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Clouded sky
"...a truly great poet, one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence dealing with the tragic twentieth century are utterly fused, as they so rarely are . . . The quality of the translation is such that it is hard to remember the poems were not first written in English, even though one is always aware of Radnoti's vision as European and of his locus as Hungary."--Denise Levertov
The Hungarian Jewish poet Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944) was also a prolific translator and editor who wrote some of his greatest poems in the labor camps and copper mines of Yugoslavia before being killed by the Nazis. Leaving behind a body of work that ranks with the classics of Hungarian verse, his influence is now being felt among a younger generation. In 1946, Radnoti's body was exhumed from a mass grave by his wife who found a notebook of his poems (many of which were addressed to her) in his coat pocket.
The Hungarian Jewish poet Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944) was also a prolific translator and editor who wrote some of his greatest poems in the labor camps and copper mines of Yugoslavia before being killed by the Nazis. Leaving behind a body of work that ranks with the classics of Hungarian verse, his influence is now being felt among a younger generation. In 1946, Radnoti's body was exhumed from a mass grave by his wife who found a notebook of his poems (many of which were addressed to her) in his coat pocket.
113 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Miklós Radnóti
75 books46 followersMiklós Radnóti, birth name Miklós Glatter, was a Hungarian poet who fell victim to the Holocaust.
Radnóti was born 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. He refers to this trauma in the title of his compilation Ikrek hava ("Month of Gemini"/"Month of the Twins").
Though in his last years, Hungarian society rejected him as a Jew, in his poems he identifies himself very strongly as a Hungarian. His poetry mingles avant-garde and expressionist themes with a new classical style, a good example being his eclogues. His romantic love poetry is notable as well. Some of his early poetry was published in the short-lived periodical Haladás (Progress). His 1935 marriage to Fanni Gyarmati (born 1912) was exceptionally happy.
Radnóti converted to Catholicism in 1943. This was partly prompted by the persecution of the Hungarian Jews (from which converts to Christianity were initially exempted), but partly also with his long-standing fascination with Catholicism.
In the early forties, he was conscripted by the Hungarian Army, but being a Jew, he was assigned to an unarmed support battalion (munkaszolgálat) in the Ukrainian front. In May 1944, the defeated Hungarians retreated and Radnóti's labor battalion was assigned to the Bor, Serbia copper mines. In August 1944, as consequence of Tito's advance, Radnóti's group of 3,200 Hungarian Jews was force-marched to Central Hungary, which very few reached alive. Radnóti was fated not to be among them. Throughout these last months of his life, he continued to write poems in a little notebook he kept with him. According to witnesses, in early November 1944, Radnóti was severely beaten by a drunken militiaman, who had been tormenting him for "scribbling". 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 his death on this spot.
Eighteen months later, his body was unearthed and in the front pocket of his overcoat the small notebook of his final poems was discovered (his body was later reinterred in Budapest's Kerepesi Cemetery). These final poems are lyrical and poignant and represent some of the few works of literature composed during the Holocaust that survived. Possibly his best known poem is the fourth stanza of the Razglednicák, where he describes the shooting of another man and then envisions his own death.
Radnóti was born 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. He refers to this trauma in the title of his compilation Ikrek hava ("Month of Gemini"/"Month of the Twins").
Though in his last years, Hungarian society rejected him as a Jew, in his poems he identifies himself very strongly as a Hungarian. His poetry mingles avant-garde and expressionist themes with a new classical style, a good example being his eclogues. His romantic love poetry is notable as well. Some of his early poetry was published in the short-lived periodical Haladás (Progress). His 1935 marriage to Fanni Gyarmati (born 1912) was exceptionally happy.
Radnóti converted to Catholicism in 1943. This was partly prompted by the persecution of the Hungarian Jews (from which converts to Christianity were initially exempted), but partly also with his long-standing fascination with Catholicism.
In the early forties, he was conscripted by the Hungarian Army, but being a Jew, he was assigned to an unarmed support battalion (munkaszolgálat) in the Ukrainian front. In May 1944, the defeated Hungarians retreated and Radnóti's labor battalion was assigned to the Bor, Serbia copper mines. In August 1944, as consequence of Tito's advance, Radnóti's group of 3,200 Hungarian Jews was force-marched to Central Hungary, which very few reached alive. Radnóti was fated not to be among them. Throughout these last months of his life, he continued to write poems in a little notebook he kept with him. According to witnesses, in early November 1944, Radnóti was severely beaten by a drunken militiaman, who had been tormenting him for "scribbling". 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 his death on this spot.
