The Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies - Vol. 4 ... - EPA

REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Poetry in English Translation:Two Recent AnthologiesTimothy KachinskeHundred Hungarian Poems. Edited by Thomas Kabdebo. Manchester:Albion Editions, 1976. Pp. 125.Miklds Radnoti, Subway Stops: Fifty Poems. Translated, with anIntroduction and Notes, by Emery George. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977.Pp. 95.Hungarian literature has long been terra incognita to Western readers.Hungary's linguistic isolation on an Indo-European continent andher history of subjugation to outside imperial powers are often given asreasons. But perhaps the primary reason for Western nescience ofHungarian poetry is the lack of good translation.This decade has done more than any previous decade to remedy theneglect Hungarian poetry has suffered in the West. Since 1970 individualcollections of Petofi, Illyes, Jozsef, Radnoti, Weores, Pilinszky,Laszlo Nagy and Ferenc Juhasz have been published in North Americaand Britain. Also, during the period 1975 to 1980 no less than liveanthologies of Hungarian poetry will have been published in Englishtranslation. By and large these translations are good. A variety of translationmethods have been used. Some are done by native speakers,others by English-speaking poets and scholars who have come to knowHungarian letters, and still others are the result of collaborationbetween native-speaking Hungarians and English-speaking poets. Thusa variety of voices in translation is afforded the reader, as well as a wideselection of Hungarian poets.Thomas Kabdebo's Hundred Hungarian Poems is an anthology thatshows such a variety of approaches to the problem of translation. Thelist of translators is impressive. Many of the poems in this anthology arethe result of partnership between Hungarian-speakers and English-