HAAKON CHEVALIER

Christopher Jones asked if anybody knows when Haakon Chevalier died.  RH: He died in 1985.  Here is his bio: Born  1902, in Lakewood, NJ; died 1985, in Paris, France; son of Emile and Therese (Roggen) Chevalier; married Ruth Bosley, 1922 (divorced, 1931); married Barbara Lansburgh, 1931 (divorced, 1950); married Carol Lansburgh, 1952; children: (first marriage) Jacques Anatole; (second marriage) Suzanne Andree, Haakon Lazarus; (third marriage) Karen Anne. Education: Student, Stanford University, 1918-20; University of California, A.B., 1923, A.M., 1925, Ph.D., 1929. Memberships: P.E.N., Authors League of America, Association Internationale des Interpretes de Conference, Association des Traducteurs Litteraires de France.University of California, Berkeley, Calif, professor of French, 1929-46; French interpreter, United Nations Conference, San Francisco, CA, 1945, War Criminals Trials, Nuremberg, West Germany, 1945-46, United Nations, Lake Success, NY, 1946; full-time translator and author, beginning 1946.
Publications:
The Ironic Temper: Anatole France and His Time, Oxford University Press, 1932.
For Us the Living, Knopf, 1949.
The Man Who Would be God, Putnam, 1959.
Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship, Braziller, 1965.
The Last Voyage of the Schooner Rosamond, Deutsch, 1970.

Translator:

Andre Malraux, Man's Fate, Smith & Haas, 1934, reissued, Random House, 1961, 1968.
Malraux, Days of Wrath, Random House, 1936, McGraw, 1964.
Louis Aragon, The Bells of Basel, Harcourt, 1936.
Aragon, Residential Quarter, Harcourt, 1938.
Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Dial, 1942, 3rd edition, Vision Press, 1968.
Vladimir Pozner, The Edge of the Sword, Modern Age Books, 1942.
Pozner, First Harvest, Viking, 1943.
Gontran de Poncins, Home is the Hunter, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.
Andre Maurois, Seven Faces of Love, Didier, 1944, reissued, Doubleday, 1962.
Dali, Hidden Faces, Dial, 1944.
Joseph Kessel, Army of Shadows, Knopf, 1944.
Denis de Rougemont, Devil's Share, Pantheon, 1944, published as The Devil's Share: An Essay on the Diabolic in Modern Society, Meridian Books, 1956.
Maurois, Franklin: The Life of an Optimist, Didier, 1945.
Vercors, Three Short Novels by Vercors, Little, Brown, 1947.
Simon Gantillon, Vessel of Wrath, Putnam, 1947.
Dali, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, Dial, 1948.
Dali, Dali on Modern Art: The Cuckolds of Antiquated Modern Art, Dial, 1957.
(And editor) Stendhal, A Roman Journal, Orion Press, 1957.
Rene Grousset, Chinese Art and Culture, Orion Press, 1959.
Michel Seuphor, The Sculpture of this Century: Dictionary of Modern Sculpture, Zwemmer, 1959, published as The Sculpture of This Century, Braziller, 1960.
Louis Aragon, Holy Week, Putnam, 1961.
Seuphor, Abstract Painting: Fifty Years of Accomplishment, From Kandinsky to the Present, Abrams, 1962 (published in England as Abstract Painting from Kandinsky to the Present, Prentice-Hall International, 1962).
Henri Mixchaux, Light Through Darkness, Orion Press, 1963, published as Light Through Darkness: Explorations among Drugs, Bodley Head, 1964.
Seuphor, Abstract Painting in Flanders, Arcade (Brussels), 1963.
Robert Descharnes and Jean-Francois Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Macmillan, 1968.
Bob Claessens and Jeanne Rousseau, Our Breugel, Fond Mercator(Antwerp), 1969.
Pierre Galante, Malraux, Cowles, 1971.
Jerzy Szablowski, Sophie Schneebalg-Perelman, and Adelbrecht L.J. van de Walle, The Flemish Tapestries at Wawel Castle in Cracow: Treasures of King Sigismund Augustus Jagiello, Fond Mercator (Antwerp), 1972.

Contributor to various magazines. See The New York Review of Books, July 2, 1970.

Obituary notice:

Born September 10, 1901, in Lakewood, NJ; died July 4, 1985, in Paris, France. Educator, translator, and author. Chevalier was a professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1929 until 1946, when he resigned under political pressure. In 1942 Chevalier was reportedly asked by George Charles Eltenton to obtain details, presumably for the Soviets, of secret atomic research then being conducted at Berkeley's radiation laboratories. Chevalier allegedly approached his friend, nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, with the proposal, but was rebuffed by Oppenheimer, who termed the scheme "treasonable." Oppenheimer's delay in reporting the incident was to later contribute to his own difficulties in obtaining security clearances vital to his work. The revelation resulted in Chevalier's becoming one of the first persons to be investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though Oppenheimer later withdrew his allegation, Chevalier was subsequently pressured to resign from his teaching post. He then worked as a translator for the United Nations for several years before moving to France in 1950. Chevalier translated numerous books, including Andre Malraux's Man's Fate, Louis Aragon's The Bells of Basel, and Salvador Dali's The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. He was also the author of several novels, including For Us the Living and The Man Who Would Be God, and a 1965 memoir, Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship.

RH: He was at Berkeley when I was there. Since I started out as a professor of French, I knew the French department well, but I saw and spoke to Chevalier only a few times. He moved in a different circle, primarily left wing physicists like Oppenheimer, with whom he had a strange relationship.  Although an active communist, he cut a dashing figure in his open car. His married life was clearly not stable.  Since he was an interpreter at Nuremberg, I wonder if Siegfried Ramler met him there. His list of publications and translations gives a good idea of the circles he frequented. Although he was of French ethnicity, he was active in promoting the independence of North Africa, which was part of the communist agenda.  I wonder what the French think of him.