Miklós Radnóti

By: Alix Lambert
May 5, 2011

Jewish Hungarian poet MIKLÓS RADNÓTI’s (1909-44) mother died during childbirth, and his twin brother was still-born. This very first experience of the world colored his poetry to come. He was recognized for his work during his short life, and even more so posthumously. Conscripted into the Hungarian Army and assigned to the Ukranian front, he was shot and killed by Hungarian Nazi collaborators during a forced march. His body was buried in a mass grave. A year and a half later, when the grave was exhumed it was identified by the small notebook full of poems found in his coat pocket. Radnóti’s friend, violinist Miklós Lorsi, was also shot and killed during the three-month-long march, while Radnóti was helping him walk. Excerpted from a poem [translated by Steven Polgar] found in Radnóti’s notebook:

I fell next to him.
His body rolled over.
It was tight as a string before it snaps.
Shot in the back of the head.
‘This is how you’ll end.’
‘Just lie quietly,’ I said to myself.
Patience flowers into death now.
‘Der springt noch auf’ [*] I heard above me.
Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear.

[*] “Still, that one jumps up.”

Radnóti’s final poems not only represent some of the few surviving works of literature composed during the Holocaust, but also a stark straightforward look at death and the anticipation thereof.

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Tammy Wynette.

READ MORE about members of the Partisans Generation (1904-13).

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