Pierre Leyris

Pierre Leyris (16 July 1907 – 4 January 2001) was a French translator.

Pierre Leyris
Born(1907-07-16)16 July 1907
Ermont
Died4 January 2001(2001-01-04) (aged 93)
Paris
OccupationTranslator
Spouse(s)name unknown, English, three children [1]

The writers who benefited from his talent were, among others, Shakespeare in the complete edition of the Club français du livre, Melville, Jean Rhys, Yeats, Dickens, Stevenson, Hawthorne and De Quincey. He was also an incomparable translator of English-speaking poets, from Milton to T.S. Eliot. His four-volume translation of the works of William Blake, published by Aubier & Flammarion, remains the most complete in French and earned him the 1974 Prix Valery Larbaud..

Biography

After studying at lycée Janson-de-Sailly, he appeared in the avant-garde literary circles. In high school he met Pierre Klossowski, who allowed him to meet his brother, the painter Balthus, and the poet Pierre Jean Jouve. By the 1930s, he began his translations on behalf of many publishers. From 1954 to 1961, he edited with Henri Evans a bilingual edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works at Club français du livre.[2]

Long a collection director at the Mercure de France, he published Esquisse d'une anthologie de la poésie américaine du XIXe at Gallimard in 1995. A translator of more than 100 works, he received the National Grand Prix of Translation in 1985, but did not hesitate to "revise" himself after a few years. His mémoires were posthumously published.

Mémoires
  • 2002: Pour mémoire : ruminations d'un petit clerc à l'usage de ses frères humains et des vers légataires, Paris, J. Corti, series "Domaine français"

References
  1. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/feb/12/guardianobituaries.books
  2. The translations have benefited from the collaboration of many writers, some of the most important of their time:: Pierre Jean Jouve, André du Bouchet, Jean Grosjean, Jules Supervielle, Michel Butor, Yves Bonnefoy, Henri Thomas, Jean-Louis Curtis, Armand Robin. Some of these translations have been taken up by the collection Garnier/Flammarion
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