Rakovszky, Zsuzsa 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born 1950, in Sopron, Hungary. Education: Attended Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, translator. Worked as librarian, 1975-1982; reader for the Helikon Publishing House, 1982-86; freelance poet, novelist, and translator, 1986—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Graves Prize; Dery Prize (twice); Attila Jozsef Prize, 1988; poetry scholarship in London, Soros Foundation, 1988-89; Hungarian Literary Prize, best book of the year, 2002, for A kígyo árnyéka.

WRITINGS:

Tovább egy házzal (poetry; title means "One House Further Away"), Magvetö (Budapest, Hungary), 1987.

(With Gyözö Ferencz and George Gömöri) As If: Poems, Starwheel Press (Cheltenham, England), 1991.

Fehér-fekete: versek (poetry; title means "White-Black"), Jelenkor Irodalmi és Müvészeti Kiadó (Pécs, Hungary), 1991.

Hangok: Válogatott es uj versek (poetry; title means "Voices"), Cserépfalvi (Budapest, Hungary), 1994.

New Life, translated by George Szirtes, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Egyirányú utca (poetry; title means "One-Way Street"), Magvetö (Budapest, Hungary), 1998.

A kígyo árnyéka (novel; title means "The Shadow of the Snake"), Magvetö (Budapest, Hungary), 2002.

A hullócsillag éve (novel; title means "The Year of the Falling Star"), Magvetö (Budapest, Hungary), 2005.

Visszaut az idöben: Versek 1981-2005 (poetry; title means "Way Back In Time"), Magvetö (Budapest, Hungary), 2006.

(With Eva G. Kristof) Ismered-e? füvészkönyv gyerekeknek, Artemisz (Sopron, Hungary), 2007.

Author of poetry collection Joslatok es hataridok (title means "Prophecies and Deadlines"), 1981.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hungarian writer Zsuzsa Rakovszky is "a poet of striking images and also … a shrewd observer of everyday life," according to World Literature Today critic George Gömöri. The author of numerous well-received volumes of verses, Rakovszky broke onto the Hungarian literary scene with her 1981 verse collection, Joslatok es hataridok ("Prophecies and Deadlines"). There followed two further volumes, the 1987 Tovább egy házzal ("One House Further Away") and the 1991 collection, Fehér-fekete: versek ("White-Black"), before Rakovszky was introduced to English-language audiences with the 1994 translation, New Life. The translator of that work, George Szirtes, compared Rakovszky in the introduction to various Western poets with whom readers might be familiar: "Temperamentally [Rakovszky] draws a little on the confessional tradition of Sylvia Plath … but her real affinity lies with [Robert] Lowell, [Randall] Jarrell and … Carol Ann Duffy." In her early poems, Rakovszky focuses on small, somewhat domestic themes rather than tackling larger political issues that she and her countrymen faced while living in what was then the Eastern Bloc. Szirtes further noted, "The world of her poems is recognizably the world of her readers, a shifting urban landscape of noisy neighbours, malfunctioning television sets, shadows on landings, snatched meetings, and dying ideologies." Rakovszky's tone is basically informal, and her favorite themes in the early poems focus on private experiences such as love, deception, guilt, self-identity, and loss. Reviewing New Life in the Hungarian Quarterly, Daniel Hoffman observed, "One of Rakovszky's dominant modes is a surrealistic itemization of the things of this world, a disorganized jumble." Hoffman offered a poem from New Life, "Translucent Objects: Greenwich Flea Market," as an example of this cataloging. The poem records the jumble of items seen at the flea market, from old golf clubs to even older skis, and reflects on what the owners of these items must be like. Reviewing New Life in the Times Literary Supplement, fellow Hungarian poet George Gömöri termed Rakovszky "one of the most talented poets in Hungary." Gömöri went on to observe: "The most striking feature of her work is her ability to cram sharp, meticulously observed details into rigorous forms. The result is a poetry at the same time sensuous and intelligent." For the same reviewer, New Life served as a "valuable introduction to the work of an interesting and rewarding poet."

