Clouded Sky - Softcover

Radnoti, Miklos; Polgar, Steven; Berg, Stephen; Marks, S. J.

4.58

69 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1931357129 ISBN 13: 9781931357128

Publisher: Sheep Meadow Pr, 2003

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"...a truly great poet, one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence dealing with the tragic twentieth century are utterly fused, as they so rarely are . . . The quality of the translation is such that it is hard to remember the poems were not first written in English, even though one is always aware of Radnoti's vision as European and of his locus as Hungary."--Denise Levertov

The Hungarian Jewish poet Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944) was also a prolific translator and editor who wrote some of his greatest poems in the labor camps and copper mines of Yugoslavia before being killed by the Nazis. Leaving behind a body of work that ranks with the classics of Hungarian verse, his influence is now being felt among a younger generation. In 1946, Radnoti's body was exhumed from a mass grave by his wife who found a notebook of his poems (many of which were addressed to her) in his coat pocket.

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From the Publisher:

6 1/2 x 9 trim.

About the Author:

In 1946, when MIKLOS RADNOTI'S wife found his body, in the pockets of his trenchcoat was a notebook that contained all the poems the great Hungarian poet had written during his internment at a copper mine in Bor, Yugoslavia.

Radnoti was born a twin in Hungary in 1909. After receiving his diploma from the University of Szeged, he went to Budapest to teach, but despite his qualifications he was never appointed to the positions he deserved because he was a Jew. He spent some time in Paris (where he began writing the first pomes for Clouded Sky), supported himself by translating and published many of his poems in major literary periodicals.

With other "progressive" intellectuals, Radnoti was at the center of opposition to the "conservative" regime of Regent Miklos Horthy, which allied itself with the Nazis in World War II. Beginning in 1940, he was sent to a number of forced labor camps. At one point he worked along the Ukrainian front, arming and disarming explosives; finally in 1944 he was taken to Bor, southeast of the Hungarian border. From there, the Fascists drove him and the rest of the prisoners across Hungary to the town of Abda, in the northwest of the country, where, no longer useful, the workers were beaten to death and thrown into a mass grave.

Surviving prisoners had smuggled copies of his poems out of the camp, but the five written in his last days, "Roots" and postcards 1 through 4, were unknown until his wife discovered them in his grave.

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