Alexander Lenard ( hu, Lénárd Sándor; la, Alexander Lenardus;

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 ...

, 9 March 1910 – Dona Emma, Brazil, 13 April 1972) was a Hungarian physician, writer, translator, painter, musician, poet and occasional language instructor. He was born in

, Hungary and died in Dona Emma, in the state of Santa Catarina,

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. He is best known as the Latin translator of

A. A. Milne Alan Alexander Milne (; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English writer best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as for children's poetry. Milne was primarily a playwright before the huge success of Winni ...

's ''

Winnie the Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character w ...

'' ('' Winnie Ille Pu''). He wrote non-fiction and translated fiction and non fiction in German, Latin, Hungarian, Italian and English.

Life

Lenard was born in the family of Jenő Lénárd (1878-1924) and Ilona Hoffmann (1888-1938), he was the first son in their family. In 1920 the Lénárd family moved from Hungary to

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. His first studies were private lessons at home because he couldn't stand being at school. In 1920-1921 he began his study at Wiener Theresianum (a board school in Vienna) where he was hungry and cold, and the few days at home at weekends were a real happiness to him.Siklós:Von Budapest bis zum Tal am Ende der Welt Sándor Lénárds romanhafter Lebensweg
Retrieved on 16 Jan 2018 He didn't stay long in this school, because their family moved to Klosterneuburg and there he finished his studies in 1928. During his leisure time he practiced playing piano, rowing, swimming and running. Lénárd conducted his medical studies at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

. He continued studying in the university till 1936 and had a good relationship with the professors and his fellow students; with some of them, the likes of Karl Adams and Egon Fenz, he had contacts till his death. During the 1930s, he travelled to Greece, Denmark, England, the Czech Republic, France, and Turkey. In 1936 he married Gerda Coste, who gave birth to their son, Hans-Gerd. After the 1938 "Anschluss" with Germany, he escaped to

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. There is no notice if he had obtained his certificate in medicine, because literature and poetry were more attractive to him. His staying in Italy he described as a very productive time for his poetry. At the beginning of the World War II he attempted to join the French Army in Basel as a volunteer but failed to do this. During World World II, he escaped the attention of the Fascist regime by leaving no "paper trail" (identity card, ration card, etc.). He survived by trading his medical services for food and shelter. His leisure hours were spent in the Vatican library, reading texts in Latin until it became a colloquial language to him. He met his second wife, Andrietta Arborio di Gattinara from a noble Italian family, in 1942. His brother Károly presumably died in 1944 in a Nazi labour camp ( Arbeitslager) while his sister settled in England. After the end of the war, his second son, Giovanni Sebastiano, was born in Rome. In 1952, he emigrated to Brazil, where in 1956 he took part and earned some money in a São Paulo television program called "The sky is the limit", answering questions about J.S.Bach. Later he settled in the Dona Emma valley, where he bought a small farm with a house he made "invisible" by surrounding it with his favourite trees. He treated the local population medically until his death in 1972.

Work

While in Brazil, he tutored the children of a local residents in Latin, and they expressed the wish for something interesting to read. In response, he translated ''Winnie the Pooh'' into Latin, for which he combed the classics for idiomatic expressions used during ancient times. He was working on this translation for about 7 years and could not find a publisher to have this work edited. And at last he published the first copies by his own money. Privately printed, the book gradually reached larger audiences until it became an international best-seller. He also wrote (

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

and

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

), and non-fiction such as musical,

culinary Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of outline of food preparation, food preparation, cooking and food presentation, presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as res ...

, linguistic and medical essays and studies. Two of his original books have been published in English – ''The Valley of the Latin Bear'' (1965), and ''The Fine Art of Roman Cooking'' (1966).

Bibliography

Fiction

The valley of the Latin bear
- in English: Dutton, 1965, in Hungarian

: Magvető, 1967, in German (Die Kuh auf dem Bast): Stuttgart, 1963 * "A day in the invisible house" - in Hungarian
Egy nap a láthatatlan házban
: Magvető, 1969, in German (Ein Tag im unsichtbaren Haus): Stuttgart, 1970 * "The Cagliostro Case" * "The Great Bear drowns in the sea in Charleston" * "Roman stories" - in Hungarian

: Magvető, 1969

- in English: Dutton, 1966, in German (Die Römische Küche): Stuttgart, 1963, in Hungarian (A római konyha): Magvető, 1986 * My family-stories - in Hungarian (Csaladtorteneteim): Typotex, 2010 * Adventures of three modern Hungarian knights - in Hungarian

* Mussolini's "Liberation" - in Hungarian

* A Few Words About Winnie-Ille-Pu - in Hungarian

* ttp://mek.oszk.hu/kiallitas/lenard/irasok/manuscript/byz_eng.html The Byzantine Schnitzel- in Hungarian
A bizánci szelet - in: ''Magyar Nemzet'', 7 May 1966. p. 7

Non-fiction

In addition to his non fiction writing, Lenard authored essays and treatises on literary and medical topics.

Linguistic and literary

* The living Latin - in Hungarian

* Seven days in Babylon - in German (Sieben Tage Babylonisch): Stuttgart, 1964, - in Hungarian (Egy magyar idegenvezető Bábel tornyában): Typotex, 2003 * "Hello Sadness" and "A certain smile" - in Hungarian

* The poems of Weöres Sándor - in Hungarian ( ttp://mek.oszk.hu/kiallitas/lenard/irasok/cikkek/weoresrol.html Weöres Sándor versei - Kultura, June 1959. (Sao Paulo) * Walk on an old map of Budapest - co-author with Landy Dezso - in Hungarian
Séta egy régi pesti térképen - Kultura, January 1958. (Sao Paulo)
* The science and the piglet - in Hungarian

* Brazil - in Hungarian

Medical

* About the Eugenics - in Hungarian

* Giving birth without pain - in Italian (Partorire senza dolore - Casa Editrice Mediterranea, Roma, 1950) * The healthy and sick child - in Italian (Il Bambino Sano e Ammalato, óma 1950) * Controlling conception and the number of offsprings - in Italian (Controllo della concezione e limitazione della prole, óma 1947) * The medical office; contribution to the history of the medical ethics - in Italian (De officio medici; contributo alla storia dell'etica medica. omeTipografia della Bussola, 1947)

Poems

* Ex Ponto óma 1947 * Orgelbuechlein óma 1947 * Andrietta óma 1949 * Asche óma 1949 * Die Leute sagen óma 1949

Film portrayal

In 2009, the New York Film Festival premiered

Lynne Sachs Lynne Sachs (born 1961) is an American experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from documentaries, to essay films, to experimental shorts, to hybrid live performances. Working from a feminist pe ...

's
The Last Happy Day
', an experimental retelling of Lenard's life story from the intimate perspective of his distant cousin turned filmmaker. The film features unpublished letters from the 1940s to 1970s written by Lenard to his relatives in the United States, as well as interviews and archival photos. A year after the film's debut, the ''Hungarian Quarterly'' published an essay by Sachs along with some of Lenard's letters.Sachs, Lynne. "Alexander Lenard: A Family Correspondence", ''Hungarian Quarterly'', Autumn 2010.

References

External links

Lénárd Sándor Reference page from the MEK in mixed languages (Hungarian, German, English)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenard, Alexander 1910 births 1972 deaths Hungarian emigrants to Brazil Hungarian male poets Hungarian medical writers English–Latin translators 20th-century translators 20th-century Hungarian poets 20th-century Hungarian male writers 20th-century Hungarian physicians 20th-century Latin-language writers