Rakovszky's 1994 collection Hangok: Válogatott es uj versek ("Voices") is a compilation of selected and new poems, dramatic monologues, and longer self-reflective poems. The last part of this collection, the cycle of monologues titled "Hangok" ("Voices"), represents a "new direction" for Rakovszky in the opinion of Gömöri, writing in World Literature Today. According to Gömöri, this cycle "gives the poet ample opportunity for play-acting and speaking through different personages." Most of these speakers are women of varying ages and from different social strata who all voice a similar "loneliness or feeling of intense frustration," as Gömöri further noted. Gömöri concluded, "Rakovszky's style here is more descriptive and less elliptical, but the painful empathy of these late poems, fully compensates the reader for a … loss of lyric intensity."

With her 1998 collection of new poems Egyirányú utca ("One-Way Street"), Rakovszky deals with more philosophical matters, such as the sense of time and how memory filters the sense of self. Some reviewers compared this work to the Four Quartets of T.S. Eliot. Rakovszky's 2006 collection of verse Visszaut az idöben: Versek 1981-2005 ("Way Back In Time") gathers many of her best older poems as well as newer verse. Reviewing the collection in Hungarian Literature Online, István Margócsy termed Rakovszky "one of the greatest contemporary Hungarian poets." Margócsy noted, "In Rakovszky's poems, there is no description without existential weight, and there is no existential problem without sensual form," and that "Rakovszky's poetry seems to stand outside time." The basic theme or motif of the verse in this collection is time. However, regardless of theme, Rakovszky brings a certain power to all her work. As Margócsy further commented: "The extraordinary poetic force of Rakovszky's poetry lies in the fact that its world of sensual images and that of reflections, of depth of thought are inseparable—the way she sees gives her poetry its depth of thought."

Rakovszky has also ventured into novel writing. Her first attempt, the 2002 A kígyo árnyéka ("The Shadow of the Snake"), an award-winning historical novel, is a "prose masterpiece," according to World Literature Today reviewer Clara Gyorgyey. Her second novel, A hullócsillag éve ("The Year of the Falling Star"), appeared in 2005. It too dealt with history, but in this case the near history of life in Hungary of the 1950s. As Hungarian Quarterly reviewer Gergely Angyalosi noted, "The protagonist, a small girl through whose eyes we see life in a small town on Hungary's western border, was born in 1950, just as the author was." Thus the work is, in part, autobiographical. The young girl, Piroska, is the filter through which larger events of the outside world are half seen and analyzed. The reader is provided a glimpse into the life of young Piroska and of her mother, widowed when her husband dies in 1950. The mother is eventually faced with a choice in life: she can continue her life as a single mother in this out-of-the-way village, or she can opt for the love of a somewhat unreliable but exciting man who courts her and wants to take her into a bigger and more frightening world. The mother decides to turn her back on the risky love of a man and instead sacrifice herself for her daughter's sake. Angyalosi termed this second work of fiction a "mosaic novel," and a "genuine contemporary novel, postmodern in a way that it is not subjected to any of the constraints of what is called ‘modernity’." Sándor Bazsányi, writing in Hungarian Literature Online, called A hullócsillag éve a "novellike book with lyrical virtues," while Gyorgyey termed it a "blend of fictional memoir and postmodern autobiographical morality tale."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rakovszky, Zsuzsa, New Life, translated by George Szirtes, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Hungarian Quarterly, summer, 1996, Daniel Hoffman, review of New Life; fall, 2005, Gergely Angyalosi, review of A hullócsillag éve.

Spectator, November 26, 1994, review of New Life, p. 46.

Times Literary Supplement, December 2, 1994, review of New Life, p. 11; January 6, 1995, George Gömöri, review of New Life, p. 23.

World Literature Today, fall, 1995, George Gömöri, review of Hangok: Válogatott es uj versek, p. 834; March-April, 2006, Clara Gyorgyey, review of A hullócsillag éve, p. 56.

ONLINE

Frankfurt.matav.hu,http://www.frankfurt.matav.hu/ (March 23, 2008), "Zsuzsa Rakovszky."

Hungarian Literature Online,http://www.hlo.hu/ (April 13, 2007), István Margócsy, review of Visszaut az idöben: Versek 1981-2005; (December 5, 2007), Sándor Bazsányi, review of A hullócsillag éve.