Synopses & Reviews
One of Hungary's leading poetic voices of the twentieth century, Miklcs Radncti (1909-1944) wrote some of his country's most cherished love poems and political verse even as he anticipated death under the Nazis. This English-only edition presents many of the poems that appear in his Foamy Sky volume and a selection of others dating back to 1929. A good portion of the poems were written during World War II, when Radncti, of Jewish descent, was forced into a slave-labor squad and sent to work building roads in the Balkans. On the final march through Hungary toward Austria near the end of the war, the guards murdered the disabled prisoners who had not already died en route and buried the bodies in a mass grave. Radncti's last poems were found in the pocket of his coat when his body was exhumed. The poems are characterized by a strong prosodic form, which Radncti believed was important to the sense. Unlike previous English translations, this one captures the poet's use of classical meter and lyrical rhyme as well as his visionary imagery and heroic voice.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | |
| The Journey of Orpheus: On Translation | |
| Pagan Invocation | 3 |
| Psalms of Devotion | 4 |
| "And Cain Spoke unto Abel His Brother" | 8 |
| Quiet Lines, Bowed Head | 10 |
| Portrait | 11 |
| Two Ikons | 12 |
| Memory (Oh I-) | 13 |
| Little Duck Bathing | 14 |
| Whistle with the Wind | 15 |
| Like a Bull | 16 |
| A Garden on God's-Hill | 17 |
| While Writing | 18 |
| Canticle | 19 |
| War Diary | 21 |
| Just Walk On, Condemned to Die | 24 |
| Twenty-Eight Years | 25 |
| Hymn to the Nile | 27 |
| Peace, Dread | 29 |
| Song of Death | 30 |
| Annotations to the Prophet Habakkuk | 31 |
| Il faut laisser... | 32 |
| Guard and Protect Me | 33 |
| The First Eclogue | 34 |
| Twenty-Nine Years | 37 |
| Hispania, Hispania | 39 |
| Federico Garcia Lorca | 40 |
| In a Troubled Hour | 41 |
| Thursday | 42 |
| Lines Written in a Copy of Steep Road | 43 |
| Song | 44 |
| Love Poem | 45 |
| Two Fragments | 46 |
| Silly Song about My Wife | 48 |
| Like Death | 49 |
| Foamy Sky | 50 |
| Perhaps... | 52 |
| In Your Arms | 54 |
| The Second Eclogue | 55 |
| Friday | 57 |
| My Friend, You Wonder... | 59 |
| The Third Eclogue | 60 |
| Skin and Bone and Pain | 62 |
| Restlessly, Fall | 65 |
| Similes | 67 |
| Calendar | 68 |
| The Charm | 73 |
| I Hid You Away | 74 |
| Couplets of a Moonish Night | 75 |
| Spring Is Flying... | 76 |
| Foral Song | 78 |
| Hexameters in Late October | 79 |
| Goats | 81 |
| The Fourth Eclogue | 82 |
| A Vague Ode | 85 |
| The Dreadful Angel | 87 |
| Paris | 89 |
| A Pink Unveils | 91 |
| As Imperceptibly | 92 |
| The Fifth Eclogue | 94 |
| I Know Not What... | 96 |
| O Ancient Prisons | 98 |
| In the Gibbering Palm Tree | 99 |
| Neither Memory nor Magic | 100 |
| The Fugitive | 101 |
| Maying | 102 |
| Dreamscape | 103 |
| Fragment | 104 |
| The Seventh Eclogue | 106 |
| Letter to My Wife | 108 |
| Root | 110 |
| A la recherche... | 111 |
| The Eighth Eclogue | 113 |
| Forced March | 116 |
| Razglednicas | 117 |
| Notes to the Poems | 119 |
| Index of Hungarian Titles | 125 |