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Ibsen and August Strindberg translator dies |
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August 10, 2000
LONDON (AP) - Michael Meyer, who prepared English translations of the plays of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, has died at age 79. Meyer, who also wrote biographies of both playwrights, died Thursday, according to obituaries published in The Guardian and The Times newspapers. The cause of death was not announced. He learned Swedish while teaching English at Uppsala University in Sweden from 1947 to 1950. During that time he wrote a novel, "The End of the Corridor," and a play, "The Ortolan." He also translated Frans G. Bengtsson's novel about the Vikings, "The Long Ships." The U.S. publisher Doubleday asked Meyer to translate 16 of Ibsen's major plays, but his London publisher was willing to cooperate only if Meyer also produced a biography of Ibsen. The biography, published in three volumes between 1967 and 1971, won the Whitbread Prize, a major British literary award. Meyer also translated 18 major plays by Strindberg, and a biography in 1985. In 1991 he wrote a play, "A Meeting in Rome," about an imaginary meeting between Strindberg and Ibsen. "I often felt that something of Ibsen's spirit invaded Meyer himself," said Michael Billington, theater critic for The Guardian newspaper. "Like his hero, he was uncompromising, fiercely principled and astutely ironic, through far more accessible." Meyer never married. He is survived by his daughter, Nora. Funeral arrangements were not announced. |