Eternal Moment: Selected Poems

by Sándor Weöres, Edwin Morgan (Translator)

The unique poetic world of Sandor Weores has fascinated readers in Hungary ever since he began to publish poems in 1928, at the Mozartian age of fifteen. This title mirrors Weores' phenomenal range and inventiveness in vigorous translations by British and American poets.

Genres: Poetry, Hungarian Literature

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Sándor Weöres (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈʃaːndor ˈvørøʃ]; 22 June 1913 – 22 January 1989) was a Hungarian poet and author.

Reviews

[Steve]

Sándor Weöres (1913-1989)

Whatever my origin, driven out into the earth,
my clothes will ever carry the sheep-fold stench
of things here below.
This is the place where God's every plant and beast
pullulates through its appalling feast,
chewing its neighbors raw.

(From "De Profundis" (1942))


A prodigy who wrote a poem at the age of fifteen that Zoltán Kodály hastened to set to music,(*) Sándor Weöres did not rest on his laurels. As described in the little essays accompanying the English translations of some of his poems in Eternal Moment (1988),(**) and in If All the World Were a Blackbird (1985), he dedicated his life to extending poetry's power of expression through constant experimentation, disinterestedly accepting that many of the experiments would not be fruitful. Though it is reported that he wrote a great deal of poetry ranging from the philosophical to the erotic, from the very short to the quite long, much of it still remains accessible only to those relatively few who master the unique language that is Hungarian. And from the description of the experiments he made, it seems likely that much of his work will always be unapproachable by those who are not intimately acquainted with Hungarian. Nonetheless, some of his vast corpus of work has been translated into other European languages, and the rumors of a secreted genius(***) have drawn me to a few of those translations.

From an early age Weöres was drawn to the metaphysical and read Asian and Western philosophy and religion. (Later in life he translated the Tao Te Ching into Hungarian.) And it had a lasting effect on his poetry. A good number of his poems try to bring to word what he calls "the constant in the changing," an expression that already reveals the turn of his mind. As a poet and not a philosopher (contrast his expression with the philosopher's "the Ground of Being"), Weöres reached for the metaphysical and mystical through the experiential.

Ranging far in content and technique - many poetic forms and also styles such as symbolism, surrealism, even Concrete Poetry undergo a sea change in his work (he does not write pastiches) - what seems to be Weöres' constant in the changing is his philosophical stance, one which was darkened somewhat during World War II and the subsequent Communist takeover of Hungary into a distaste for this mortal coil, as exemplified in this sonnet from 1946.

To a Skeleton Fastened Together With Wire

You flesh-hatched statue, artifice of lace,
the slimy body's final dried-out station,
the clatter of your jaw as you are shaken
drums sacred rhythms, spins you to cleanliness.

This small excrescence who stands in for me
dotes not on you but incense, gold, some dead
beast for his table, hot damp games in bed.
Poor fool - he shares his spoils generously.

Clasp him to your ribs, he's like a state
strutting to what the hoi polloi dictate,
collapsing laurelled in his heap of silt.

The flesh is filth throughout, up to the hilt,
but you, bone man, are pure, stripped, ultimate;
the one flower of our being not to wilt!

(translation by George Szirtes)

As the third stanza may suggest, Weöres was not a favorite of the Communist regime. Indeed, between 1948 and 1964 they permitted him to publish almost nothing except his many translations of other poets' work.

But Weöres rejected the role that Hungary's leading poets had always fulfilled - to give expression to the political and nationalistic aspirations of the Hungarian people - choosing instead to search for more profound and general truths. And so he did not write explicitly against the fascist and communist governments that were in power in Hungary for such a long while; instead he wrote satires like "Monkeyland" (1955), from which I quote the opening and closing pairs of quatrains.

Oh for far-off monkeyland,
ripe monkeybread on baobabs,
and the wind strums out monkeytunes
from monkeywindow monkeybars.

Monkeyheroes rise and fight
in monkeyfield and monkeysquare,
and monkeysanatoriums
have monkeypatients crying there.

...

With monkeysupper memories
the monkeyouthouse rumbles, hums,
monkeyswaddies start to march,
right turn, left turn, shoulder arms -

monkeymilitary fright
reflected in each monkeyface,
with monkeygun in monkeyfist
the monkeys' world the world we face.

(translation by Edwin Morgan)

Variety, range and experiment are characteristics of Weöres' poetry, making it impossible for me to give a representative sampling of his work. In If All the World Were a Blackbird Alexander Fenton translates some two hundred smaller poems that neighbor folk and childrens' poetry and which he contrasts with Weöres' "more portentous verse." Just one for a taste:

Red-headed girls,
Like the sweetness of thought,
Are flying by night
In the moon's clear light.