Eighteen months later, his body was unearthed and in the front pocket of his overcoat the small notebook of his final poems was discovered (his body was later reinterred in Budapest's Kerepesi Cemetery). These final poems are lyrical and poignant and represent some of the few works of literature composed during the Holocaust that survived. Possibly his best known poem is the fourth stanza of the Razglednicák, where he describes the shooting of another man and then envisions his own death.
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March 2, 2012
CLOUDED SKY: THE POETRY OF MIKLOS RADNOTI
Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944), the Hungarian Jewish poet and a fierce anti-fascist, is considered as the greatest of the Holocaust poets. His poetry collection, “Clouded Sky” , wonderfully translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J. Marks, alone is enough to rank him as a truly great poet , one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence find a perfect fusion.
Before discussing his poems, I will condense his biography in a few words. Born in 1909, Radnoti emerged as a promising lyricist in the artist circles of Budapest in the early 1930s. In 1935, Radnoti married his childhood sweetheart, Fanni Gyarmati, hoping to secure a teaching position in the Hungarian high school system. When this did not work out, he took temporary jobs, chiefly private tutoring, and accepted partial support from his wife’s family.
As Hungary’s political climate turned increasingly fascist, Radnoti shared the fate of those who had been persecuted for their Jewish origins. With the exception of brief periods of respite, he spent the years from 1940 until his death in various forced-labor camps. In May 1944, two months after the German occupation of Hungary by the Nazis , Radnoti was forced into a Jewish labor battalion to build roads in Yougoslavia. During the fall of that year, the Germans evacuated the Balkans and ordered the exhausted, emaciated servicemen to march back to Hungary and then through to Austria. When Radnoti could walk no longer, he was shot in the neck by his Hungarian Guards and buried, together with twenty-one of his comrades, in a mass grave near the village of Abda in western Hungary.
When the grave was discovered and his body was exhumed on June 23, 1946, nearly two years after his death, his wife found a small, black notebook of ten poems in the pocket of his raincoat which he had written during his years in the work camps. Rising from the grave, these poems have come to occupy an extraordinary place in twentieth-century literature; they not only manifest great beauty, exceptional range and masterful designs, but also record one of the most brutal mass murders in history. This poetry collection contains all the famous poems from that notebook including ‘Forced March” and “Postcard”.
Let us now move into some his celebrated poems.
I Don’t Know
I don’t know what this land means to others, this little country
Fenced in by fire, place of my birth,
world of my childhood, swaying in the distance.
I grew out of her like the young branch of tree,
and I hope my body will sink down in her.
Here, I‘m at home. When one by one, bushes kneel at my feet,
I know their names and names of their flowers.
I know people who walk the roads and where they’re going
and on a summer evening, I know the meaning of the pain
that turns red and trickles down the walls of the houses.
This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over.
He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.
For him factories and angry barracks can’t be seen on this map.
For me there are grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.
Through binoculars, he sees factories and plowed fields:
I see worker, shaking, afraid for his work.
I see forests, orchards vibrant with song, vineyards, graveyards,
and wizened old woman who quietly weeps and weeps among
the graves.
The Industrial plant and the railway must be destroyed.
But it’s only a watchman’s box and the man stands outside
sending messages with a red flag. There are children around him,
In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.
And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.
Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.
I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school
I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk.
Here is the stone, but from up there it can’t be seen.
There’s no instrument to show any of it.
Among Radnoti’s images, a few run throughout his works as recurring metaphors and symbols. He uses the figure of the pilot, for example in the above poem, as an embodiment of the insensibility chillingly evident in war. The pilot becomes in this one a symbol of all willing instruments in the service of inhumanity; his actions derive from a worldview in which separation leads to indifference. When sufficient distance is created between malefactor and victim, the wrongdoer ceases to feel any guilt concerning his crime. In this poem “I don’t Know”, Radnoti pits the humanist’s values against those of the pilot.
It is a poem about Hungary as seen, on one hand, by a native son, the poet, and, on the other hand, by the pilot of a bomber plane from another country. The poet sees his “tiny land” on a human scale:
“In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.
And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.
Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.
I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school
I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk”
To the man in the plane, however, “This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over./He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.” The pilot sees only military targets such as army barracks, factories etc—while the poet sees “grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.”
This poem wonderfully proclaims the true feelings of a universal poet whose heart beats with the flora and fauna around him.
