József and Radnóti

Hungarian Literature

Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Poetry in Crisis: Attila József & Radnóti

Two Hungarian poets of the twentieth century are known well beyond the language: Attila József, who died young in 1937, and Miklós Radnóti, who was murdered in 1944. Their poems are among the most moving in European literature, and their lives are bound up with poverty, political extremes and the Holocaust. This chapter follows them, and then two poets of the next generation, Sándor Weöres and János Pilinszky, who found new ways to write in the shadow of the war. The material is sensitive and is handled descriptively. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Attila József

The life

Born in 1905 in a poor family in Budapest, left fatherless, raised partly in foster care and supported by a series of benefactors, József studied briefly in Szeged, Vienna and Paris (check). He joined the communist movement and was expelled from it, and he suffered from depression (check).

The poetry

His poems join a modern, intense voice with simple language and strong images of childhood, class, love, work and the cosmos. He wrote about poverty and loneliness with a directness that moved readers (check examples such as "Tiszta szívvel" and "Altató").

The death

He died in December 1937 under a train near Balatonszárszó, aged 32, in circumstances usually described as suicide, though that is debated (check). His birthday, 11 April, is celebrated as Hungarian Poetry Day (Chapter 1; check).

Recognition. Largely unrecognised in his short life, he became one of the most loved Hungarian poets after his death.
Political use. He was claimed by the communist state as a proletarian poet and by others for different reasons, and the simplified image can hide the complexity of his work (check).
Translations. There are several English translations, which differ widely, so it is worth comparing (Chapter 1).

Miklós Radnóti

Poems from a forced march Miklós Radnóti (1909 to 1944), born in Budapest into a Jewish family and later baptised a Catholic, was a poet and translator who wrote with classical forms and a gentle, humane voice (check). In the Second World War he was repeatedly conscripted into forced labour. In 1944 he was marched with other labour servicemen from a copper mine in Serbia towards Hungary, and was shot near Abda in November 1944 when he was too weak to continue (check). When his body was exhumed in 1946, a notebook of poems, now called the Bor notebook, was found in his coat pocket (check). The last poems, written in pencil, are among the most remembered of the war.

The "Razglednicas". His final short poems, written as picture postcards ("razglednica" in Serbian), set a calm description beside the horror around him (check).
The form. He often used strict classical metres, and this control gives the later poems much of their force.
The context. The Hungarian anti-Jewish laws from 1938 and the mass deportations of 1944 shaped the lives of many writers (check; treat figures with care).
The memory. He is widely read in Hungary and in translation, and is treated as a central witness of the period.

After the War: Weöres and Pilinszky

Poet (check dates)	Note
Sándor Weöres (1913 to 1989)	A virtuoso of form and voice, who wrote in many styles and personas, from nursery rhymes to philosophical sequences; Psyché, a long work in the voice of an invented eighteenth-century poet, is a famed example (check).
János Pilinszky (1921 to 1981)	A Catholic poet of spare, stark lines shaped by the experience of the war and the camps; his poems are short and often dark (check).
Others	Gyula Illyés, Lőrinc Szabó and Ágnes Nemes Nagy are among the other major poets of the period (check).

The communist period constrained these poets in different ways, and Chapter 7 returns to censorship and the strategies writers used.

A British comparison Compare the First World War poets Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, who died young and whose poems are read as witness (check). Radnóti's case differs in that he wrote in classical forms under conditions of persecution and died as a victim of a genocide, not as a soldier.

Check the details This chapter covers suicide, persecution and murder. Dates, places and circumstances are from general knowledge and must be checked against reliable biographies and the poets' collected works before being relied on or repeated. Translations of the key poems differ, so name the translator when quoting.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe what makes Attila József's poetry distinctive and why he was claimed by different groups after his death.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Explain why Radnóti's last poems are treated as witness, and what the Bor notebook shows about his work.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Compare Weöres and Pilinszky: their styles, their relation to the war and what each adds to the picture of Hungarian poetry.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

József: 1905 to 1937; plain, intense poems; Poetry Day on his birthday (check)
Radnóti: 1909 to 1944; forced labour; the Bor notebook found in 1946 (check)
Weöres: 1913 to 1989; a virtuoso of form (check)
Pilinszky: 1921 to 1981; spare, stark poems (check)
The caution: sensitive history; verify and name the translator