ...

: '' Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo'' (1956) * Lion Feuchtwanger: ''Jephthah and His Daughter'' (1958) *

Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expres ...

: ''A Sea Ringed with Visions'' (1962) *

Ingeborg Bachmann Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. Biography Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of Olga (née Haas) and Matthias Bachmann, a schoolteacher. Her f ...

: "Everything" (1962), from ''Das dreißigste Jahr'' * Robert Musil: ''Tonka and Other Stories'' (1965), translations of ''Drei Frauen'' and ''Vereinigungen'', later reprinted as ''Five Women'' *

Heimito von Doderer Franz Carl Heimito, Ritter von Doderer; known as Heimito von Doderer (5 September 1896 23 December 1966) was an Austrian writer. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Family Heimito von Doderer was born in Weidling ...

: ''The Waterfalls of Slunj'' (1966) *

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz (; 17 March 19267 October 2014) was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's bi ...

: '' The German Lesson'' (1971)

References

New Zealand people of Irish descent British women poets 20th-century British translators {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilkins, Eithne 1914 births 1975 deaths Writers from Wellington City Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford 20th-century New Zealand poets Academics of Bedford College, London Academics of the University of Reading German–English translators Germanists