William Penn Life, 2000 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2000-09-01 / 9. szám
Miklós Radnóti: Hungarian Poet ALTHOUGH ATTILA JÓZSEF established no school, he influenced nearly all of his contemporaries. The poetry of this period was enriched under the Nyugat's influence and by Attila József. His poetry was marked by a classical, polished style and an abundance of forms, evoking the full range of human emotion in protest against inhumanity. The most prominent member of this group was the lyricist Miklós Radnóti (1909-1940). Radnóti was a budding poet when he entered Szeged University in 1930. There he studied Hungarian and French literature. He also became a leader of the "Szeged Young Men," a group of students who engaged in what they called "village exploration." Although Radnóti was a highly gifted poet and translator with a teacher's diploma, employers everywhere refused to hire him because he was Jewish. He was compelled to do odd jobs and translations for a living. Beginning in 1941, he was sent to several forced labor camps. In 1944 he was sent to Bor, Yugoslavia, where the Germans operated one of their most horrible extermination camps. When the Germans evacuated Yugoslavia the camp's inmates were marched across Hungary to Germany. It was in his beloved native land that the exhausted poet was shot and killed by the SS. When Radnóti's body was exhumed, his last poems, written on the threshold of death, were found in the pocket of his overcoat. A spirit of rebellious jauntiness dominates his For the benefit of our readers not schooled in the Hungarian language, we present this English version of this month’s “Magyar Nyelv” feature. It is not a complete word-for-word translation, but we feel it will give you a general understanding and appreciation of the subject discussed. early work. Feelings of frustration are expressed in crabbed exclamations, expressionist imagery and fractured forms. After 1936, some of his poems display a richer, clearer voice. The development of his work proceeds in several directions simultaneously: the poet's message is matched to an ever bolder use of the elements of reality and a growing tendency for more polished, more classical forms. Radnóti yearns for optimism, idyll, peace and harmony—for quiet pleasure—and longs to live in a land of culture and classicism. However, the darkening horizon-the "prelude to war"- mars the idyll and suggests thoughts of gloom and doom. Awareness of death is a motif that runs through Radnóti's poetry. Even amidst the most radiant harmony, in the most serene and peaceful regions, he has a nagging presentiment that he is going to perish miserably. Radnóti's voice soared highest in the last few years of his life, in the years of humiliation and persecution, of horror and extreme peril. In eight eclogues (the last of which was written behind the barbed-wire fences of Lager Heidemann in Bor), he expresses in dialogue, through the rigorous discipline of the classical verse form and delicate shades of meaning, his perturbation at the ever more savage horror of the era and, despite the horror, his confidence in an idyllic peace that would come—perhaps when he was dead. In these dreadful throes, love becomes a truly great sentiment, the last refuge. Now the real meaning of words like "country" and "people" become apparent. As a marvelous example of poetic selfdiscipline and human resistance, Radnóti kept writing poems until the last moment. He evoked the world of concentration camps with a rare degree of perceptiveness, describing each stage of his Calvary with more and more perfect versification, in an exceptionally condensedand mature poetry. |HP|J Forced March (Erőltetett Menet) Miklós Radnóti He’s foolish who, once down, resumes his weary beat, A moving mass of cramps on restless human feet, Who rises from the ground as if on borrowed wings, Untempted by the mire to which he dare not cling, Who, when you ask him why, flings back at you a word Of how the thought of love makes dying less absurd. Poor deluded fool, the man’s a simpleton, About his home by now only the scorched winds run, His broken walls lie flat, his orchard yields no fruit, His familiar nights go clad in terror’s rumpled suit. Oh could I but believe that such dreams had a base Other than in my heart, some native resting place; If only once again I heard the quiet hum Of bees on the verandah, the jar of orchard plums Cooling with late summer, the gardens half asleep, Voluptuous fruit lolling on branches dipping deep, And she before the hedgerow stood with sunbleached hair, The lazy morning scrawling vague shadows on the air... Why not? The moon is full, her circle is complete. Don’t leave me, friend, shout out, and see! I’m on my feet! (September 15, 1944, Bor) William Pern Lila, September 2000 17
