Light Within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Ozsvath, Zsuzsanna; Turner, Frederick

Light Within the Shade

Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry

Edited and Translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsvath and Frederick Turner

Publication Year: 2014

The pure verbal energy characterizing Hungarian poetry may be regarded as one of the most striking components of Hungarian culture. More than 800 years ago, under the inspiration of classical and medieval Latin poetry, Hungarian poets began to craft a rich chain of poetic designs, much of it in response to the country’s cataclysmic history. With precision, depth, and great intensity, these verses give accounts of their authors’ vision of themselves as participants in history and their most personal experience in the world. Light within the Shade includes 135 of the most important Hungarian poems ranging from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century. Organized in chronological order, the poems are followed by an essay by Ozsváth providing the historical, biographical, and cultural background of the poets and the poetry. The book concludes with Turner’s essay on the special thematic and literary qualities of Hungarian poetry, as well as notes on translation practices. This essential volume exposes English-speaking readers to Hungarian poetry’s artistic achievement in history and culture, its evolutionary development as a tradition, and its significance within the context of world literature.

Light Within the Shade

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, About the Author

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Selection of Poems

“Spring Wind Makes the Waters Rise”;

“Be My Star, Ferryman”;

“Getting Down to Living”;

On Finding Julia, He Greeted Her Thus:

A Soldier’s Song

He Supplicates the Lord to Protect Him in His Exileand Extend to Him His Further Blessings

Bitter, As I Know Too Well . . .

A Restrained Plea

The Vow

To Hope

The Black Wax Seal

Winter Is Coming

Supplication

Hymn

Declaration

Night and Star

Mankind

The Mother of Matthias

Klára Zách

The Bards of Wales

The Ordeal of the Bier

Civilization

Red Rébék

My Complaints . . .

Prophecy

I Would Be a Tree . . .

One Thought Troubles Me

My Songs

September Ending

Song of the Nation

Monstrous Days

Twenty Years Later

Against the Tide*

Oh Why So Late

Among My Songs

“I Am the Son of Gog and Magog . . .”

Hawk-Mating on the Forest Floor

The Poet of the Eastern Plains

On New Waters I Walk

Autumn Came to Paris

Legend of Saint Margaret

Confessions of the Danube

From the Stream to the Ocean

And I Am Not a Hungarian?

The Voiceless Birds

On Elijah’s Wain

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

The Abandoned Pirate Ships

I Guard Your Eyes

Memory of a Summer Night

Behold, Love, These My Treasures

Pagan Prayer

Little Peter Walks

To Appear Before You

How It Was

Profane Litany

Evening Questioning

Ode on Beauty

Love Poem

Evening Arrival

Between Fall and Spring

Saint Blaise-ing*

The Prayer of Jonah

Autumn Breakfast

Ilona

Funeral Eulogy

Dawn Drunkenness

Evening Song

Evening Gloriole

Foreword

Dandelion

Craftsman

On the Fields of July