Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklos Radnoti

Radnoti was one of the major Hungarian poets during the first part of the 20th century. Like that of the Soviet Acmeists, his early lyrical work is concentrated on the classical themes of love and memory. His later poems, focused on the political tragedy of his age, foreshadow his own death. After a forced march across the Balkans to a slave-labor camp in 1944, Radnoti was shot in the neck by Hungarian guards. This volume, a selection from his entire oeuvre, includes many of the poems from his last book (which bears the same title as this volume) and five poems that were found in his coat pocket when his body was exhumed from a mass grave in 1946. Radnoti wrote metered verse, and Osvath and Turner have attempted to translate the poetry metrically, based on the idea that ``the cadence of poetry is already prior to and in common among all languages.'' This, unfortunately, is not true. By stretching and contorting the poetic lines in English (``Now rests after so many sufferings, / behold, this brown and unwarmed corpse''), the translators have inadvertently obfuscated the poetry. This is regrettable, since there is a great depth to the work that has not yet been successfully rendered in English. (Aug.)