Miklós Radnóti: The Complete Poetry in Hungarian and English

by Miklós Radnóti, Gabor Barabas (Translator)

This book contains the complete poems in Hungarian and in 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.

Genres: Poetry, Hungarian Literature, Hungary

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2013

About the author

Miklós Radnóti, birth name Miklós Glatter, was a Hungarian poet who fell victim to the Holocaust.

Radnóti was born into an assimilated Jewish family. His life was considerably shaped by the fact that both his mother and his twin brother died at his birth. He refers to this trauma in the title of his compilation Ikrek hava ("Month of Gemini"/"Month of the Twins").

Though in his last years, Hungarian society rejected him as a Jew, in his poems he identifies himself very strongly as a Hungarian. His poetry mingles avant-garde and expressionist themes with a new classical style, a good example being his eclogues. His romantic love poetry is notable as well. Some of his early poetry was published in the short-lived periodical Haladás (Progress). His 1935 marriage to Fanni Gyarmati (born 1912) was exceptionally happy.

Radnóti 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.

In the early forties, he was conscripted by the Hungarian Army, but being a Jew, he was assigned to an unarmed support battalion (munkaszolgálat) in the Ukrainian front. In May 1944, the defeated Hungarians retreated and Radnóti's labor battalion was assigned to the Bor, Serbia copper mines. In August 1944, as consequence of Tito's advance, Radnóti's group of 3,200 Hungarian Jews was force-marched to Central Hungary, which very few reached alive. Radnóti was fated not to be among them. Throughout these last months of his life, he continued to write poems in a little notebook he kept with him. According to witnesses, in early November 1944, Radnóti was severely beaten by a drunken militiaman, who had been tormenting him for "scribbling". Too weak to continue, he was shot into a mass grave near the village of Abda in Northwestern Hungary. Today, a statue next to the road commemorates his death on this spot.

Eighteen months later, his body was unearthed and in the front pocket of his overcoat the small notebook of his final poems was discovered (his body was later reinterred in Budapest's Kerepesi Cemetery). These final poems are lyrical and poignant and represent some of the few works of literature composed during the Holocaust that survived. Possibly his best known poem is the fourth stanza of the Razglednicák, where he describes the shooting of another man and then envisions his own death.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

The light drips from the sun like pearls,
and though I’ve not laid eyes on you for years,
I can still see you […]
ah, how the light still trembles,
though ten years have passed, and you’re but a memory!
*
and I think, who is thinking of me now, when
they look up at the sky?
*
just listen to the voiceless silvery night,
as the celestial flowering tree unfurls,
and the moon gazes over a crippled world.
*
and now I play the sad song of your perfume
like on an old violin, as I sift through my
memories
on this wilting scrap of paper.
*
When autumn comes, and the glimmering
sunlight turns feeble, I shall pay you homage
through simple words, and love you
as only the willow can love the languorous river.

[Nuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting. Lucid. Tender. Heartbreaking.

TO WHAT END
You are an adult,—and at times filled with
disgust,
but you can do nothing about it, so admit it
finally.
Go back,—says a voice at times like this,
and just sit on the ground and speak to the sky.
You mean you can’t?—it asks, almost crying.
Just start from the foot of the chair, and look!
To the left lies China
and to the right, the eternal hunting grounds,
and clover.
O, come, where is that old Indian pride?
you say you no longer care from whence the
wind blows?—
And that you’re content to grow old, teach, and
write poetry…
“Just sit on the ground and speak to the sky.”
But he refuses to sit. And will not talk.
And so he grows up, but never knows why.

Miklós endured much during his brief life. He was a poet of isolation, torment, love and grief. When I read this collection, some of his poems reminded me how much the essence of his poetry is similar to that of Nazim Hikmet and Pablo Neruda. And yet the story of this stateless writer is one that will haunt us the most. And yet, it's so underrated.

Miklós, a Hungarian poet, celebrated for his poetry of witness, was a victim to the Holocaust. Shot dead with other Jews on a forced March, at the age of 36. The poems in his final collection were retrieved from his clothes, after his body was exhumed from a mass grave by his wife, Fanni.

Fanni Gyarmati was a teacher, who survived until 2014 when she was 101 years of age. She kept his memory and poetry alive for 70 years. And now, we do.

