HEVESI (originally Hoffman), SANDOR

HEVESI (originally Hoffman ), SANDOR (1873–1939), Hungarian stage director, playwright, and translator. After graduating from the University of Budapest, Hevesi became a teacher but he soon turned to the theater and in 1902 was appointed stage director of the Budapest National Theater. A disciple of the English director Gordon Craig, Hevesi improved artistic standards and introduced modern English plays into the repertoire. He put his knowledge of stage technique to good use in his own plays, which enjoyed considerable popularity in their time. Hevesi translated all the plays of George Bernard Shaw and many of those by Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Gogol, and Wilde. His conversion to Christianity did not save him from antisemitic persecution and he was forced to retire from public life in 1935. An anthology of his essays, A drámairás iskolája ("School for Playwriting"), appeared posthumously in 1961.

His adopted son, andrÁs hevesi (1902–1940), also an author and translator, was a member of the group associated with the radical periodical Szép Szó, which included Pál Ignotus, Ferenc Fejtö, and Béla *Zsolt. His outstanding stories were A párizsi esö ("The Rain in Paris," 1939) and Irén (1938). He left Hungary during the antisemitic excesses of the Horthy regime, and, after volunteering for the French army in 1940, died in battle.

bibliography:

Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929); Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon, i (1963), 460–2; uje, 5 (1941), 350.

[Baruch Yaron]