Radnóti Miklós (1909-1944) 

Radnóti was born in Budapest into an assimilated Jewish family. His life was considerably shaped by the fact that both his mother and his twin brother died at his birth.

In his last years, Hungarian society rejected Radnóti as a jew, but in his poems he identifies himself very strongly as a Hungarian. His poetry mixed avant-garde and expressionist themes with a new classical style, a good example being his dialogue. His romantic love poetry is notable as well.

In the early forties Radnóti was called by the Hungarian Army, but being a Jew he was assigned to an unarmed.

Radnóti‘s group of 3,200 Hungarian Jews was force marched tı central Hungary. On the march most of them died, including Radnóti .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL8jwnZeKvo

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In these last months of his life continued to write poems in a small notebook he kept with him. His last poem was dedicated to his friend Miklos Lorsi, who was shot to death during their death march. According to witness, in early November 1944, Radnoti was severely beaten by a drunken militiaman who had been tormenting him for “notes”. Too weak to continue, he was shot into a mass grave near the village of Abda in northwestern Hungary. Today, a statue next to the road commemorates (to honor the memory of by someone) his place of death.

Eighteen months after his death ,the mass grave was exhumed (dig of earth) and in the front pocket of Radnóti’s overcoat his small notebook of final poems was found. The final poems are lyrical and poignant (distressing to feelings) and represent some of the few works of literature composed during the Holocaust that survived.

I cannot know…

I cannot know what this land means to other people.

For me,it is my birthplace,this little nation ambraced

By flames,the world of my childhood rocking in the distance.

I grew out of her like a tender branch from a tree

And I hope one day my body will sink into her.

I am at home.And if a shrub happens to kneel down

Beside my foot,I know both Its name and its flower;

I know who walks on the road and where they are going,

And what it might mean when in the summer sunset

The house-walls shimmer and drip with crimson-agony.

For one who flies above,this land is merely a map,

And does not know where lived Vörösmarty Mihaly,

What does this map hold for him?factories and wild barracks;

But for me cricekts,oxen,steeples,peaceful homesteads;

He sees factories in his lenses and cultivated meadows,

While I see the worker too,who for his work trembles.

Forests, singing orchards,grapes and cemeteries,

Among the graves an old woman who quietly weeps.

And what seem from above train tracks to destroy

İs a conductor’s house and he stands outside and signals;

Many kids surround him,a red flag in his hand,

And in the courtyard a komondor rolls in the sand;

And there’s the park,the footsteps of long-lost loves,

The kisses on my mouth both honey and cranberry.

And walking off to school on the edge of the road,

To avoid beeing called on,I stepped on a stone;

Look,here’s the stone, but from above,this cannot be seen,

There is no machine with which all this can be revealed.

For we are guilty too,as other peoples are,

Knowing full-well when and how and why we’re sinned so far,

But workers live here too,and poets,without sin

And tiny babies in whom intellect will florish;

İt shines in them and they guard it,hiding in dark cellars

Until the finger of peace once again marks our nation,

And with fresh voices they will answer our muffled words.

Cover us with your big wings,vigil-keeping evening cloud.

-By: Radnóti Miklós-

About the Poem

Miklos Radnoti’s poem ‘How others see..’ is a poetic expression of patriotism and description of a national identity.The textual pattern presents sets of contrasts between landscapes for bombing and landscapes for life,above and below,far and near,ignorance and knowledge,collective sin and individual innocence.