1909 On May 5, Miklós Radnóti is born in Budapest as Miklós Glatter. His father, Jakab Glatter (1874–1921), was a traveling salesman for his brother-in-law’s textile firm. His mother, Ilona Grosz (1881–1909), dies while giving birth to him and his twin brother, who dies several minutes after delivery. Both parents are from non-religious, assimilated Jewish families.
1911 His father remarries Ilka Molnár (1885–1944). Radnóti is very close to his step- mother, unaware until the age of 12 that she is not his biological mother. His half-sister, Ágnes, is born three years after the marriage (1914–1944) and is five years younger.
1914–1918 World War I begins on July 28, 1914, and ends four years later on November 11, 1918. Hungary is caught up in the great upheaval and is on the losing side. On the front there are devastating defeats and great sacrifices, while at home there is chaos with labor strikes and food shortages. For four months after the end of World War I Count Mihály Károlyi serves as president of the short-lived Hungarian People’s Republic as the country breaks away from Austria. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire gradually disintegrates, various nationalities rise up, demanding independence. To support these movements the Allies put pressure on Hungary and set up a boycott to further destabilize the regime. French troops occupy Hungarian territories, and Hungary ultimately loses almost 70 percent of its lands as millions of Hungarians are left in these lost regions cut off from the motherland. Radnóti starts four years of elementary school in Budapest in 1915.
1919 A communist government under Béla Kun succeeds Károlyi’s regime and the country descends further into economic and social chaos with the crumbling of industry and agriculture. Kun resorts to bloody suppression of dissent. The fact that he is of partial Jewish heritage, and that the majority of his leaders are Jewish, helps to fuel the anti–Semitic backlash that follows. As Hungary nears civil war, the Romanians defeat Kun’s army and his regime dissolves. The factions that had sought to overthrow Kun are anti–Semitic and anti–Communist, and they blame Hungary’s ailments, as well as its involvement in the disastrous international war, on Jews. Many Jews are murdered in the pogroms that follow. Radnóti starts four years of secondary school in Budapest.
1920 On March 1, Admiral Miklós Horthy becomes regent of Hungary. There is a great backlash because of the humiliation imposed by the Allies on Hungary. The Trianon Peace Treaty, which forces Hungary to give up its territories and millions of its citizens to live displaced in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, is felt to be the result of Jewish machinations and influence. A succession of anti–Semitic laws, the Numerus Clausus, are passed, and they limit the number of Jews that can attend universities. The laws also prevent peasants from owning any substantial lands and allows for torture as punishment. The Catholic church and clergy frequently among those who fan the flames of anti–Semitism and organize radical anti–Semitic groups. The new laws gradually erode the freedoms that were afforded to Jews in 1867, when the First Law of Emancipation gave them equal rights to Christians, and 1895, when the Second Law provided Judaism with protection and legitimacy equal to that of the various Christian religions. For fifty years these laws, generous by European standards had led to the rapid involvement of Jews in highly respected professions and businesses, instilling in the Jews of Hungary a deep patriotism that led to significant assimilation, especially in the larger cities. As a consequence, many Jews had entered professions in law, medicine, engineering, and journalism, and many more had become prominent in industry and agriculture. At the same time, and despite anti–Semites’ claims that the Jews were getting rich on the backs of others, most were still simple laborers and merchants with limited education and means. This had been especially true in the smaller towns and villages.
1921 His father dies suddenly when Radnóti is 12, and the poet learns both that Ilka is not his biological mother and that Ágnes is his half-sister. Because of financial difficulties Ilka and Ágnes must go to live with her parents in Nagyvárad in what is now Romania, while Miklós stays in Budapest. He is separated from the only family he has ever known. On October 20 the Orphans’ Court designates Radnóti’s maternal uncle, Dezső Grosz, to be his legal guardian. His uncle is a wealthy textile wholesaler who hopes to encourage the young Miklós to follow in his footsteps and learn about the family business.
