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The Sharable Rightness of Meaning
Esther Allen
Michael Henry Heim gave
himself over entirely to
the things that mattered
to him. He worked among
the intricate ambiguities
of language and had not a
dogmatic bone in his body,
yet his life was the absolute
refutation of Yeats’ celebrated
diagnosis of our time: “the
best lack all conviction,
while the worst are full of
passionate intensity.” Mike
was one of the best, and did what he did with total conviction.
The fact that he brought his quiet intensity to bear on what is
sometimes perceived as the minor field of translation may have
seemed quixotic or even a waste of talent to some of his peers.
Those who share his vocation know that Mike’s unconditional,
unflagging devotion to the art is one of the most valuable
reaffirmations we have of its significance.
I first met Mike one February morning in 2003. He came
to the offices of PEN American Center in New York City,
introduced himself to everyone, and announced that he
was donating $734,000 to fund what was known during his
lifetime as the PEN Translation Fund. The money came from
a death benefit the U.S. Army had paid out for Mike’s father,
a Hungarian composer who enrolled and died during World
War II, when Mike was a toddler. His mother had invested the
money, and it grew over the years.
The one condition of the donation was that it be entirely
anonymous: Mike simply couldn’t bear to be associated with
money. A man who prized tolerance, he was sometimes almost
chagrined by his own aversion to wealth, power, and celebrity.
He had no ambition to vault up hierarchies, no notion
of vaunting his own achievements, and little stomach for
hearing them extolled by others. In 2009, PEN American
Center members (who only learned Mike was the donor of the
Translation Fund after his death in 2012) voted to award him
the PEN/ Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a lifetime
achievement award. Mike was too busy with his students at
The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation
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