Clouded Sky

“…a truly great poet, one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence dealing with the tragic twentieth century are utterly fused, as they so rarely are . . . The quality of the translation is such that it is hard to remember the poems were not first written in English, even though one is always aware of Radnóti’s vision as European and of his locus as Hungary.”—Denise Levertov The Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944) was also a prolific translator and editor who wrote some of his greatest poems in the labor camps and copper mines of Yugoslavia before being killed by the Nazis. Leaving behind a body of work that ranks with the classics of Hungarian verse, his influence is now being felt among a younger generation. In 1946, Radnóti’s body was exhumed from a mass grave by his wife who found a notebook of his poems (many of which were addressed to her) in his coat pocket.