The last poems of Radnoti, written under the pressure of the most degrading and desperate circumstances imaginable, unfurl visions of delicate pastoral beauty next to images of extreme degradation and wild, filthy despair. They give voice to the last vestiges of hope, as Radnóti fantasizes being home once more with his beloved Fanny, as well as to the grim premonition of his own fate. This impossibly stark contrast blossoms into paradox: Radnóti’s poetry embraces humanity and inhumanity with an urgent desire to bear witness to both.
Yet even at the moment when he is most certain of his imminent death, he never abandons the condensed and intricate language of his poetry. And pushed to the limits of human endurance and sanity, he never loses his capacity for empathy. This is what is evident in the poems, “ Forced March” and “Postcard”.
Forced March
You’re crazy. You fall down, stand up and walk again,
your ankles and your knees move
but you start again as if you had wings.
The ditch calls you, but it’s no use you’re afraid to stay,
And if someone asks why, maybe you turn around and say
that a woman and a sane death a better death wait for you.
But you’re crazy. For a long time
only the burned wind spins above the houses at home,
Walls lie on their backs, plum trees are broken
and the angry night is thick with fear.
Oh, if I could believe that everything valuable
is only inside me now that there’s still home to go back to.
If only there were! And just as before bees drone peacefully
on the cool veranda, plum preserves turn cold
and over sleepy gardens quietly, the end of summer bathes in
the sun
Among the leaves the fruit swing naked
And in front of the rust-brown hedge blond Fanny waits for me,
The morning writes slow shadows—
All this could happen The moon is so round today!
Don’t walk past me, friend. Yell, and I’ll stand again!
(Breaks in each line as given in the text)
The poem begins with a judgmental view of the poet, observed in the third person. Radnoti admits in the first line that he is “crazy”, which is understandable given the barbarous conditions of the forced March. This “craziness”, sense of a man losing his mind, comes across in the surreal lines, “Only the burned wind spins….above houses at home,/Walls lie on their backs,…plum trees are broken”.
When Radnoti falls down on the March, he is somehow able to ‘stand and walk again’. as if he had ‘wings’. He refuses to die in the roadside ditch , because “a woman and a sane death…a better death “ await. He feels that he is crazy, and that “the angry night …is thick with fear”, yet the thought that “there’s still home to go back to”, that blond Fanny awaits” urges him forward. “All this could happen”, he tells us , “don’t walk past me, friend…Yell, I will stand again!”, reminding them to be alert on him.
Halfway through the poem, a sudden transformation occurs, a shift from the third person to the first. Judgment turns into a confession of hope, the war-torn landscape is transmuted into an idyll of bygone days, dogged resistance into a cosmic, optimistic message. In a world from which reason has disappeared, anything, including superstition and magic, can serve as crutches.
In this unique poem , Radnoti employed long breaks between words in order to create the visual image of half-starved soldiers marching on. With the exception of the second line of the poem, each line is broken by a caesura ( meaning a blank space as a pause or interruption ) , which seems to relay the stop-and –go, zombie –like shuffle of someone on a forced march, as if the poet is imparting not only the weariness of his mind and soul, but his actual physical status with the rhythm of his words and lines. This is quite extraordinary whether the poet intended it or not.
Although he had long been prepared for death, Radnóti paradoxically regained a hope for survival during the last bitter weeks of his life. The wish to live, to return to Fanni, his wife, to tell about the horrors, and to wait for a “sane.. better death” permeates several of his poems . Well aware that this hope was flimsy at best, based on desire more than on truth, Radnóti expressed its elusiveness at his best in “Forced March.”
Literature offers number of poems written by Holocaust survivors or others who faced the atrocities of modern warfare. But this one has a ring of truth -- of memory unvarnished by the passage of time. I am particularly moved by how the poet conveys the way a person's mind wanders to happier times and almost loses touch with the horrors of the present in the second half of the poem, and then is yanked back into the on-going atrocity by the fear of falling behind.
“Forced March” impresses and moves the reader with its spontaneity, its simple vocabulary and familiar imagery and its emotional directness. It is the last cry for survival. This poem has a special place in Radnoti’s oeuvre: It represents hope’s triumph over despair. Above all, it shows the artist’s triumph over his own fate. It proves that even during the last weeks of his tormented life, Radnoti was able to compose with precise poetic principles in mind, that he was in control of his material, playing secretly with literary and existential relationships and creating out of all this an enduring testament.
It is appropriate to post here an unabashedly sentimental, and yet beautiful, love poem he had written prior to 'Forced March'. It intensely expresses his unfulfilled desire to be in the arms of Fanni.
