Mann's Translator
Sirs:
I am writing to you because, unfortunately, I do not know the address of the gentleman who came to see me a short time ago, and with whom I had a pleasant conversation, to be used, I presume, as material for a story in your esteemed magazine [TIME July 3]. On that occasion, I became guilty of a forgetfulness which I want to correct with this letter.
It is my wish to take the opportunity to prove my gratefulness to my translator of many years, Mrs. Helen Lowe-Porter in Princeton, for her extraordinary achievement she has accomplished with the translation of all my books, from Buddenbrooks [1924] up to the last volume of the Joseph series. I am fully aware of the tremendous difficulties which my not exactly simple way of writing puts in the way of her mediatorial zeal and faithfulness, and I cannot appreciate enough the great credit Mrs. Lowe-Porter has earned with her linguistic reproduction of my work for the English-speaking public. Not always have the reviews done her full justice, and that is why I wish to express my appreciation publicly. My literary standing in this country and in Great Britain would certainly not be what, gratifyingly, it is, if I had not had the good fortune of finding a translator of the devotion and linguistic talent of Mrs. Helen Lowe-Porter. . . .
THOMAS MANN
Pacific Palisades, Calif.
¶ H. T. Lowe-Porter, née Helen Tracy Porter, 68, is a native Pennsylvanian.
A graduate of Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., she has lived most of her life abroad.
Mann sends his manuscripts piecemeal to his translator, who works on them almost as hard (eight hours a day) as their author does. Mrs. Lowe bakes her own bread (see cut), keeps house for her husband, Dr Elias Avery Lowe, an Oxford paleographer, who joined the staff of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1936. Her hyphenated surname is the result of her mistaken notion that married Britons always join surnames.
At present she is on an island off the Maine coast, translating Mann's current work-in-progress.—ED.
War for Fair Play
Sirs:
You are saddened by our war losses and you say: "World War II is not yet a crusade" [TIME,' June 26]. As the late Prof. Boas pointed out, it is almost impossible to tell what masses of people have thought in the past or are thinking in the present. For each one of us, it is mostly a projection of individual thought. So, for the American soldier this war may not be a crusade, but something better on a lower emotional plane: a fight for fair play.
My father was a Russian Jew who loved this country because it gave him a chance to live like a decent human" being. I was blessed with a mother who knew no boundaries of race or religion, especially when other people were in trouble. My grammar-school and high-school teachers taught me to love good sportsmanship. They taught what they were, even more than what they knew.
So when the last war came I went over to France as a machine gunner with that same 4th Division which is now fighting at Montebourg. We did not talk about slogans then and our men probably don't talk about them now. We thought we knew what we were fighting for, although it was hard to hold onto beliefs when boys we loved were killed before our eyes.