Call Number:

C0793

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

10 boxes

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Wolfgang A. Luchting Correspondence, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1958-1994 (inclusive) and 1960-1990 (bulk)

Creator:

Luchting, Wolfgang A. (Wolfgang Alexander), 1927-

Form:

Correspondence -- 20th century and Manuscripts, Spanish -- 20th century.

Abstract:

Consists primarily of correspondence of Wolfgang Luchting (1927-1999), retired professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington), with Latin American authors and German publishers. Miscellaneous manuscripts of Luchting, a small amount of papers of others, and printed material are included.

Wolfgang Alexander Luchting was born in 1927 in Munich, Germany. He studied at the University of Paris, Sorbonne (Paris, France), University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minn), and the University of Munich (Munich, Germany). He received his Ph.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Munich in 1956. From 1956 to 1962, Luchting lived in Lima, Peru, and taught on a part-time basis at two universities in Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and Pontífica Universidad Católica.

In the early 1960s, Luchting began teaching at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio), where he was assistant professor of German Language and Literature. In 1965-1966, he assumed a teaching post in Spanish and German at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and in the fall of 1966, he began teaching Spanish and Comparative Literature at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, where he taught until he retired from teaching in 1993.

In 1961, Luchting began publishing his translations of Latin American authors (from Spanish into German) in Germany. He specialized in translating novelists and short story writers from countries of the Andean region and Chile, and has published German translations of works by Ciro Alegría, José María Arguedas, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Enrique Congrains Martín, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Manuel Rojas, and Mario Vargas Llosa, among others.

The collection consists primarily of correspondence between Wolfgang A. Luchting and Latin American authors, and, in particular, authors from Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Some of the primary correspondents include Peruvian writers Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Ortega, José Miguel Oviedo, and Carlos Meneses; Mexican writers Marco Tulio Aguilera Garramuño, Manuel Mejía Valera, and Gonzalo Martré; Chilean writers Fernando Alegría and Antonio Skármeta, and Colombian novelist Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazábal. There is also one folder of correspondence from the Argentinian novelist Ernesto Sábato, and an original manuscript by Sábato containing suggestions for translators of his novel Abaddón, el exterminador.

The collection also includes a large amount of correspondence between Luchting and Günter W. Lorenz, a German translator and literary critic specializing in Latin American literature; and correspondence between Luchting and German and Swiss publishers, among them Horst Erdmann Verlag, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Ammann Verlag, and Rowohlt Verlag. There is business correspondence, documents, and printed material, and, in addition to correspondence with publishers, there is one folder of correspondence with the Spanish literary agency, Carmen Balcells, spanning the years 1964 to 1994.

The collection includes a few manuscripts by Luchting, and one by Julio Ramón Ribeyro which were extracted from his letters to Latin American authors. Manuscripts by Luchting include a typescript prologue, probably for a book edited by Luchting and Carlos Meneses, El cuento peruano contemporáneo (1983), and a first draft of his translation into German of a short story by Ribeyro, "Sólo para fumadores." Interspersed in the correspondence received from Latin American authors are a few papers of others, including poems and short stories by Peruvian writer Fernando Ampuero, and a typescript fragment of a novel by Isaac Goldemberg titled "La conversión de Marcos Karushansky."