Background
Lowenfeld was born in Washington, District of Columbia
Lowenfeld was born in Washington, District of Columbia
Lowenfeld studied Russian literature at Harvard, did postgraduate work at Saint St. Petersburg University and then obtained his law degree at New York University.
To Andreas Lowenfeld, a German-Jewish Professor of International Law (New York University), and Elena Lowenfeld, a Cuban guitar player and art critic. His great-grandfather Rafael Löwenfeld, a correspondent for the newspaper Berliner Tagesblatt in Saint St. Petersburg, was the first translator of Leo Tolstoy into German, and Tolstoy"s play The Power of Darkness had its world premiere in the Schiller Theater, Berlin, which Löwenfeld founded. After the Russian revolution, the Nabokov family lived in the Löwenfeld home in Berlin.
Lowenfeld translates from 8 languages, including Russian, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin.
He has translated verses of Lermontov, Blok, Mandelshtam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Rilke, Goethe, Heine, Pessoa, Lorca, Machado, Martí, Neruda, Leopardi, Petrarch, Dante, Catullus, Ovid, Martial, and Horace. Lowenfeld"s translations of Alexander Pushkin received overall positive reviews and considered to be "the most brilliant and fullest translation" of Pushkin"s works because Lowenfeld succeeded in preserving original and distinctive rhythms of most poems so one can easily recognise which poem this is without any knowledge of English: Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может, I loved you once, and still, perhaps, love’s yearning В душе моей угасла не совсем.
Within my soul has not quite burned away. Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит.
Yet may that nevermore you be concerning.
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем. I would not wish you sad in any way. Original: Alexander Pushkin Translation: Julian Henry Lowenfeld Puskin"s Little Tragedies, translated into verse by Lowenfeld, were staged at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York in 2009.