Denise Naville

Denise Lévy, née Kahn, later Denise Naville (1896-1979) was a French writer and translator. Active in early surrealism, she and her husband Pierre Naville later moved away from surrealist activity to work with Leon Trotsky. She translated writing by Trotsky, Friedrich Hölderlin, Hans Erich Nossack, Carl von Clausewitz, Friedrich Engels, Nikolai Bukharin and Paul Celan from German into French.

Life Denise Kahn was born on June 26, 1896, to a French-speaking family in Sarreguemines, then part of the German imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine. Simone Kahn (later Simone Breton) was a cousin.

In 1921 she married Georges Lévy. as have those of her cousin Simone Breton.

Works

Translations (anon.) 'Leonce et Lena' by Georg Büchner, Commerce, 1924. Correspondance complète by Friedrich Hölderlin. Paris: Gallimard, 1948. Translated from the German Interview mit dem Tode. Interview avec la mort by Hans Erich Nossack. Paris: Gallimard, 1948. Dialectique de la nature by Friedrich Engels. Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1950. De la guerre by Carl von Clausewitz. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1955. With a preface by Camille Rougeron and an introduction by Pierre Naville. Translated from the German Vom Kriege. L'Économie politique du rentier by Nikolai Bukharin

Other writing 'Textes surrealistes', La Révolution surréaliste, No. 3 (April 1925)