'''Elizabeth Wolff Mayer''' (1884 – 14 March 1970)<ref name="DailyObituary">{{cite news |title=Obituary – Elizabeth Wolff Mayer |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/464447019/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BMayer%22%2Btranslator |access-date=29 March 2019 |work=Daily News |date=16 March 1970 |location=New York, New York |page=60}}</ref> was a German-born American translator and editor, closely associated with W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and other writers and musicians. After emigrating to the United States in the 1930s she used her homes in Long Island and New York City as salons for visiting artists.
== Biography == Elizabeth Mayer was born in Germany and spent her early life in Munich. Her father had been chaplain to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg; she studied music and was a skilled pianist. She was married to the psychiatrist William Mayer, with whom she had two sons and two daughters.<ref name="Michael">{{cite news |title=Obituaries: Reverend Michael G. Mayer |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/164302338/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BWolff%2BMayer%22 |access-date=5 April 2019 |work=The News Journal |date=23 December 2007 |location=Wilmington, Delaware |page=B4}}</ref> She worked as a translator in Germany, and visited D. H. Lawrence in Irschenhausen in 1927, where they discussed translation techniques.<ref name="Arnold">{{cite journal |last1=Arnold |first1=Armin |title=Genius with a Dictionary: Reevaluating D. H. Lawrence's Translations |journal=Comparative Literature Studies |date=December 1968 |volume=5 |issue=4 |page=392 |publisher=Penn State University Press|jstor=40467785 }}</ref> The Mayers moved to the United States in 1936 in order to flee Nazi persecution.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/15/archives/elizabeth-wolff-mayer-85-germanenglish-translator.html|title=Elizabeth Wolff Mayer, 85, German–English Translator|date=1970-03-15|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-03-31|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/47709|title=What W. H. Auden Can Do for You|last=McCall Smith|first=Alexander|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2013|isbn=9781400847976|pages=1|chapter=Love Illuminates Again...|chapter-url=http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10062.pdf|via=Project MUSE and Princeton University Press}}</ref>
Her homes in Long Island and New York City were used as a salon for artists.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nyrb.com/collections/elizabeth-mayer|title=Elizabeth Mayer|website=New York Review Books|language=en|access-date=2019-03-31}}</ref> Between 1939 and 1940, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears stayed at her Long Island Home.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/06/10/auden-britten/|title=When Auden Met Britten|last=Auden|first=W. H.|date=2015-06-10|website=The New York Review of Books|language=en|access-date=2019-03-31}}</ref><ref name="Bond">{{cite journal |last1=Bond |first1=Timothy |title=Britten's music for organ: some new discoveries |journal=The Musical Times |date=2004 |volume=145 |issue=1887 |pages=51–57 |doi=10.2307/4149146 |jstor=4149146 }}</ref><ref name="Greenfield">{{cite news |last1=Greenfield |first1=Edward |title=Bunyan's Progress |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/260326626/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BMayer%22%2BAmityville |access-date=6 April 2019 |work=The Guardian |date=10 June 1988 |page=32}}</ref> Britten described her as "one of those grand people who have been essential through the ages for the production of art; really sympathetic and enthusiastic, with instinctive good taste".<ref name="BrittenObserver">{{cite news |last1=Britten |first1=Benjamin |title=Benjamin Britten's Letters, Part Two |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/258017920/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BMayer%22%2BGerman |access-date=1 April 2019 |work=The Observer Review |date=9 July 1991 |pages=49–50 |quote=Extracts from 'Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten 1923-45'. To Enid Slater, from Amityville, Long Island, New York, 7 November 1939}}</ref> W. H. Auden wrote about "a house in Amityville, Long Island, the home of Dr. William and Elizabeth Mayer, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears stayed ... a house which played an important role in the lives of all three of us. It was during this period that Britten wrote his first opera, and I my first libretto".<ref name="Peters">{{cite news |last1=Peters |first1=Frank |title=The Voice of the American Gargantua As Two Bright Young Britons Heard It |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/140823680/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BMayer%22%2BAmityville |access-date=5 April 2019 |work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |date=20 May 1984 |location=St Louis, Missouri |page=5B}}</ref>
Mayer died on March 14, 1970.<ref name=":0" />
== Work == In collaboration with Marianne Moore she translated Adalbert Stifter's ''Bergkristall'' (''Rock Crystal'' 1945). ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' wrote that their translation "reflects the classic perfection of the original."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30124499/|title=An Exquisite Christmas Tale|date=2 December 1945|work=The Philadelphia Inquirer|access-date=31 March 2019|via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Hannah Arendt also found the translation perfect.<ref name="Arendt">{{cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |last2=Gottlieb |first2=Susannah Young-ah (editor) |title=Reflections on Literature and Culture |date=2007 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=9780804744997 |page=113 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KTClSv_qJP4C&q=Mayer |access-date=6 April 2019 |chapter=12. Great Friend of Reality. Adalbert Stifter}}</ref>