For Radnóti, his birth was his first tragedy. It was an ever existing wound of remembrance and guilt of having lost his mother and twin brother during childbirth — his blood soaked sacrifices. All his life, he thought of himself as nothing but a murderer.

His father died when Miklós was 12. His step mom and sister died in Auschwitz. All of Radnóti's losses were woven by him, in his poems.

Losses formed the core of him. It is inexplicably painful to read the poems dealing with this subject. He felt motherless, even though he had a step mother. It is also achingly beautiful that the void — of never been kissed by a mother, who, for a child, is his/her first love, and also, to have never drank the elixir of life from his mother's breast, almost created in him, a yearning — and he felt calm and comfort, resting his head between his woman's breasts. A child's instinct to latch onto a mother's breast, then becomes the place for planting gentle kisses on a lover's body. In BIRTH, he explores this void and connection.

It is a very difficult and overwhelming poem to read. What strength it must have taken Miklós to even write it.

BIRTH
I was born among lives that ran on threads then
got lost, as two lives
were traded for my wonderful life.

I was born amidst death, as worlds crumbled,
and the month of May mourned for the dead;
Mine must be the most expensive of lives, for two were traded for one, and were given back to timelessness.
And I arrived soundlessly without a voice. And the somber trees spoke of the flowers and then of the dead.
My mother spoke first who died for me, but never kissed me.
She could speak but would not kiss.

And though it was May I received no warmth nor kisses.

As yet, I had no voice, and my mother said:
“I will leave and take with me your dreams. I will leave and take from you your tears. I will leave and take with me your dreams and tears.”

As yet, I had no voice, and my Brother said: “I will leave even though I never arrived.
I will leave because I must.
I will leave because I am stillborn.
I will leave and take with me your Mother who will die in labor somewhere.
I will leave, but pay attention to the months of May. For therein lies your fate.
I will leave, and take with me all that can never be.
I will leave, and you will be left alone.”

And it was then that I found my voice and cried.
For he left and took with him the dream.
He left and took with him the tear.
He left and took with him my Mother.
He left, and she left, too.
And they took with them all that can never be.
Yes, it was then that I found my voice and cried.
And ever since I have been alone in the months of May.
And I almost died with them as well.

And it was a buxom German girl who nursed but never kissed me, and I firmly believe I planted my first kiss on her swollen nipples. Yes, I am sure that she was my very first love.

TO BE SAID OVER AND OVER
My mother gave birth to twins,
then died right there on the spot
may she rest in peace with my brother
in their common grave.

My father died as well,
it seems that the work did him in,
first came the autopsy
and then the church steeple,

— and so I could not reach him,—
they piled high his soul,
and I have been waiting ever since
for it to fall.

There are poems he dedicated to his sister is "Many Cars Pass By Here" in Pagan Salute, who died in Auschwitz at the age of 29. "The Cry of the Gulls" is dedicated to his step mom, who died in Auschwitz, in 1944, at the age of 59. He also dedicated a poem to his uncle, who took Radnóti in his care, after Radnóti's father died and he mourned the loss of his friends throughout his writings.

It’s two years since I last heard him whistle, and
he’s gone,
and he sleeps deep within the ground; no sharpclawed
lover to rock him now, only the pounding earth
mutely gathering its terrifying clumps
to slowly harden and dry between his ribs.

Having been forced to witness the dark period of humanity, being a Jew, he also wrote a great deal of protest poetry — the plight and grief of people, the Lord ruling over the surfs, and executions of class workers. In Pagan Salute, through his poems, he dimly perceived an ominous situation looming in the future. This was 7 years in prior to the World War II and the Holocaust. He was proven right.

An unspeakable torment and isolation haunted Radnóti throughout much of his life despite his attempts to link himself to various groups and movements. Despite his best efforts, he never found solace.

A POEM FOR MEN
1. It is a man’s curse, this lofty loneliness;
one that neither woman, nor dog can
understand.
It lurks and strolls about inside,
like the sun’s
warmth
that promenades in fruit weighed down
with
autumn,
one can almost hear it surge and swell,
as it thrusts the rustling waters unto the dry
shores,
perhaps the footsteps of the snow- ruffled wind
are as familiar.

Some of his poems were seemed sacrilege or obscene at the time, because of feelings of anti-Semitism and rising fascism. In them, he uses the transfigurative device of melding nature and his beloved.

