Miklos Radnoti: The Complete Poetry in Hungarian and English
(This book contains the complete poems in Hungarian and in...)
This book contains the complete poems in Hungarian and in the English translation of Hungary's great modern poet, Miklos Radnoti, murdered at the age of 35 during the Holocaust. His earliest poems, the six books published during his lifetime, and the poems published posthumously after World War II are included. There is a foreword by Győző Ferencz, one of Hungary's foremost experts on Radnoti's poems, and accompanying essays by the author on dominant themes and recurring images, as well as the relevance of Radnoti's work to Holocaust literature.
Miklós Radnóti was a Hungarian poet and educator, who fell victim to the Holocaust. He published a number of collections of poems before the war and was a fierce anti-fascist.
Background
Miklós Radnóti was born on May 5, 1909, in Budapest into a Jewish family. Radnóti's mother, Ilona Grosz, died while giving birth to him and his twin brother, who was stillborn. When he was 12 Radnóti lost his father, Jakab Glatter, who had remarried Ilka Molnár - he died of brain thrombosis.
Most of Radnóti's ancestors earned their living in occupations typical for Jews living in the countryside at that time - they were small shopkeepers, vendors, or itinerant peddlers. On his father's side, they also included two painters. Jakab worked as a traveling salesman in his brother-in-law's textile firm. He taught Radnóti Jewish prayers and rituals. Radnóti was not told about his mother's and twin brother's death until he was ten.
Education
Radnóti was brought up by relatives who provided him a good education, and his stepmother, Ilka Molnár, raised him with affection and dedication. In 1927 he graduated from a commercial school.
When Radnóti applied for admission to the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest, the Numerus Clausus Law of 1920, which made Jewish attendance at the institutes of higher learning difficult, barred him from admission. He was accepted in 1930 at the Ferenc József University at Szeged, where he studied Hungarian and French literature.
After graduating Miklós Radnóti tried to find work as a teacher of literature without much success. To support himself he worked as a translator, freelance writer, and private tutor. After a stint in his uncle's textile business, he turned to literature. Inspired by the activities of the Czech and Hungarian avant-gardes, Radnóti worked for a number of little magazines in Budapest, and his early poetry is influenced by avant-garde techniques. His first collection of verse, "Pogány köszöntõ" ("Pagan Statue," 1930), however, delved into highly personal symbolism rife with pagan imagery.
Radnóti formed important friendships with many of the interwar Budapest's most prominent artists and intellectuals at the University of Szeged. His second book, "Újmódi pásztorok éneke" ("Song of New-Fashioned Shepherds," 1931), was banned, and Radnóti barely escaped imprisonment. He published seven more collections of poetry and one memoir, "Ikrek hava" (1940; published as "Under Gemini" in English, 1985), during his lifetime.
During the 1930s, he traveled to France with his wife, Fanni Gyarmati, several times.
During World War II Radnóti published "Orpheus nyomában" (1942), which contained his translations of poetry, new and old. He had translated Virgil's 'Eclogue IX' in 1938 and composed his own 'Eclogue I' in the same year. From the modern French writers, he translated Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Eluard, Apollinare, and Blaise Cendras. Radnóti used many classical poetic forms, which offered a firm cultural ground, ideals of eternal beauty, against the irrationalism, barbarism, and anti-Semitism of his own time. Several of his poems have also religious overtones, such as 'Ének a halálról' and 'Töredék.'
In 1944 Radnóti was sent to a labor camp near Bor in Yugoslavia. As the Russian army was approaching, the concentration camps in Yugoslavia were evacuated and his unit was led on foot through Hungary. Radnóti was shot death by Hungarian guards in November near the village of Abda, with the other 21 internees who were unable to walk. The mass grave was exhumed after the war and Radnóti's last poems, describing incidents on the march, were found in his trench coat pocket by his widow. Radnóti's collected poetry, including his final poems, was published as "Tajtékos ég" (1946; translated into English as "Clouded Sky," 1986). Recent English editions of his works include "All That Still Matters at All" (2014, translated by John Ridland and Peter Czipott).
Miklós was born into a Jewish family. He converted to Catholicism in 1943. This was partly prompted by the persecution of the Hungarian Jews (from which converts to Christianity were initially exempted), but partly also with his long-standing fascination with Catholicism.
Politics
In the early 1930s Miklós had produced several activist poems - 'John Love, testvérem,' 'Vasárnap,' 'Füttyel oszlik a béke' and others - and established ties with the illegal Hungarian Communist Party.
Views
Radnóti's poems were often melancholic and introspective. The central theme in his later collections was death, the poets stand in the world "marked with a white cross." Radnóti's language was highly controlled, serene, and precise, and he did not abandon his cold objectivity even when he knew he would not survive the horrors of his last march.
Personality
Miklós's penname Radnóti derived from his father's birthplace, Radnót. In 1934 he changed his name officially to Radnóti.
Radnóti's friends were attracted by his energy and intensity. Moreover, his deep, melodic voice added to his success in public debates and poetry readings.
Connections
In 1935 Radnóti married Fanni (Fifi) Gyarmati, the daughter of the head of the Office of Communication of the Hungarian Parliament, and settled with her in Budapest, where they had an apartment on 1 Pozsonyi Street. Radnóti had met her already in 1926 at the home of Károly Hilbert, a secondary school teacher, who tutored him in mathematics; Fanni was the pupil of Hilbert's wife. Several of Radnóti's love poems were inspired by his wife Fifi.