RADNÓTI, MIKLOS

RADNÓTI, MIKLOS (1909–1944), Hungarian poet. Radnóti, born in Budapest and an orphan from childhood, was converted to Christianity. He trained to become a teacher, but because of his Jewish origin was prevented from taking up a post. He spent his last years in Hungarian army labor camps. Radnóti's writings are overshadowed by World War ii and the social crises of the Horthy regime. His early poetry is filled with surrealistic influences, but over the years, as the atrocities of the Holocaust increased, it became pure enough to be defined as neoclassicist.

His verse collections include Pogány köszöntő ("Pagan Salute," 1930), Újhold ("New Moon," 1935), Meredek út ("Steep Way," 1938), and the autobiographical Ikrek hava ("Under the Sign of Gemini," 1940). Two verse collections that appeared after World War ii were Radnóti. Miklós versei ("The Poems of Miklós Radnóti," 1948), and Radnóti, Miklós összes versei és műfordításai ("Translations and Poems of Miklós Radnóti," 1963).

His last book, Tajtékos ég ("Stormy Skies"), published in 1946, contains poems found in his pocket as he lay in a mass grave at Abda. They accurately prophesy the circumstances of his death. Radnóti, who has come to be considered one of the most important Hungarian lyric poets, was also a skilled translator.

bibliography:

Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon, 2 (1965), 543–9; L. Madácsi, Radnóti Miklós (Hung., 1954).

[Itamar Yaos-Kest]