1923 His uncle moves him into the household of his two great-aunts, whom he also supports. Dezső Grosz is frugal and the accommodations are meager. He enrolls his young ward in the Upper Commercial School in Budapest to encourage a practical career in business, and Radnóti attends for four years. During these four years, his uncle grooms him to enter the textile business, but unbeknownst to Grosz, Radnóti has already developed an interest in literature and writing. His mathematics teacher and tutor, Károly Hilbert, guides Radnóti’s readings in poetry and remains in contact with him throughout much of the poet’s life.
1924 Radnóti learns at the age of 15 that not only his mother but his twin brother died during his birth. This new knowledge is a great blow to him, and he never fully recovers from the trauma. It becomes a major underlying theme in many of his poems throughout his life and leads to a profound guilt.
1925 He composes what is believed to be his first poem at the age of 16.
1926 He meets Fanni Gyarmati, his future wife, in Hilbert’s home and they marry eight years later. Fanni’s father is a highly successful educator who owns a school for typing and stenography.
1927 He writes his first poem to the 15-year-old Fanni and graduates from commercial school at the age of 18. His uncle takes him on a vacation to Pirano, Italy, as a reward for graduating and continues to groom him for a career in business. He is sent for further study to Reichenberg, Czechoslovakia, to attend the famous Textile Institute for a year. Students attend the institute from throughout the world, but Radnóti has scant interest in his courses. He continues to develop his poetry, and although he corresponds with Fanni, he falls in love with a young German girl, Klementine Tschiedel (Tinni). Many of the poems written in Reichenberg are inspired by her and by this first sexual relationship. At the Textile Institute, German is the primary spoken language, and he begins to translate German poems into Hungarian. He also becomes aware of the writings of the European avant-garde and begins to write free verse, rejecting rhyme and meter.
1928–1929 Radnóti becomes involved in the literary journals 1928 and Kortárs (Contemporary), serving as co-editor of the latter. These journals give voice to a liberal movement among young intellectuals and encourage rejection of the past and the values of the older generation. Like many such journals, these publications are short-lived. Radnóti works in his uncle’s company with reluctance as his guardian becomes aware of his passion for literature and of his disdain for the textile business. Despite his uncle’s seductive dangling of future wealth in front of him, Radnóti balks at pursuing a business career and continues to develop his aesthetic theories and techniques. In June 1929, some of his earliest poems are published in the anthology Joság (Goodness), of which he is co-editor. In this particular issue he is in the company of poets writing free verse. Joság focuses on the fusion of Christ’s teachings of love for humanity and socialism. Radnóti reaches an accommodation with his uncle and studies Latin so that he can enter a university and pursue the humanities.
1930 In March his first book of poetry, Pogány köszöntő (Pagan Salute) is published by Kortárs. He is 20 years old. In September he enrolls in the Ferencz József University in Szeged, unable to attend a university in Budapest because of anti–Semitic laws. He pursues studies in the Hungarian and French languages, and he visits the famous Piarist priest Sándor Sík, who is a poet and a professor of literature. Sík had been born to Jewish parents who converted to Christianity, and he becomes Radnóti’s close friend, mentor, and protector. Hungary is buffeted by the Great Depression, and there is wide-spread unemployment and starvation. Agriculture and industry collapse, and there are strikes and demonstrations as the nation descends into chaos. The turmoil fuels anti–Semitism and is fertile ground for the rise of numerous right-wing and extremist organizations. Like most young Jewish intellectuals of the time, Radnóti is patriotic and sees himself as Hungarian first; his links to Judaism are secular and tenuous. He continues to maintain contact with his step-mother and sister.
