PROFESSOR HENRY GIFFORD

Professor of English at Bristol University whose grasp of foreign literatures led to the establishment of comparative studies there

HENRY GIFFORD was Winterstoke Professor of English at the University of Bristol from 1967 to 1975, becoming Pro - fessor of English and Comparative Litera - ture in the last six months of his career there. Educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford , he had arrived at Bristol in 1946 as an assistant lecturer soon after completing war service with the Royal Armoured Corps. It was at that time of active service that he began to teach him - self Russian . He was already proficient in Spanish, having worked, together with his wife Rosamond; among refugee chil - dren during the Spanish Civil War. Some time after arriving at Bristol, he suggested to a younger member of staff, the poet Charles Tomlinson, that they should collaborate on a translation of

poems by the Russian Fyodor Tyutchev. As the younger man knew no Russian , Gifford prepared sheets of what he called "transparencies ". These are now to be found in the manuscript collection of the University of Texas. Their annotations on points of style and tone are extraordinary in their meticulousness, and they are accompa - nied by a literal translation of the origi - nal underneath the Russian text. Gifford' next suggested they try the poems of Antonio Machado on the same principle, followed by a selection from Vallejo . This interest in comparative liter - ature possessed, beside a firm linguistic base, a critical exactness in the choice of texts. Gifford's aptitude for languages, backed by the classics from his school