Radnóti, Miklós

Born May 5, 1909, in Budapest; died between Nov. 6 and 10, 1944, in Abda. Hungarian poet.

From 1930 to 1934, Radnóti studied in the faculty of philology of the University of Széged. His first poems were published in 1924. The collection Pagan’s Greeting (1930) decried coercion and falsehood; the collection Song of the New Shepherds (1931) was confiscated for its anticlericalism. The poems in the collections The Healing Wind (1933) and The New Moon (1935) were permeated with antifascist and internationalist ideas.

In 1936, Radnóti joined the staff of the communist journal Gondolat and established close relations with the left wing of the journal Nyugat. The optimism of his poetry of the mid-1930’s was replaced by a tragic vein, as seen in the antifascist collection Steep Road (1938). Radnóti was in fascist labor camps from 1940 to 1944 and was executed by the Hitlerites. His last poems, published in 1946 in the collection The Sky Is Foaming, are permeated with faith in Hungary’s rebirth.