In Your Arms
I sleep in your arms,
it's quiet.
You sleep in my arms,
it's quiet.
I'm a child in your arms
who is silent.
You are a child in my arms
I listen.
You hold me in your arms when I'm afraid.
I hold you in my arms.
I'm not afraid.
In your arms even the great silence
of death can't
scare me
In your arms I'll
survive death.
It's a dream.
Let us now examine the poem, “Postcard”. This poem is breathtaking, luminous and pared down to exquisite precision even though he was writing it under barbaric and inhumane conditions.
Postcard
I fell next to him. His body rolled over.
It was tight as a violin 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.
Life is snuffed out in this poem. Radnoti speaks to the unspeakable in these seven lines, to the horrific death he knew was coming. The poem inscribes a suffering unimaginably intense, a consciousness of death unbearably palpable. The poem was written on October 31 1944 and on Nov 6th the poet was shot and tossed into a collective grave.
It seems as if the poem itself rose from the mass grave as a final testament to the fate of all those who perished. By titling the poem as 'Postcard', probably the poet wanted to condense his life into that of a postcard, which is often characterized as much by what is left out as by what is put in, and its brevity speaks volumes to what must be left unsaid. There is a terrifying stoicism to the line "Patience flowers into death now". A blossoming into oblivion. Then he hears an unattributed voice floating over him in German, the language of death.
In his essay, American poet Edward Hirsch mentions that the German phrase "Der springt noch auf" means something like "Wait till you see this guy break open". The verb 'aufspringen' , which means to "to break or pop open" , is usually used to describe a bud or flower. It's an image of germination , and so perhaps there's a hidden tenderness here, as if the poet ventriloquized the German to say, "Wait till you see him blossom." He is breaking free of his fetters; and death has become a liberation. The last sentence "Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear" has an eerie calmness. The poet is thinking associatively here and the line stuns as the one who listens and observes is still alive, speaking from earth.
This is the greatest holocaust poem I have ever read. It has the moonglow of a poem made halfway to Hades.
Radnoti is one unique poet whose work has irreversibly become one with his life and tragic death . There is no divide between his life and work, they continue to exist in an interplay, mutually interpreting one another. It is my firm belief that the story of Radnoti’s life, his love, his courage, the crystal-clear tone of his poems written in the great lyrical tradition documenting the tears of a deplorable phase in human history will last another millennia as they are of supreme significance in the saga of our civilization.
Ref:
(1) In The Footsteps Of The Orpheus: Life And Times Of Miklos Radnoti by Zsuzsanna Ozsvath
(2) Clouded Sky: Poems by Miklos Radnoti translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J.Marks
(3) How to read a poem: Edward Hirsch
Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944), the Hungarian Jewish poet and a fierce anti-fascist, is considered as the greatest of the Holocaust poets. His poetry collection, “Clouded Sky” , wonderfully translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J. Marks, alone is enough to rank him as a truly great poet , one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence find a perfect fusion.
Before discussing his poems, I will condense his biography in a few words. Born in 1909, Radnoti emerged as a promising lyricist in the artist circles of Budapest in the early 1930s. In 1935, Radnoti married his childhood sweetheart, Fanni Gyarmati, hoping to secure a teaching position in the Hungarian high school system. When this did not work out, he took temporary jobs, chiefly private tutoring, and accepted partial support from his wife’s family.
As Hungary’s political climate turned increasingly fascist, Radnoti shared the fate of those who had been persecuted for their Jewish origins. With the exception of brief periods of respite, he spent the years from 1940 until his death in various forced-labor camps. In May 1944, two months after the German occupation of Hungary by the Nazis , Radnoti was forced into a Jewish labor battalion to build roads in Yougoslavia. During the fall of that year, the Germans evacuated the Balkans and ordered the exhausted, emaciated servicemen to march back to Hungary and then through to Austria. When Radnoti could walk no longer, he was shot in the neck by his Hungarian Guards and buried, together with twenty-one of his comrades, in a mass grave near the village of Abda in western Hungary.
When the grave was discovered and his body was exhumed on June 23, 1946, nearly two years after his death, his wife found a small, black notebook of ten poems in the pocket of his raincoat which he had written during his years in the work camps. Rising from the grave, these poems have come to occupy an extraordinary place in twentieth-century literature; they not only manifest great beauty, exceptional range and masterful designs, but also record one of the most brutal mass murders in history. This poetry collection contains all the famous poems from that notebook including ‘Forced March” and “Postcard”.
