Foamy Sky: the Major Poems of Miklos Radnoti (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation) - Softcover

Radnóti, Miklós

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691015309 ISBN 13: 9780691015309

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1992

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hungarian

From Publishers Weekly

Radnoti was one of the major Hungarian poets during the first part of the 20th century. Like that of the Soviet Acmeists, his early lyrical work is concentrated on the classical themes of love and memory. His later poems, focused on the political tragedy of his age, foreshadow his own death. After a forced march across the Balkans to a slave-labor camp in 1944, Radnoti was shot in the neck by Hungarian guards. This volume, a selection from his entire oeuvre, includes many of the poems from his last book (which bears the same title as this volume) and five poems that were found in his coat pocket when his body was exhumed from a mass grave in 1946. Radnoti wrote metered verse, and Osvath and Turner have attempted to translate the poetry metrically, based on the idea that "the cadence of poetry is already prior to and in common among all languages." This, unfortunately, is not true. By stretching and contorting the poetic lines in English ("Now rests after so many sufferings, / behold, this brown and unwarmed corpse"), the translators have inadvertently obfuscated the poetry. This is regrettable, since there is a great depth to the work that has not yet been successfully rendered in English.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0691015309
• ISBN 13: 9780691015309
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186