1930s Radnóti becomes one of the founders of the Arts College of the Youth of Szeged, a leftist student organization at the university that decries the plight of Hungary’s large and oppressed peasant class. The idealistic student movement is modeled after the English settlement movement of the late–19th century in which middle- and upper-class reformists sought to better the lives of the poor in London’s slums through educational support and social work.1 The members of the Arts College apply these methods in trying to better the lives of peasants. The group visits villages to witness first-hand the grinding poverty that is the fate of the agrarian class still living under the medieval class structure that denied them many basic rights. The Arts College organizes lectures, exhibits, and debates, and publishes books. The members link themselves to the avant-garde, and some are inspired by Soviet revolutionary art movements and the Italian Futurists.2 There is an evolving feeling that art contains the answer to many of the political and social ills that foster a growing fascism. The leftist students foresee a revolution in morality and aesthetics that will do away with capitalist injustices and promote liberalism. They are against the Horthy regime and his right-wing supporters, but they are also in the minority and are closely watched and sometimes harassed by the authorities. The university professors and administrations are bulwarks of the establishment, and the majority of students are anti-left and anti–Semitic. Right-wing extremism therefore finds strong support not only among the poorer working classes but also among the most educated segments of society. Anti-Semitic student riots increase and become commonplace at institutes of higher learning throughout the thirties, and the beatings of Jewish students by well-organized mobs are ignored or encouraged. During this time Radnóti maintains close contact with Fanni while living in poverty in a cramped apartment in Budapest. He immerses himself in Latin, which later leads to his translations of Latin masters.
1931 In March, Radnóti’s second book, Újmódi pásztorok éneke (Song of Modern Shepherds), is published by Fiatal Magyarország, a progressive group whose name translates as “Young Hungary.” In April, the chief prosecutor of Budapest confiscates the book for obscenity and blasphemy and orders that all available copies are to be destroyed. Some of the poems are declared attacks on public morality and religion, and Radnóti is scheduled to appear in court that December to face charges of indecency and blasphemy.3 A guilty verdict will mean prison and expulsion from the university, and it will forever dash any hopes of teaching in a school or pursuing a university career in the humanities.
July–August 1931 Radnóti travels to Paris for the first time with his friend Imre Szalai. They arrive at the time of the Colonial World Exposition, and Radnóti is exposed for the first time to African culture and art. This experience has a profound and life-long effect on him, and it leads to his writing the poem “Ének a négerröl aki a városba ment (Song of the black man who went to town) in 1932 and to later translations in 1943 and 1944 of African fairytales. On this trip he meets Maki Hiroshi, the Japanese doctor who is the subject of one of his poems in Lábadozó szél (Convalescent Wind), his third book of poems, published in 1933. In December he appears in court. The two poems that especially concern the authorities are “Arckép” (Portrait) and “Pirul a naptól már az őszi bogyó” (The autumn berries redden in the sun). He is sentenced to eight days in prison for blasphemy but appeals the verdict. Fortunately, his mentor and protector, Sándor Sík, intervenes on his behalf and writes a letter to the presiding judges stressing that in his opinion the works are not blasphemous but merely in bad taste. Radnóti receives one year of probation.
1932 Szeged is in an uproar as police infiltrate and close down left-wing organizations. The persecution reaches deep into the university and student body and many activists are jailed and tortured. In June, Radnóti travels to Nagyvárad to see his step-mother and Ágnes. In July he travels with Fanni and some friends to the Tatra Mountains in a region that is now in Slovakia. This trip is commemorated in his poem “1932. július 7.” (July 7, 1932). In September the neo-fascist Arrow Cross Party is formed in Szeged. It becomes a powerful political force similar to Hitler’s Brown Shirts and terrorizes Jews and Gypsies with increasing impunity. In October the ardent anti–Semite Gyula Gömbös becomes prime minister; he remains in power until 1936. Gömbös is the first European head of state to visit and recognize Hitler. He views Jews as foreigners who contaminate Hungarian society and calls for their expulsion. His administration strengthens economic ties with Germany, and under his leadership, Hungary eventually enters World War II on the side of the Axis powers.4 In December Radnóti publishes his poem “Zaj, estefelé” (A Noise, Toward Evening) in Nyugat, the most prominent Hungarian literary journal at the time.