Let us now move into some his celebrated poems.
I Don’t Know
I don’t know what this land means to others, this little country
Fenced in by fire, place of my birth,
world of my childhood, swaying in the distance.
I grew out of her like the young branch of tree,
and I hope my body will sink down in her.
Here, I‘m at home. When one by one, bushes kneel at my feet,
I know their names and names of their flowers.
I know people who walk the roads and where they’re going
and on a summer evening, I know the meaning of the pain
that turns red and trickles down the walls of the houses.
This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over.
He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.
For him factories and angry barracks can’t be seen on this map.
For me there are grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.
Through binoculars, he sees factories and plowed fields:
I see worker, shaking, afraid for his work.
I see forests, orchards vibrant with song, vineyards, graveyards,
and wizened old woman who quietly weeps and weeps among
the graves.
The Industrial plant and the railway must be destroyed.
But it’s only a watchman’s box and the man stands outside
sending messages with a red flag. There are children around him,
In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.
And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.
Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.
I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school
I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk.
Here is the stone, but from up there it can’t be seen.
There’s no instrument to show any of it.
Among Radnoti’s images, a few run throughout his works as recurring metaphors and symbols. He uses the figure of the pilot, for example in the above poem, as an embodiment of the insensibility chillingly evident in war. The pilot becomes in this one a symbol of all willing instruments in the service of inhumanity; his actions derive from a worldview in which separation leads to indifference. When sufficient distance is created between malefactor and victim, the wrongdoer ceases to feel any guilt concerning his crime. In this poem “I don’t Know”, Radnoti pits the humanist’s values against those of the pilot.
It is a poem about Hungary as seen, on one hand, by a native son, the poet, and, on the other hand, by the pilot of a bomber plane from another country. The poet sees his “tiny land” on a human scale:
“In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.
And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.
Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.
I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school
I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk”
To the man in the plane, however, “This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over./He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.” The pilot sees only military targets such as army barracks, factories etc—while the poet sees “grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.”
This poem wonderfully proclaims the true feelings of a universal poet whose heart beats with the flora and fauna around him.
The last poems of Radnoti, written under the pressure of the most degrading and desperate circumstances imaginable, unfurl visions of delicate pastoral beauty next to images of extreme degradation and wild, filthy despair. They give voice to the last vestiges of hope, as Radnóti fantasizes being home once more with his beloved Fanny, as well as to the grim premonition of his own fate. This impossibly stark contrast blossoms into paradox: Radnóti’s poetry embraces humanity and inhumanity with an urgent desire to bear witness to both.
Yet even at the moment when he is most certain of his imminent death, he never abandons the condensed and intricate language of his poetry. And pushed to the limits of human endurance and sanity, he never loses his capacity for empathy. This is what is evident in the poems, “ Forced March” and “Postcard”.
Forced March
You’re crazy. You fall down, stand up and walk again,
your ankles and your knees move
but you start again as if you had wings.
The ditch calls you, but it’s no use you’re afraid to stay,
And if someone asks why, maybe you turn around and say
that a woman and a sane death a better death wait for you.
But you’re crazy. For a long time
only the burned wind spins above the houses at home,
Walls lie on their backs, plum trees are broken
and the angry night is thick with fear.
Oh, if I could believe that everything valuable
is only inside me now that there’s still home to go back to.
If only there were! And just as before bees drone peacefully
on the cool veranda, plum preserves turn cold
and over sleepy gardens quietly, the end of summer bathes in
the sun
Among the leaves the fruit swing naked
And in front of the rust-brown hedge blond Fanny waits for me,
The morning writes slow shadows—
All this could happen The moon is so round today!
Don’t walk past me, friend. Yell, and I’ll stand again!
(Breaks in each line as given in the text)
The poem begins with a judgmental view of the poet, observed in the third person. Radnoti admits in the first line that he is “crazy”, which is understandable given the barbarous conditions of the forced March. This “craziness”, sense of a man losing his mind, comes across in the surreal lines, “Only the burned wind spins….above houses at home,/Walls lie on their backs,…plum trees are broken”.
When Radnoti falls down on the March, he is somehow able to ‘stand and walk again’. as if he had ‘wings’. He refuses to die in the roadside ditch , because “a woman and a sane death…a better death “ await. He feels that he is crazy, and that “the angry night …is thick with fear”, yet the thought that “there’s still home to go back to”, that blond Fanny awaits” urges him forward. “All this could happen”, he tells us , “don’t walk past me, friend…Yell, I will stand again!”, reminding them to be alert on him.
