Babette Deutsch (September 22, 1895 – November 13, 1982) was an American poet, critic, translator, and novelist.
Born in New York City, the daughter of Michael and Melanie (Fisher) Deutsch, she matriculated from the Ethical Culture School and Barnard College, graduating in 1917 with a B.A. She published poems in magazines such as the North American Review and the New Republic while she was still a student at Barnard.
In 1946, she received an honorary D. Litt. from Columbia University. On April 29, 1921, Deutsch married Avrahm Yarmolinsky, chief of the Slavonic Division of The New York Public Library (1918–1955), also a writer and translator. They had two sons, Adam Yarmolinsky and Michael.
She translated Pushkin's Eugene Onegin into English and also made some of the best English versions of Boris Pasternak's poems.
Fawns in the winter wood
Who feel their horns, and leap,
Swans whom the bleakening mood
...
These are the streets where we walked with war and childhood
Like our two shadows behind us, or
Before us like one shadow.
...
Content that now the bleeding bone be swept
Out of her reach, she lay upon her side.
In a blonde void sunk deep, she slept, she slept
...
If you press a stone with your finger,
Sir Isaac Newton observed,
The finger is also
...