1933 In January, Hitler assumes power in Germany. In February Radnóti’s third book of poems, Lábadozó szél (Convalescent Wind), is published by the Arts College of the Youth of Szeged and receives favorable reviews except from the most influential poet at the time, Mihály Babits.5 The collection includes poems that explore the struggle between rich and poor and express Radnóti’s left-wing sentiments. In September, he travels with Fanni to Dalmatia where he meets the peasant Pero Kapetanovich, who makes an appearance in his poem “Montenegrói elégia” (Elegy for Montenegro).
1934 In June he formally changes his name from Glatter to Radnóti, taking the name of his grandfather’s village, Radnót. He also obtains his PhD from the University of Szeged, writing his thesis on Margit Kaffka (1880–1918), one of Hungary’s great modern poets and novelists. He also completes a thesis in French.
1935 In May he sits for his final exams in both Hungarian language and literature and French language and literature. His fourth book of poems, Újhold (New Moon), is published by the Art College of the Youth of Szeged. On August 11, he and Fanni are married and he moves from his apartment to a new apartment on Pozsony Street #1. He is 26 at the time. In November, Mussolini’s fascist forces invade Ethiopia.
1936 The Spanish Civil War begins on July 17. It ends three years later, on April 1, 1939, with the defeat of the loyalists by Franco’s fascist forces supported by Hitler and Mussolini. In September, Radnóti obtains his high school professor’s diploma in Hungarian and French, but because of the anti–Semitic laws, he is never allowed to teach. He and Fanni live in poverty during their nine years of marriage until his death. He is able to secure occasional jobs as a tutor and supplements this with income by editing manuscripts and working as a translator. Fortunately, Fanni is able to teach typing and stenography at her father’s school, and Radnóti’s uncle gives money to the struggling young couple. In November his fifth book of poetry, Járkálj csak, halálraítélt! (March On, Condemned!), is published by Nyugat, which brings him significant prestige among the literati and his peers.
1937 Radnóti is awarded the Baumgarten Award, Hungary’s highest literary honor, which includes a cash prize and brings him national recognition. With the prize money, he and Fanni are able to travel that June to Paris, where he witnesses and participates in a mass rally organized by the Communists in support of the loyalist anti–Franco forces in Spain. A massive portrait of Lorca, the executed Spanish poet, is a centerpiece at the rally that ends with the emotional singing of the “Internationale” by the 100,000 participants. He also sees Picasso’s famous painting Guernica. His experiences on this trip inspire him to write his poem “Hispánia, Hispánia,” which the censors would not allow into his next book and which is published only posthumously after the end of World War II. Radnóti’s readings and lectures on literature are broadcast over the radio.
1938 He translates Virgil’s ninth eclogue, which greatly influences his esthetic development and leads to the writing of his own now-famous eclogues. On March 11, the Nazis annex Austria, and just over two months later, on May 28, the Hungarian Parliament passes a law that classifies Jews as non–Hungarian and radically limits the number of Jews working in all professions. On October 1, German forces move into the Sudetenland, precipitating the breakup of Czechoslovakia; in November, Hungary annexes parts of Slovakia. On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht in Germany is followed by pogroms against the Jews. In December, the Hungarian Parliament passes another law creating forced military labor service for Jews. Although conscripted into the army, these laborers could not bear arms. Radnóti’s fifth book of poems, Meredek út (Steep Road), is published by Cserépfalvi.
1939 On May 4, the Hungarian Parliament adopts the Second Anti-Jewish Law, which defines Jewishness along racial lines and further establishes forced labor. The leaders of Hungary’s major Christian denominations enthusiastically support the law. From July to August, Radnóti travels to Paris for the third and final time, accompanied by Fanni and their close friends, Gyula Ortutay and his wife, Zsuzsanna.
On September 1, Hitler invades Poland, starting World War II, and soon afterwards the Soviets invade Poland from the east as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. This precipitates a spiritual crisis in Radnóti, who like most left-wingers had viewed the Soviets as the bulwark against fascism and as the only force that could defeat the Nazis.