Halfway through the poem, a sudden transformation occurs, a shift from the third person to the first. Judgment turns into a confession of hope, the war-torn landscape is transmuted into an idyll of bygone days, dogged resistance into a cosmic, optimistic message. In a world from which reason has disappeared, anything, including superstition and magic, can serve as crutches.
In this unique poem , Radnoti employed long breaks between words in order to create the visual image of half-starved soldiers marching on. With the exception of the second line of the poem, each line is broken by a caesura ( meaning a blank space as a pause or interruption ) , which seems to relay the stop-and –go, zombie –like shuffle of someone on a forced march, as if the poet is imparting not only the weariness of his mind and soul, but his actual physical status with the rhythm of his words and lines. This is quite extraordinary whether the poet intended it or not.
Although he had long been prepared for death, Radnóti paradoxically regained a hope for survival during the last bitter weeks of his life. The wish to live, to return to Fanni, his wife, to tell about the horrors, and to wait for a “sane.. better death” permeates several of his poems . Well aware that this hope was flimsy at best, based on desire more than on truth, Radnóti expressed its elusiveness at his best in “Forced March.”
Literature offers number of poems written by Holocaust survivors or others who faced the atrocities of modern warfare. But this one has a ring of truth -- of memory unvarnished by the passage of time. I am particularly moved by how the poet conveys the way a person's mind wanders to happier times and almost loses touch with the horrors of the present in the second half of the poem, and then is yanked back into the on-going atrocity by the fear of falling behind.
“Forced March” impresses and moves the reader with its spontaneity, its simple vocabulary and familiar imagery and its emotional directness. It is the last cry for survival. This poem has a special place in Radnoti’s oeuvre: It represents hope’s triumph over despair. Above all, it shows the artist’s triumph over his own fate. It proves that even during the last weeks of his tormented life, Radnoti was able to compose with precise poetic principles in mind, that he was in control of his material, playing secretly with literary and existential relationships and creating out of all this an enduring testament.
It is appropriate to post here an unabashedly sentimental, and yet beautiful, love poem he had written prior to 'Forced March'. It intensely expresses his unfulfilled desire to be in the arms of Fanni.
In Your Arms
I sleep in your arms,
it's quiet.
You sleep in my arms,
it's quiet.
I'm a child in your arms
who is silent.
You are a child in my arms
I listen.
You hold me in your arms when I'm afraid.
I hold you in my arms.
I'm not afraid.
In your arms even the great silence
of death can't
scare me
In your arms I'll
survive death.
It's a dream.
Let us now examine the poem, “Postcard”. This poem is breathtaking, luminous and pared down to exquisite precision even though he was writing it under barbaric and inhumane conditions.
Postcard
I fell next to him. His body rolled over.
It was tight as a violin 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.
Life is snuffed out in this poem. Radnoti speaks to the unspeakable in these seven lines, to the horrific death he knew was coming. The poem inscribes a suffering unimaginably intense, a consciousness of death unbearably palpable. The poem was written on October 31 1944 and on Nov 6th the poet was shot and tossed into a collective grave.
It seems as if the poem itself rose from the mass grave as a final testament to the fate of all those who perished. By titling the poem as 'Postcard', probably the poet wanted to condense his life into that of a postcard, which is often characterized as much by what is left out as by what is put in, and its brevity speaks volumes to what must be left unsaid. There is a terrifying stoicism to the line "Patience flowers into death now". A blossoming into oblivion. Then he hears an unattributed voice floating over him in German, the language of death.
In his essay, American poet Edward Hirsch mentions that the German phrase "Der springt noch auf" means something like "Wait till you see this guy break open". The verb 'aufspringen' , which means to "to break or pop open" , is usually used to describe a bud or flower. It's an image of germination , and so perhaps there's a hidden tenderness here, as if the poet ventriloquized the German to say, "Wait till you see him blossom." He is breaking free of his fetters; and death has become a liberation. The last sentence "Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear" has an eerie calmness. The poet is thinking associatively here and the line stuns as the one who listens and observes is still alive, speaking from earth.
This is the greatest holocaust poem I have ever read. It has the moonglow of a poem made halfway to Hades.
Radnoti is one unique poet whose work has irreversibly become one with his life and tragic death . There is no divide between his life and work, they continue to exist in an interplay, mutually interpreting one another. It is my firm belief that the story of Radnoti’s life, his love, his courage, the crystal-clear tone of his poems written in the great lyrical tradition documenting the tears of a deplorable phase in human history will last another millennia as they are of supreme significance in the saga of our civilization.