A DUCKLING BATHES
A duckling bathes and dips in the black pond,
where a voluptuous girl bathes in a
laundry tub, everything’s laid bare, as she
splashes, and scrubs, and tosses her hair;
I know that soon she will sprawl out in the warming
sun,
and will welcome me with her chattering teeth,
as I slip softly between her warbling thighs!

It's hard to choose a favorite, but the "A Cycle of Fourteen Poems /DIE LIEBE KOMMT UNDGEHT" from the Miscellaneous Poems section, is my favorite. It's about how the ambitious cycle of how love comes and goes, written between 18– 19 years of age in Reichenberg and chronicling his first sexual encounter with Klem entine Tschiedel (Tinni). These poems were not included in any of the books published during his lifetime and perhaps this was a gesture to Fanni so as not to hurt her feelings. The excerpts show the tenderness, and the ruthlessness of love.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m your son,
lurking in the dark, watching you undress,
my eyes gleaming and wide with wonder,
an adolescent plagued with self- loathing,
but then I’m falling in love with you.
Falling in love with you,
having glimpsed your forbidden body.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m your son,
when you kiss me on my brow,
and though tormented by guilt and terror
I lightly brush your lips with mine,
and I’m falling in love with you.
Falling in love with you,
knowing that you’re mine.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m your son,
your debased and lovesick son,
and on cold and guilty nights like this
I rest my head upon your breast
after our passionate kisses.
After our passionate kisses, my dear beloved.


(...)

We broke apart.
My lips bloodied by your kisses, and you gasped
and begged for me to stay.
But I will not stay.
So go quietly inside, so I can take my leave
and wander among the mile markers in the
mud.
What are you staring at?
Haven’t our snow- white evenings been followed
by a melting, tear- stained thaw,
Are you even listening?
To how among the sickly trees winter’s
moldy saints bemoan the summer.
Stop your crying.
You only make your eyes ugly with your tears
and anyway, I can’t bear it.
Do you hear?
How the wind careens and howls in the hills
while here before you lies the ruffled mud.
Do you understand me?
Mud. Mud and Hatred that lurk beneath
every great and gleaming love affair.
So go now.

I both adore and hate you,
and for that I’ll leave you on this road.
My dear.
I once loved you to distraction, and perhaps
if we ever meet again we can pick up where we
left off.
Go now.

FROM PSALMS OF RAPTURE
I am sadder than a willow by the riverbank, but love you with the most beautiful of words,
you who are a hundred times more simple
than simplicity, more beautiful than beauty.

IN YOUR TWO ARMS
In your two arms
I rock silently.
In my two arms
you rock in silence.
In your two arms
I am a child, sleeping.
In my two arms
you are a child, listening.
In your two arms
you enfold me
when I’m afraid.
In my two arms I enfold you
and I no longer fear.
In your two arms
even death’s silence
cannot frighten me.
In your two arms
I overcome death
as in a dream.

Last recommendation among his love poems would be "WITH YOUR RIGHT HAND ON MY NECK."

I wish I could list all favorites from the 12 books, but I've already overdone by listing the aforementioned poems.

At the time of writing this review, that I fell in love with Miklós even more — not just for his poetry, but for all that made him human, how he created all he did, in spite of his unimaginable pains. And just this realization made me change my rating from 4 to 5.

I am I, to myself,
and I am you, to you,
and to you, you are I,
from two separate kingdoms.
And two of us make we.
But only, if I agree.

I wish more poetry lovers across the world, reads Miklós Radnóti.

[Nithin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.8) so thankful my lovely friend introduced me to his work

[zunggg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant edition of a poet much less well-known than he ought to be. It's complete and, crucially, bilingual, and there are useful appendices on the translation and the context of the work. But it's the poetry that matters, and Radnóti's voice is strong and supple throughout his changing styles. From the jumpy, political absurdism of his youth, through the surreal and lyrical pre-war pieces, to the sui-generis final poems (and this is a very perfunctory summary) there is a clear connecting thread. Radnóti has the central European gift of expressing a deep rootedness, a strong sense of place and home, while also articulating the plight of the outcast and satirising/despising the mob. Frequently surprising, by turns angular and enbosoming, these poems seem to spring from the very kidney of shadowed pre-WWII Europe; and that they should do so out of such an alien tongue as Hungarian is a great testimony to the translator.

[j.e.rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Look how broken he is with pain, / just like this poem."

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hb, Ardis, 1980, English only trans.