1940 Germany attacks and defeats France, Holland, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark and establishes Jewish ghettoes in Poland. Hungary occupies regions in Transylvania. Radnóti publishes two books: Guillaume Apollinaire válogatott versei (The Selected Poems of Guillaume Appolinaire), translated with István Vas.; and Válogatott versei, 1930–1940 (Selected Poems), containing his own poems written over the previous decade. In September, he receives his draft card and soon afterwards is called up for duty for his first tour of forced labor. The tour lasts three and a half months, and during this time he is assigned to clear barbed wire with his bare hands along the Hungarian-Romanian border and to dig anti-tank trenches.
1941 In April he begins an adulterous affair with the artist Judit Beck that lasts until July 1942. The relationship places great strain on his marriage of six years to Fanni. A number of poems from this period are written to Judit,6 but Fanni, who has stubbornly guarded his literary legacy for almost seventy years since his death, has protected these poems equally. Fanni loses her job when her father’s school is closed by the authorities, who enforce the new anti–Semitic laws. German troops enter Hungary on their way to Yugoslavia and are joined by their Hungarian allies. Later, as many as 18,000 Jews, all of whom who had sought refuge in Hungary from countries invaded by the Nazis, are rounded up and transported to the Ukraine, where they are executed by the SS, Hungarian soldiers and Ukrainian militia. Hungary declares war on the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States. In June, Radnóti visits the great but now badly ill poet Mihály Babits, who was critical of Radnóti’s early work but has become an admirer. Upon Babits’s death, Radnóti writes his famous poem “Csak csont és bőr és fájdalom” (Mere Skin and Bones and Pain). On August 2, the Hungarian Parliament adopts a third anti–Jewish law that further isolates Hungary’s Jews from the rest of the population. This isolation sets the stage for the deportation and murder of 500,000 Hungarian Jews toward the end of the War. In December, Radnóti’s small book of poems Naptár (Calendar) is published.
1942 In January, three thousand Serbs and Jews are murdered by the Hungarian army and their bodies are thrown into the Danube in Budapest. Radnóti translates selected tales from the French by La Fontaine, as well as poems by Keats, Shelley and Byron. In July he is called up for his second tour of forced labor service; it lasts ten long months, until May 1943. His time is spent putting up telephone poles, and in back-breaking work in a sugar factory. He becomes severely ill with a dental abscess and suffers from intermittent depression. He entertains thoughts of suicide. Radnóti is able to go home on furloughs, and Fanni is sometimes able to visit, but their relationship is not fully mended from the affair with Judit Beck. The long separations and ever-present dangers, take their emotional toll on both husband and wife. Radnóti must wear an armband that identifies him as a Jew. He is nearly at the end of his rope when friends and prominent supporters write a letter to the minister of defense, pleading for his release. He is discharged home.
1943 Germany builds gas chambers in Auschwitz. Hitler’s forces are defeated in Stalingrad, and for the first time doubt is cast on the invincibility of the German war machine. In May, Radnóti and Fanni are baptized by Sándor Sík. Their motives are a source of controversy, and the conversion offers scant protection against the genocide to come. In August he publishes a collection of translations, Orpheus nyomában [In the Footsteps of Orpheus], with the publisher Pharos, and in October he translates a juvenile version of Don Quixote.