Ref:
(1) In The Footsteps Of The Orpheus: Life And Times Of Miklos Radnoti by Zsuzsanna Ozsvath
(2) Clouded Sky: Poems by Miklos Radnoti translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J.Marks
(3) How to read a poem: Edward Hirsch
January 4, 2009
One of my favorite poets of all time ever! I just re-read this, as I often do. Indescribable, but I will say if you like Neruda and/or Rilke at all, you'll like Radnoti (He's all heart in a way that reminds me of them). Clouded Sky might be called Poetry of Witness, but it's never, ever preachy-- just precise, lovely, enthralling. Surprisingly comforting and hopeful.
Here's a sample (not necessarily the best, but one of the shorter ones... and the final quartet in this kills me every time!):
I Hid You
(trans. Polgar, Berg, Marks)
I hid you for a long time
the way a branch hides its
slowly ripening fruit among leaves,
and like a flower of sane ice
on a winter window
you open in my mind.
Now I know what it means
when your hand swoops up to your hair.
In my heart I keep
the small tilt of your ankle too
and I'm amazed by the delicate curve
of your ribs, coldly
like someone who has lived
such breathing miracles.
Still, in my dreams
I often have a hundred arms
and like god in a dream
I hold you in those arms.
Here's a sample (not necessarily the best, but one of the shorter ones... and the final quartet in this kills me every time!):
I Hid You
(trans. Polgar, Berg, Marks)
I hid you for a long time
the way a branch hides its
slowly ripening fruit among leaves,
and like a flower of sane ice
on a winter window
you open in my mind.
Now I know what it means
when your hand swoops up to your hair.
In my heart I keep
the small tilt of your ankle too
and I'm amazed by the delicate curve
of your ribs, coldly
like someone who has lived
such breathing miracles.
Still, in my dreams
I often have a hundred arms
and like god in a dream
I hold you in those arms.
October 6, 2009
One of my favorite translations of one of my favorite poets. Radnoti was murdered in Hungary in 1944, a victim of the Holocaust. He wrote poems right up until he died, and when his wife found his body in 1946, she found his last poems tucked into the pocket of his coat. The fact that he managed to write poetry in the face of so much horror, and right up until he died, makes me cry, as does his work, which is beautiful and utterly haunting.
June 25, 2019
I always find treasures like this masterpiece on my grandmother's bookshelves. ♡
Radnóti is one of the greatest Hungarian poets, living in the 20th century during the WWII.
His life was full of struggles and tribulations but he was still able to create something wonderful and inexpressible even in the extermination camp.
Radnóti is one of the greatest Hungarian poets, living in the 20th century during the WWII.
His life was full of struggles and tribulations but he was still able to create something wonderful and inexpressible even in the extermination camp.
July 25, 2010
Are you cold? You are like the lonely
song of a bird sitting on a branch covered with snow
----------
Are you surprised, love, that i am so thin?
The trouble of worlds is heavy, the trouble of worlds hurts me...
...Light vibrates inside my tired eyes
but i still smile sometimes. I smile because
even seeds hiding in the earth are happy when they've outlived
another winter. i think about you, love, and love,
a sleepy mood, walks like a tiger and toys with me.
-------------------------------
The door rattles when she steps in,
flowerpots click
and in her hair a small dreamy blond streak
chirps like a panicky sparrow.
The old wire lightcord squaks too,
brushing its awkward body against her.
Everything spins. I can't even write about it.
She has come back. She has been gone all day.
There is a large petal of a poppy in her hand.
She'll chase death away with it.
---------------
etc.
exactly.
song of a bird sitting on a branch covered with snow
----------
Are you surprised, love, that i am so thin?
The trouble of worlds is heavy, the trouble of worlds hurts me...
...Light vibrates inside my tired eyes
but i still smile sometimes. I smile because
even seeds hiding in the earth are happy when they've outlived
another winter. i think about you, love, and love,
a sleepy mood, walks like a tiger and toys with me.
-------------------------------
The door rattles when she steps in,
flowerpots click
and in her hair a small dreamy blond streak
chirps like a panicky sparrow.
The old wire lightcord squaks too,
brushing its awkward body against her.
Everything spins. I can't even write about it.
She has come back. She has been gone all day.
There is a large petal of a poppy in her hand.
She'll chase death away with it.
---------------
etc.
exactly.
April 16, 2023
This is how this poem walks up to you—
the words stamp quietly, then they fly up and crash,
just like death. And afterwards, silence
whishes, listens.
