2012/02/10
Meyer-Clason is remembered as “one of the best translators of our days”
In a text before the mail between Curt Meyer-Clason and Joao Guimaraes Rosa, published in 2003, says “the list of authors, among poets and prose writers, whose work Curt Meyer-Clason translated into German is quite impressive”, including Machado de Assis, Mario de Andrade, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro, Clarice Lispector, Oswald de Andrade among other concretist poets. Besides this, Meyer-Clason also translated and organized anthologies of Latin American authors.
He was also responsible for transposing into German, the work of Spanish language authors, such as, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Juan Carlos Onetti and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others. “One of the best and most known translators of our days”, said the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, upon informing his death in Munich on January 13. Altogether, Meyer-Clason translated over 150 books.
“He had a charismatic personality, with a brilliant trajectory “, the Munich newspaper reported, city in which the translator lived for many years. There, at home, he received uncountable times renowned German and foreign intellectuals: “from Heinrich Böll to Günter Grass and Hans-Magnus Enzensberger to Martin Walser”, says the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Elderly, Meyer-Clason remembered his youth among “women, ties and tennis games” – a time when he himself said he was a dandy, before turning to Latin American literature and assuming the role of cultural mediator in German-speaking countries.
“Thanks to him, the Iberia-American literature conquered its place and its readers in Germany. A considerable merit, for as much, in that country they may appreciate bland romanticism, but not explicit sensuality”, analyzes the daily Die Welt, in a text entitled “A life and book lover”, upon the translator’s death. It was he, the newspaper continues, who was able to “transpose the opulent and operatic novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Garcia Marquez to a proper German form”.
Source: http://www.dw.de