1944 Radnóti begins his translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, completing two acts. On March 19, Hitler invades Hungary, concerned that his staunch ally is trying to arrange a separate and secret peace with the Allies. He sends Adolf Eichmann to implement the “Final Solution” at a time when Hungary’s Jews are the last remaining large group of Jews untouched by genocide. He finds willing partners among government leaders, right- wing extremists, and the general population. In just two months (May 15–July 10), nearly 500,000 Jews are rounded up and sent to in cattle cars to Auschwitz, where the majority are murdered in the gas chambers. All Jewish properties are confiscated and appropriated by the government and by individual members of the populace. Part of the fabric of Hungarian society for centuries, Hungary’s Jews are rapidly destroyed. Pharos publishes Radnóti’s translations of African folktales and poems in Karunga, a holtak ura (Karunga, Lord of the Dead). In May, Radnóti receives his letter summoning him to his final, and fatal, tour of forced labor service. He and his battalion arrive in Serbia in cattle trucks. On June 2, he arrives in Lager Heidenau in Bor, Serbia, and works in a copper mine. As a convert to Christianity, he wears a white arm band instead of the yellow band worn by non-converts, but it confers little protection. His contingent is assigned to build a railroad for transporting the much-needed copper ore for the German war machine. The men subsist on starvation rations, and there are frequent beatings and torture. On August 16, he writes his final letter to Fanni. From August to September, the Soviet army and Yugoslav partisans close in, and Radnóti’s labor battalion starts its retreat from Bor back north to Hungary. The battalion is split in two, and Radnóti is assigned to the second group, which remains behind as the first group departs. Fearing that the second group may be destined for harsher treatment, or worse, he makes several requests to join in the first group and finally prevails. Ultimately, however, this is the doomed column, and the men unknowingly set out on a death march that few will survive. In contrast, the second group is soon liberated by Yugoslav partisans.7 Before embarking, Radnóti copies five poems out of his now famous Bor notebook, including his “Hetedik ecloga” (Seventh Eclogue), “Levél a hitveshez” (Letter to My Wife), “Á la recherché …,” “Nyolcadik ecloga” (Eighth Eclogue), and “Erőltetett menet” (Forced March). He entrusts the copies to his friend, Sándor Szalai, who has been assigned to the second group. Soon after being liberated Szalai has two of the poems, “Hetedik ecloga” and “Á la recherché …,” published in a local newspaper in Temesvár (Timisoara), Romania. The poems come out while Radnóti is still alive and marching toward his inevitable fate near Abda, Hungary. His column is decimated by hunger, illness, and executions, and he is unaware that his mother and sister have already been murdered in Auschwitz. On October 7 or 8, the group is split up in Cservenka, with Radnóti and 800 of his fellow prisoners continuing their march toward Hungary and another 1,000 remaining behind. Radnóti witnesses the killing of violinist Miklós Lorsi. A wounded Lorsi had been assisted by the poet and another prisoner, and he is shot and killed after an SS guard calls out “Der springt noch auf!” or “He is still moving!” It is an incident that Radnóti commemorates in his famous final poem, “Razglednica (4)” (from the Serbian for “Postcard”), which anticipates his own death. Most of the prisoners that remained in Cservenka are murdered by the German SS in a frenzied two-day bloodbath.8 On October 30, Radnóti writes “Razglednica (4)” in Szentkirályszabadja on a scrap of paper that he inserts into his small writing tablet. The SS guarding his column return command of the prisoners to Hungarian soldiers. On November 8 and Nov 9, Radnóti is badly beaten and is unable to go on. He is taken with 21 other exhausted and wounded prisoners to a remote forest in two carriages. The prisoners are executed one by one with a shot to the back of the neck and are buried in a mass grave by their Hungarian guards.
1945 In January and February the Russian army enters Budapest.
1946 Radnóti’s posthumous collection, Tajtékos ég (Frothy Sky), is prepared for publication by Fanni. He had done much of the editing on the collection that Fanni partially revises and adds to with the five poems from the Bor notebook, rescued by Szalai. Just before publication, and 19 months after his murder at the hands of Hungarian soldiers, a mass grave is discovered near Abda. The grave is exhumed and Radnóti’s body is identified among the corpses. In the pocket of his trenchcoat, his Bor notebook is discovered; it contains his final 10 poems, along with letters and photographs. On August 1, Fanni learns of the discovery near Abda in a Jewish newspaper, and among the names of the dead she sees that of her husband. On August 12, she travels with Gyula Ortutay, Dezső Baróti, and Gábor Tolnai to Győr, near Abda, to claim the body. She is also given the Bor notebook, in which she discovers five final poems, “Gyökér” (Root) and the four “Razglednicas,” all written during the death march9 Radnóti is reburied in Budapest.
—Gabor Barabas