In collaboration with Louise Bogan she translated Ernst Jünger's ''The Glass Bees'' (1961), Goethe's ''Elective Affinities'' (1963) and ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' and ''Novella'' (both in 1 vol., 1971). One reviewer of ''Elective Affinities'' found the beginning "promising": by "tak[ing] liberties with the original text, ... [they] thereby win the modern reader's interest", but considered it "colorless, rather than timeless" overall.<ref name="Steinhauer">{{cite journal |last1=Steinhauer |first1=Harry |title=Reviewed Work: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Elective Affinities by Elizabeth Mayer, Louise Bogan |journal=The German Quarterly |date=May 1967 |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=439–442 |doi=10.2307/402416 |jstor=402416 }}</ref> ''The New York Times'' reviewer wrote that the work on ''Elective Affinities'' was an "excellent translation—the only readable one I have come across",<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/18/archives/speaking-of-books.html|title=Speaking of Books|date=1964-10-18|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-03-31|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> while ''The Washington Post'' reviewer wrote that their translation was his favorite.<ref name="Dirda">{{cite news |last1=Dirda |first1=Michael |title=A new look at Goethe, a one-time cultural celebrity |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-new-look-at-goethe-a-one-time-cultural-celebrity/2017/05/16/7023faca-3745-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html |access-date=5 April 2019 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=17 May 2017}}</ref>
With Auden she translated Goethe's ''Italian Journey'' (1962).<ref name="Nicolson">{{cite news |last1=Nicolson |first1=Harold |title=Goethe's grand tour |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/258832730/?terms=%22Elizabeth%2BMayer%22%2Btranslator |access-date=29 March 2019 |work=The Observer Weekend Review |date=18 November 1962 |page=26}}</ref> Douglas Pringle wrote in ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' that this was a "very lively translation".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30124126/|title=Rediscover Goethe While He 'Finds Himself' in Italy|last=Pringle|first=John Douglas|date=5 March 1983|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|access-date=31 March 2019|via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> She also translated Hans Graf von Lehndorff's ''Token of a Covenant: Diary of an East Prussian Surgeon, 1945–47'' (1965).
With Peter Pears, Mayer prepared translations for Benjamin Britten, for inclusion in programs or scores of songs in Italian, German and Russian which he had set to music.<ref name="Low">{{cite book |last1=Low |first1=Peter |editor1-last=Minors |editor1-first=Helen Julia |title=Music, Text and Translation |date=2013 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=9781441173089 |page=70 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OQdMAQAAQBAJ&q=%22Elizabeth+Mayer%22+German+translator&pg=PA70 |access-date=5 April 2019 |chapter=Purposeful Translating: The Case of Britten's Vocal Music}}</ref>
She was the dedicatee and recipient of Auden's poem ''New Year Letter''<ref name="Waldson">{{cite journal |last1=Waldson |first1=H. M. |title=Auden and German Literature |journal=Modern Language Review |date=April 1975 |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=347–365 |issn=0026-7937|doi=10.2307/3724286 |jstor=3724286 }}</ref><ref name="Smith">{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Alexander McCall |title=What W. H. Auden Can Do for You |date=2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9781400847976 |page=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_ziYMVkQHWsC&q=%22Elizabeth+Mayer%22+German+translator&pg=PA1 |access-date=1 April 2019}}</ref> and the book that included it, ''The Double Man'' (1941). In ''New Year Letter'', Auden described her "learned peacefulness";<ref name="Waldson"/> he regarded her the emotional equivalent of a mother, and was close to her for many years. Near the end of her life he wrote about her (without naming her) in his poem "Old People's Home", and in "Lines for Elizabeth Mayer", in ''About the House''.<ref name="Waldson"/>
Mayer is the dedicatee of "Hymn To St. Cecilia", Op. 27, as well as the sixth section, titled "Interlude", of Britten's ''Les Illuminations'', Op. 18, settings of Rimbaud for high voice and string orchestra.
She was a friend and admirer of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.
== References == {{reflist}}
== External links == * Elizabeth Mayer and Wolfgang Sauerländer Papers. Yale Collection of German Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayer, Elizabeth}} Category:German–English translators Category:Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Category:1884 births Category:1970 deaths Category:American women writers Category:20th-century translators Category:American salon-holders Category:Translators of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Category:American translators