Henry S. (Hank) Heifetz (born May 20, 1935) is an American poet, novelist, documentarian, critic, and translator. He has published poems in various collections and journals, one novel, critical writings on film and other topics, numerous translations of Spanish to English, and translations of ancient Sanskrit and Tamil poetry into American English verse. His translation of Kalidasa's "Kumarasambhavam," entitled "The Origin of the Young God", was selected as one of the twenty-five best books of the year by the Village Voice in 1990. Heifetz has lived and traveled extensively in India, Latin America, Europe, and Turkey, and he has translated works in several languages, including Spanish, Tamil, and Sanskrit. He has taught writing, translation, film, literature, and Indian studies at universities including Yale University, Mount Holyoke College, Wesleyan University, City University of New York (CUNY), San Jose State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has recently completed a new novel and a collection of his own poetry for publication as well as working on a poetic translation of a Sanskrit epic poem.
Early life
Henry Saul (Hank) Heifetz was born May 20, 1935, in the Dorchester-Mattapan area of Boston, Massachusetts, a working-class Jewish neighborhood. Henry and his older brother, Leonard, were the children of Lithuanian immigrants, Edward, a vegetable-truck driver and Dina (Heller), a homemaker. Heifetz graduated from Boston Latin School and was the first member of his immediate family to go to college, attending Harvard University with a full scholarship. In 1957 he married Natasha Alpert, with whom he had two children, a son, Aaron, and a daughter, Samara. He graduated from Harvard in 1959 (class of 1957) with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Summa cum Laude, in English and American Literature. After graduation, Heifetz was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and traveled to Europe where he studied and taught for three years before returning to the United States and settling in New York City in 1962. In New York he began his first novel, "Where Are the Stars in New York?", which he completed after moving to California in 1968. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed a master's degree in South and Southeast Asian studies in 1979. In 1983 Heifetz received a PhD with distinction in South Asian studies, with an emphasis on Sanskrit and Tamil, from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing his doctoral degree, Heifetz taught in the Department of South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was there that he met Mira (Reym) Binford, a filmmaker and academic, who became and remains his life partner. They now divide their time between New York City and Hamden, Connecticut.
Writing
Translations
Heifetz has published many literary translations of articles, poems, and books. Among his numerous translations of poetry from Sanskrit and Tamil to English, his version of Kalidasa's "Kumarasambhavam," "The Origin of the Young God", is considered an unparalleled accomplishment. Geoffrey O'Brien wrote in the Village Voice, "The most exciting book of new poetry I've read in the last several years is a translation of a 1600-year-old Sanskrit epic. Hank Heifetz has had the audacity to take on a formally elaborate, densely allusive masterpiece in which rhythm, assonance, and wordplay are crucial--and the gift to make American poetry out of it." The poem, probably composed about AD 400, is considered the greatest long poem in classical Sanskrit. It is the love story of Shiva and Parvati, the god and the goddess, who are viewed as lovers and as cosmic principles. In an article in the Journal of South Asian Literature, John E. Cort noted that a new approach to translating Sanskrit poetry into English is "best exemplified in Hank Heifetz's excellent translation of Kalidasa's Kumarasambhavam, 'The Origin of the Young God', a translation which marks a new departure for translations of Sanskrit into English, and should remain a model for all translators for decades." Poet Robert Creeley wrote of "The Origin of the Young God", "This remarkable translation...holds its active authority as poetry throughout...an exceptional literary accomplishment."