Background

Sándor Kányádi was born on May 10, 1929, in Porumbeni, Romania, to a family of Hungarian farmers, Miklós Kányádi and Juliannát László.

Education

Sándor Kányádi attended the Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, where he earned a degree in Hungarian philology and gained a love of poetry.

Career

Sándor Kányádi published his first poem in 1955. His relationship with poetry went beyond writing it. He also spent much of his time traveling to local schools reciting his poetry, as well as other Hungarian classics, from memory. Besides, he has worked for various publications as an editor.

Sándor Kányádi, whom many refer to as one of the greatest Hungarian poets, was the voice of the Hungarian minority in Romania, whose land was annexed to Romania after World War I and whose villages were later bulldozed by dictator Nicolai Ceausescu in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. When Kányádi was young, despite the difficulties in his life, he was optimistic. He suffered a series of setbacks, which, however, helped the poet to mature. Kányádis's poetry became more elusive and allusive, and he committed to telling the truth, about himself and about the arduous, often humiliating conditions in which his community has to survive.

Sándor Kányádi has remained in his homeland despite the challenges there and despite generous accommodations offered to him in Hungary. In 2002 English-speaking readers were given a chance to explore Kányádi's writings with the publication of Dancing Embers, the most comprehensive collection of Kányádi's works, where can be found All Souls' Day in Vienna, as well as a representative body of work from the 1960s to the turn of the twenty-first century. Some poems celebrate nature and poems that condemn the cruelties one person can inflict on another. In a selection called "Unadorned Songs," the poet reflects on the process of aging and death. In his more recent poems, written between 1990 and 2000, Kányádi offers meditations on the conflict between the violence of man and the serenity of nature.

Achievements

• Sándor Kányádi was widely known as a poet. He has earned many prestigious awards. His works have been translated into English, Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, German, French, Romanian, and Portuguese. Kányádi was a holder of the Kossuth Prize, which he received in Budapest in 1993, the Poetry Prize of the Romanian Writers' Union, Herder Prize in Vienna in 1995, and the Central European Time Millennium Prize, which he earned in 2000.

Works

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  • Fekete-piros versek 1979
  • Sörény és koponya 1989
  • Valaki jár a fák hegyén 1997
  • Talpas történetek és a kíváncsi hold 1997
  • Talpas történetek 1999
  • Szitakötő tánca 1999
  • Tavaszi tarisznya 1982
  • 45 poems 1999
  • Dancing Embers 2002

Politics

Sándor Kányádi paid great attention to policy, as evidenced by his numerous works concerning the oppression of the Transylvanian Hungarian minority. When the Romanian Communist government refused him a passport to visit an international poets' conference in Rotterdam in 1987, Kányádi resigned from the Romanian Writers' Union out of protest.

Views

Sándor Kányádi's goal was to preserve his language and culture.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• George Dömöri: "Sándor Kányádi started as a starry-eyed regional poet whose optimism equaled his naïveté, manifesting itself in such lines as "We only must have faith and/we shall reach up high to the glittering stars!"

Connections

Father:

Miklós Kányádi

Mother:

Juliannát László