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

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speaking poets, including such important poets as W. H. Auden,Robert Graves, Michael Hamburger, Ted Hughes, Edwin Morgan andJohn Wain. Internationally recognized scholars of Hungarian letters,such as George Gomori, George Cushing, and Watson Kirkconnell,have also contributed translations. And some selections come fromHungarians such as Paul Tabori who have themselves become writers inEngland and America. Because of the range of translators, a distinctvoice in English is assured for each Hungarian poet.The historical scope of Kabdebo's anthology is ambitious. He includespoets from the Renaissance and Reformation to the present,arranging the one-hundred poems chronologically according to thebirth of the author. However, the emphasis of Hundred HungarianPoems is on more recent poets; more than half the anthology is devotedto the twentieth century. Firmly established modern writers such asAdy, G. Juhasz, Babits, Kassak, Illyes, Attila Jozsef, and Radnoti are ofcourse included. Also, a surprisingly comprehensive selection of contemporarypoetry is given. A number of the important poets living inHungary today are represented F. Juhasz, L. Nagy, Weores, andPilinszky all have a poem or two. Kabdebo also includes not-so-oftenread Hungarian poets living outside the national boundaries of Hungary,thereby expanding the anthology's range. Among these poets areF. Feher (Jugoslavia), G. Paskandi (Romania), G. Gomori and Cs.Szabo (England), L. Kemenes Gefin, G. Faludy and F. Fay (Canada),and A. Makkai (USA).The anthology is not without problems. Using the Hungarian tricolorsred, white and green across the entire cover is an eye-catchingidea. Unfortunately, the horizontal colors are inverted, appearinggreen, white and red — the color arrangement of the flag of Iran. A fewtypographical errors occur. It is not so bad that Jozsef Erdely's Christianname appears with a "d" rather than an "f" in the biographicalsection "Notes on the Poets" (p. 1 12). When it is obvious to the readerthat a name is misspelled, the error is not so important. But when atypographical error occurs in a line of poetry, as in Gyorgy Ronay's"The Death of Virginia Woolf," it is not so easy to make allowance. Inthe line "The weaves are splashing round my hips," "waves" shouldreplace "weaves" (p. 84). This is disconcerting because "weaves" is anoun that fits into the grammatical logic of the line. Without a closereading, a reader could take this line for a clumsy image, which it is not.Hundred Hungarian Poems could have a more convenient format aswell. Since it is designed for the English-speaking reader, it would havebeen appropriate to follow organizational conventions usually found in
ooks written in English. A table of contents, for example, would behelpful. As it is, the two title indices located at the back of the book,which list titles alphabetically in English and then in Hungarian, are oflimited use. The "Index to Hungarian Titles" is of course essential, butof interest primarily to readers who know Hungarian. The "Index toEnglish Titles" presupposes a knowledge of the title given a poem intranslation, and such titles can vary considerably from translator totranslator. The reader familiar with Magyar poetry in translation canfor this reason find himself nearly as ill at ease using the index as wouldthe novice, since alphabetical arrangement requires knowledge of whatone is looking for. A table of contents listing authors' life dates wouldhave been more useful, as well as being appropriate to the chronologicalarrangement of the book.Emery George's Subway Stops is an important contribution to thegrowing interest in Radnoti. Hungarians consider Radnoti to be amajor poet. Since his death in 1944, many collections of Radnoti'sworks have been published in Hungary, with some of these collectionsenjoying several printings. More than a dozen monographs on his lifeand work have been published by various Hungarian presses, andcountless articles about him have appeared in Hungarian journals.Indeed, Miklos Vajda, literary editor of The New Hungarian Quarterly,has said that Radnoti is among a handful of Hungarian poets who, hadthey "written in a language less isolated than Hungarian would now berevered wherever poetry is read." Interest in Radnoti in the UnitedStates has grown in recent years. Various poems in translation haveappeared in American literary magazines, and in 1972 Harper and Rowbrought out Clouded Sky, a collection of poems from the posthumouslypublished Tajtekos eg, translated into English by Steven Polgar,Stephen Berg, and S. J. Marks. This book is out of print.Subway Stops is the first book in English to offer poems from allseven of Radnoti's books of poetry. The fifty poems are arrangedchronologically, and include posthumous works. Subway Stops has anappealing format and good organization. The cover is an arresting, fullpage portrait of the poet's face. A table of contents, a selected bibliographyand an introduction all meticulously prepared — precede thepoems.The introductory remarks begin with an assessment of Radnoti'sposition in the tradition of Hungarian letters. George compares Radnotito Petofi, a comparison he warrants justifiable on both literary andhistorical grounds. Certainly Radnoti's universality, his active politicalengagement, and his tragic death appeal to the public imagination. The
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Canadian-American Review of Hungari
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Page 9 and 10: the best possible settlers who woul
Page 11 and 12: than a decade later they were follo
Page 13 and 14: Sociologists have yet to explain sa
Page 15: fifteen minutes, and spent the rest
Page 18 and 19: from the "Canadian poetry" of Icela
Page 20 and 21: garian community of Western Canada,
Page 22 and 23: lowed translations from other, more
Page 24 and 25: which took place in the pages of th
Page 27 and 28: from teaching in 1968, Kirkconnell
Page 29 and 30: Magyar poets and writers to the rea
Page 31 and 32: tive of his helpful attitude and un
Page 33: 33. Kirkconnell, A Slice of Canada,
Page 36 and 37: The groaning of the slaves on Egypt
Page 38 and 39: ecause most such lines are imbedded
Page 40 and 41: ;Two spheres contend with one anoth
Page 42 and 43: matched it to this feeble hurdy-gur
Page 44 and 45: NOTES1. The only full-length study
Page 46 and 47: terest in Hungarian literature, has
Page 48 and 49: limitations of Bowring and others:
Page 50 and 51: Jones' Five Hungarian WritersJ 4 Su
Page 53: REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Poetry in E
Page 57 and 58: passive, or into noun phrases in En
Page 59 and 60: REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Religious P
Page 61 and 62: magas és a mély magánhangzójú
Page 63 and 64: SPECIAL SECTIONToldiAn Epic Poem (1
Page 65 and 66: CANTO ONE"He lifted, with one hand,
Page 67 and 68: "Who should be squire of this whole
Page 69 and 70: What meant this hubbub in a widow's
Page 71 and 72: "Lad, here's your share! Don't say
Page 73 and 74: The heavy stone flies on: where wil
Page 75 and 76: The homes of moorhen, plover, gull
Page 77 and 78: Perhaps I'll shed my blood, some no
Page 79 and 80: CANTO FIVENicholas went wandering a
Page 81 and 82: Her tongue was like a coulter in th
Page 83 and 84: Rosemary pots mourned on its window
Page 85 and 86: Such were her words. No more would
Page 87 and 88: As if a nest of hornets rose to sti
Page 89 and 90: Upon an isle, by a Czech's hand the
Page 95 and 96: REVIEW ARTICLEQuo Vadis Transylvani
Page 97 and 98: Hungarians in Rumania in terms of t
Page 99 and 100: down by serious shortcomings in bot
Page 101 and 102: alanced presentation of the Vienna
Page 104 and 105:
talent enables Wass to depict the s
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Carpathian Federation, and printed
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Now and then, however, this rule de
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temper such an indictment by recogn
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OUR CONTRIBUTORS (continued from pa
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TO THOSE WISHING TO SUBMIT MANUSCRI
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