Alfred Perlès

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Alfred Perlès (born 1897 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died January 27, 1990 in Wells , Somerset , England) was a British author and translator of Austrian origin. He is best known for his lifelong friendship with Henry Miller , Anaïs Nin and Lawrence Durrell .

Life

Perlès was the son of a Jewish businessman from Bohemia and a French Catholic. After the end of the First World War , in which he took part, he left Austria with the aim of becoming a writer.

From the beginning of the 1920s he stayed in Paris , where he worked for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune from 1927 . There he met June Miller , Henry Miller's wife, and had an affair with Jean Kronski, June's lover at the time. In 1931 he was able to get Henry Miller, whom he had met in 1928, a position at the Chicago Tribune . From 1932 to 1934 the two lived together in an apartment in Clichy , then a suburb of Paris. This time forms the background for the situations described in Miller's Silent Days in Clichy (published 1956). Perlès appears there under the name Carl, also in Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer , on which Miller was working at that time. At that time he also met Anaïs Nin, with whom Miller had an intense sexual and literary relationship at the time.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Perlès went to England, where he met Anne Barrett, a Scottish woman, whom he married around 1950. After writing two novels in French during his time in France, he has now started writing in English. In 1943 his first English novel, The Renegade , was published, which was well received. In 1947 he was naturalized. He died in 1990 at the age of 92 in Wells, Somerset, where he had lived since the early 1950s.

In 1979 Joey , a portrait of Perlès by Henry Miller appeared (Miller and Nin always called Perlès Joey or Joe ). In the 1970 film adaptation of Silent Days in Clichy (director: Jens Jørgen Thorsen) Carl / Perlès is portrayed by Wayne Rodda and in the 1990 film adaptation (director: Claude Chabrol ) by Nigel Havers .

Works (selection)

My Friend Henry Miller (1956)
  • Sentiments Limitrophes (1935)
  • Le Quatour En Re Majeur (1938)
  • The Renegade (1943)
  • Alien Corn (1944)
  • Round Trip (1946)
  • My friend Henry Miller. An intimate biography . New York: John Day, 1956
  • Art And Outrage (with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, 1959; German: Art and Provocation. A correspondence Reinbek near Hamburg 1960)
  • Reunion in Big Sur. A letter to Henry Miller in reply to his 'Reunion in Barcelona' (1959)
  • My Friend Lawrence Durrell (1961; German: Mein Freund Lawrence Durrell. An intimate portrait Wiesbaden 1963)
  • Scenes From A Floating Life (1968)
  • My Friend Alfred Perlès: Coda to an Unfinished Autobiography (1973)
  • Henry Miller in Villa Seurat (1973)

Translations:

  • Hedwig Borgner: Rathausplatz no.16 1957
  • Rainer Maria Rilke : The lay of love and death of Cornet Christopher Rilke. London 1987

literature

  • Henry Miller: Joey: a Loving Portrait of Alfred Perlès Together With Some Bizarre Episodes Relating to the Opposite Sex. 1979. German: Joey. A portrait of Alfred Perlès and some episodes related to the opposite sex. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-499-13296-6
  • Henry Miller: Reunion in Barcelona. A letter to Alfred Perlès, from Aller retour New York. 2nd ed. Northwood, Middlesex 1959

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Perlès, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barret, Alfred; Perles, Alfred; Perles, Fred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-British author
DATE OF BIRTH 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1990
Place of death Wells , Somerset , England