A beautiful, powerful collection. I’ve never grasped poetry as fully as I would’ve liked, but Radnóti’s words are compelling. They flow from the pages: green, yellow, gold, and blue. A man who loved his wife and the world, who ached and mourned for them, and who seemed to carry sorrow and hope in equal measures.
the words stamp quietly, then they fly up and crash,
just like death. And afterwards, silence
whishes, listens.
A beautiful, powerful collection. I’ve never grasped poetry as fully as I would’ve liked, but Radnóti’s words are compelling. They flow from the pages: green, yellow, gold, and blue. A man who loved his wife and the world, who ached and mourned for them, and who seemed to carry sorrow and hope in equal measures.
September 2, 2021
My favorite of my collection of his works. All of his poetry is wonderful, however "I Hid You" was one I stumbled upon online 20 years ago and led me to seek out his other work. It is the poem I always come back to. It speaks to my soul so deeply. This book gets picked up routinely for a re-read.
November 28, 2022
I have never seen this kind of sadness; calm, anger being buried into dark earth yet every night was still stunningly beautiful for him. Flowers grew on top of the rotten corps and kept singing. Till the last moment he still wrote, so that we see clearly the footprint of death.
October 22, 2025
I can't die, I can't live without you now.
I loved this collection of poems by the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti.
I loved this collection of poems by the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti.
August 20, 2011
In Miklos Radnoti's trench coat pocket notebook of poems during work-camp years under Fascism, Clouded Sky speaks from a tragic European twentieth-century vision of love and death, but primarily death, for example, by personifying war as stormcrows in the poem "Spain, Spain" (1): "O black-winged war, whipping us. / Terror flies across the border. / No one sows, no one reaps on the other side. / Grapes aren't picked any more." The poem "At an Impatient Hour" (5): "Maybe I should be silent too. What makes me / write poems today? Tell me, is it death? Who asks, // Who asks about life, / and about this poem--mere fragments?" The poem "Early Summer" (8-9) observes a natural scenery of beauty as terror approaches, encroaches..." There is a lovely poem called "Simple-Minded Song About My Wife" (14): "She'll chase death away with it." But what does the poppy symbolize? Then there is the poem "Like Death" (15): "This is how a poem walks up to you-- / the words stamp quietly, then they fly up and crash, / just like death. And afterwards, silence / whishes, listens." "Clouded Sky" (16-17): "I am surprised that I live." "Rain Falls, It Dries Up" (24): "What else should I write in this poem? Maybe I'll let it drop / the way a sycamore sheds a leaf."
May 7, 2007
My friend Ryan introduced me to this Hungarian poet while we traveling around Central/Eastern Europe last summer. This particular book has poems Radnoti wrote while he, as a Jew in fascist Hungary, was conscripted into a forced labor battalion, death-marched around Eastern Europe, and eventually executed. While the extraordinary historical circumstances surrounding his poems add to their power, his talent is such that they can easily stand alone on their own artistic merits. Excellent, sad, beautiful. Reminds me of Pablo Neruda's Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca in which he asks: "What are verses for if not for that night in which a bitter dagger finds us out, for that day, for that dusk, for that broken corner where the beaten heart of man makes ready to die?" Make sure you get a good translation; I recommend the 2003 edition.
December 7, 2013
Amazing life. A Jew who became a Catholic but whose poetry was Hungarian and Jewish. He was caught in the midst of the Second World War, conscripted into a service corps at the end of the war, brutally treated, died and was buried. When friends went to look for his body, they found it, with some of his best poetry still on him. He is buried in the National Cemetery of Hungary. I visited his grave there in Budapest.
February 5, 2008
this book is worth reading just to experience the story of the author - killed be fascists, buried in a mass grave, later exhumed and identified by his wife (18 months later) and notebooks were found in his trenchcoast, which were cleaned up and became part of this manuscript. does it get better than that? nope.
August 8, 2011
The following is an appreciation of Radnoti written on the anniversary of his murder. It includes poems from this wonderfully-translated collection.
Miklos Radnoti (1909 – 1944)
Miklos Radnoti (1909 – 1944)
September 6, 2007
Only the Steven Polgar and Stephen Berg translation. You can find it on alibris.com.
January 22, 2014
This is one of my all-time favorite books on the planet!!! To me, this is clearly the best translation of Radnoti's poems into English.
Read
August 12, 2011radnóti miklós' poetry is in my heart - no words
October 29, 2014
spare, horrifying, tender.
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