Visions of Catastrophe in the Poetry of Miklos Radnoti (Critical Essay‪)‬

Central to the late poetry of Miklos Radnoti is the evolution of a set of visionary images auguring the Holocaust. This development followed on the heels of the poet's earlier interest in the socialist, populist, and left-oriented movements and ideas that drove a number of Hungarian artists and young intellectuals of the time. Immersed in social-cultural activities during his university years in Szeged (1930-35), Radnoti underwent a significant change when he moved back to Budapest. He recognized the threat posed by the Third Reich and watched with great consternation the involvement of a number of Hungarian intellectuals and politicians in rightist and anti-Semitic activities and propaganda (Ozsvath, In the Footsteps 108-17). Responding to this development, he started to warn of the impending catastrophe and suggest the breakthrough of previously unimaginable forces in the world. Of course, at first sight we may identify his premonitions and images as poetic responses to the rising extremist political groups of his time. But a more careful study of Radnoti's work reveals a frequency and intensity of these visions, connoting more than the poet's disagreement with contemporary political developments; they reveal rather his foresight of destruction and mass murder. Certainly, visions of catastrophe are not foreign to Hungarian poetry. Over the past five hundred years, Hungarian poets often bewailed the tragic fate that had befallen their country. But Radnoti's forebodings probably spring from other, older, cultural sources as well. They may be identified as part of the ancient Jewish prophetic tradition: warning of calamity, awareness of sin, retribution, fear, despair, and hope, a tradition that has become part of both Jewish liturgy and Jewish communal memory. Recast, reformulated, and reshaped to fit the circumstances of the time and place in which Radnoti lived, this commemorative material has created a subtext to the poet's uncanny visions of devastation, to his urge to chronicle and witness history, and to his repeated declarations of his passionate love for Hungary, including his self-projection as a true son of his native land, indivisible from the larger Magyar community.