They bring evening water,
Bed-straw and wood,
And bustle and laugh
As a family should.

They sweep up the courtyard
And make it so bright.
Who can imagine
Their doings by night.

The eldest one, Mary,
Floats up with the reek,
And from the eaves Lesley
Is starting to creep.

Red-headed girls
From them keep apart ...
Catch one - elusive -
Bring me my heart !

The few samples of Weöres' work in these two books do not suffice to edge him among my favorites, but I know I shall be re-reading some of the poems in Eternal Moment again and again in the years to come.


(*) The poem, "Öregek" (The Old Ones), addresses the feelings of the extremely elderly with an empathy astonishing for a teenager. A recording of Kodály's choral piece is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_gZ9... This choral piece was just the first of a flood of pieces based on Weöres' texts by all the leading Hungarian composers including György Ligeti and Péter Eötvös.

(**) All of the translations of Weöres' poems by Edwin Morgan in Selected Poems: Sándor Weöres, Ferenc Juhász (1970), which appeared in Penguin's old and still valuable Modern European Poets series, have been taken over into Eternal Moment and supplemented by further poems rendered by a handful of other translators. Ferenc Juhász is a very different poet, and this is not the place to discuss his work.

(***) Outside Hungary, of course; his proponents within the linguistic border view him as one of the most important poets of their language.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weores sees the brutal absurdity of the world. He seeks dissolution of self, stillness, perhaps nothingness. Top tips: Nocturne; and, for a moment of self-doubt, End Life.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

ETERNAL MOMENT is a collection of poems by Hungarian poet Sandor Weores translated into English by a team of several poets. The work spans most of his activity, from 1928 to 1980, though it generally leaves out his light verse. The collection takes its title from a 1935 poem translated here by Edwin Morgan, which begins "What you don't trust to stone and decay, shape out of air."

Weores is possibly the greatest Hungarian poet of the 20th century. He wrote in many styles, from children's poetry (suitable for adults as well, see English translations in Fenton's IF ALL THE WORLD WERE A BLACKBIRD), to elegiac verse, sonnets, and the series of over ten great experiments in sound he called Symphonies. His versatility with poetic voice was so great that he could write a cycle of poems (PSYCHE) attributed to an imaginary 19th-century poetess named Erzsebet Lonyai and lead one female critic to claim that the best feminine verse in Hungarian was written by a man. Weores had a profound interest in the Near and Far East; the Epic of Gilgamesh is a strong influence on his poetry, and he translated the Tao Te Ching into Hungarian.

With such talent, one would think Weores would have become an internationally renown poet, but his exploitation of the Hungarian language is so strong, as the themes of his poetry so complex, that much of his work cannot find a capable translator. Here we see attempts to bring his poems into English by Alan Dixon, Daniel Hoffman, Hugh Maxton, Edwin Morgan, William Jay Smith, and George Szirtes. All of the poems here are excellent in the Hungarian original, and several of the translations here succeed brilliantly.

Weores' famous short pieces are here. "Monkeyland" is a commentary on the absurdity of human society: "Monkeyking on monkeypole / harangues the crowd in monkeytongue, / monkeyheaven comes to some, / monkeyhell for those undone" translates Edwin Morgan. In the Dixon-translated "Saturn Declining", written in memory of T.S. Eliot, we find the mournful lines "They took my flock away. Should I care? I have nothing to do now, / no responsibility; easy an old man's life at the poorhouse." Even one of Weores' graphical poems, "Wallpaper and Shadows" is here, its shape perfectly preserved in English by Morgan.

We are fortunate to have portions of five of Weores' "symphonies". George Szirtes, a native Hungarian and the only translator to have the advantage of knowing what Hungarian sounds like to its speakers, tackled "The Constant in the Changing" section of the sixth symphony: "The earth flies fast, the old shag bird. And now, as it turns / on autumn nights, progressively withdrawing its north face from light / we may feel the fan of its wings as, ever faster, it furrows / the furthest pleats of space." "The Assumption", Weores' seventh effort in this series, was written in memory of his mother and explores the phenomenon of death and the transmigration of the soul. William Jay Smith renders the opening lines as "Death's swaddling clothes, Death's iron lock / the clods that coldly clatter down; / while still the body-shadow climbs / higher than ultimate flame can dart / and, rotting, the sweatband pries the earth apart."

As an additional delight, the book is illustrated with drawings by Weores himself. While ideally all could learn Hungarian and read Weores' work in the original, this translation is an essential purchase for lovers of poetry and an unappreciated gem.

[Jeff Laughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot more of this made sense than I thought it would.

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Hungarian poetry from one of its best!

[Mills College Library]

894.51113 W482e 1988