Miklós Radnóti
I woke up thinking about Miklós Radnóti again this morning. This happens every so often, though not as much as when I was completing my thesis on his last poems; his work has apparently seared itself into my psyche, and I guess there will always be a connection there. Anyway, Miklós Radnóti, a Hungarian poet and translator, is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century poets of his country. Radnóti was killed at the age of thirty-five on a forced march during World War II. After the war, his last poems, written in a notebook during the march, were discovered on his body when he was exhumed from a mass grave near Abda, Hungary. Here's an excerpt from "Eclogue VII", translated by Steven Polgár:
Without commas, one line touching the other
I write poems the way I live, in darkness,
blind, crossing the paper like a worm.
Flashlights, books - the guards took everything.
There’s no mail, only fog drifts over the barracks.
Haunting stuff, for sure. You can read the rest of Radnóti's bio here: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/radnoti.htm
Or, if you're interested, here's a link to my Master’s thesis, that I completed at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2007, analyzing the last poems:
Or, if you're interested, here's a link to my Master’s thesis, that I completed at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2007, analyzing the last poems:
R.I.P.
Radnóti’s work has touched me more deeply than perhaps any other. One day, I will make the journey to pay my respects at his grave in Budapest.
