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HUNGARIAN STUDIES 12. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai

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HUNGARIAN STUDIES 12. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai TWO POEMS OF DISCOVERY: MIKLÓS RADNÓTTS "HYMN TO THE NILE" AND "COLUMBUS" EMERY GEORGE Trenton, NJ, U.S.A. I. Two Poems, Four Sources When in the spring of 1944 Miklós Radnóti received his copy of the 15 March issue of Magyar Csillag (Hungarian Star), in which his poem "Columbus" first appeared,1 well might he have meditated on the almost three years that had elapsed since his first encounter with its source, Antal Szerb's translated edition of the explorer's ship log. Szerb's Columbus uti naplója (Columbus' Travel Jour­ nal) appeared with Officina Publishers, Budapest, in 1941, presumably during autumn of that year; in view of the mutual esteem that existed between literary historian and poet, there can be no doubt that Radnóti acquired a copy almost immediately. Twenty months later, he reacted to the volume in the form of a poem. The decisive moment of stimulation came on Sunday, 2 May 1943, when the Radnótis, under the officiating hand of the poet's former professor, the pia- rist father Sándor Sík, were baptized in the Roman Catholic faith. Now was the time to turn to the achievement of Christopher Columbus, one of Radnóti's most unmistakably Catholic subjects. The completed poem dates from 1 June 1943. It does not seem too much to suggest that its opening line, which quotes the opener of the ship log, also sounds like the priest administering the Radnótis' baptismal sacrament: "In Nomine DominiNostri Jhesu Christi"1 Those twenty months of study, waiting, meditation, and writing stand at the opposite extreme from the often all but instantaneous reaction and speed with which Radnóti responds to an invitation to write and important poem.3 One fine example of encounter with a source for a poem and nearly hair-trigger response to it is "Hymn to the Nile." As did "Columbus," the poem most probably had a double instigation: a "5,000-year-old" AEgyptian hymn, and (my discovery) a distinguished first translation into Hungarian of part of a book on the subject of the river Nile. The book in question is: Emil Ludwig, Der Nil: Lebenslauf eines Stromes (translated into English as The Nile: The Life-Story of a River).4 Banned in Nazi Germany, Ludwig's book first appeared with Querido Verlag in Amsterdam: volume 1 (Von der Quelle bis nach AEgypten) in 1935; volume 2 (Der Nil in AE- gypten) in 1937. Tibor Déry's translation of volume 1 appeared with Athenaeum Hungarian Studies 12/1-2 (1997) 0236-6568/97/$ 5.00 © 97 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 224 EMERY GEORGE of Budapest, in what I take to be the first days of 1936;5 volume 2 of Ludwig's work, in a translation by Endre Csánk, was also published by Athenaeum, very probably in the fall of 1937. Radnóti's verse adaptation of his "five-millennia-old" hymn, titled "A Nílus himnusza" ("Hymn of the Nile"), first saw print in the 31 January 1936 issue of the popular illustrated weekly Ünnep (Holiday). "Himnusz a Nílushoz" ("Hymn to the Nile"), the definitive version we know from Radnóti's sixth poetry collection, Meredek út (Steep Road) (1938), and from later editions of the poet's work, first appeared in the February 1937 issue of Szép Szó (Beautiful Word).6 I owe to Mariann Nagy's magisterial bibliography of Miklós Radnóti7'my awareness that the early version "Hymn of the Nile" has had some scholarly at­ tention before. Tibor Melczer, in a perceptive article in the 16 November 1984 issue of Élet és Irodalom (Life and Letters), titled "Egy elfelejtett Radnóti- átköltés" ("A Forgotten Radnóti Adaptation"),8 identifies the source of the "Hymn of the Nile" prototype as occurring in a work by Adolf Erman, Die Litera­ tur der Aegypter (The Literature of the Egyptians) (Leipzig, 1923).9 In this vol­ ume, on pages 193—96, we indeed find a prose hymn titled "An den Nil," a text as passionate as it is diffuse, occupying almost four pages in print. It is not 5,000 years old but dates, rather, from the late Hyksos period, or, from the earlier half of the second millennium B. C. From this source text Radnóti takes what appeals to him, in the process rearranging and compressing his material. The opening "zöldeló" ("gleaming green"), for example, comes from a repetitive feature found at the end of the prose hymn.10 There can be little doubt, then, as to Radnóti's first source. One recalls that the poet, during his university days at Szeged, simi­ larly adapted an African fire hymn, taken from the Anthologie Nègre of Blaise Cendrars." Melczer is also right in pointing to how the definitive "Hymn to the Nile" is no longer adaptation, but rather "to the very roots of its being" a poem by Radnóti. This, to quote the article, is underscored by its "dynamic verbs, revel­ ing participles, and indeed thinly veiled political sentiments." So far, Melczer and I agree. We part ways where he makes no mention of the possibility that Radnóti may also be directly indebted to volume 1 of Ludwig's book, in the translation by Tibor Déry.12 I hold this to be not only possible, but also highly probable, for two reasons. First, there is the matter of timing. A friend or editor — or both — may have called Radnóti's attention to Erman's 1923 com­ pilation, whether weeks or years preceding the adaptation, it is not yet possible to determine. As it looks, it took the stimulation of a second, more recent, source, namely, Ludwig's account, to revitalise the poet's interest in the ancient hymn text. That less than a month should elapse between the appearance of the Déry translation and of Radnóti's "Hymn of the Nile" adaptation, is highly suggestive. My second reason has to do with language. Every one of the principal ideas un­ derlying lexicon in either version by Radnóti: green, distant plain, flooding, cattle herds, crowding, tightness, pastureland, irrigation, loaded trees, wandering poor, TWO POEMS OF DISCOVERY: MIKLÓS RADNÓTTS "HYMN TO THE NILE" 225 billowing waves, generous crop, teeming fish, desert, serpent, fruit, moon, sun — every one of these is attested in one form of another in Ludwig's book in its en­ tirety.13 It is almost as if Ludwig himself were acquainted with Erman's anthology, and with ancient hymn, and while this is by no means precluded, I have no data on it. What we do know is that Radnóti could not have seen volume 2 of Lud­ wig's book, either in the original or in the Csánk translation, in time to profit from it in composing "Hymn to the Nile." He himself may afterwards have mar­ velled at the similarities in language between poem and book. As to a "trigger" for writing the definitive version, either in fall or late winter of 1936, it could have been a publisher's advertisement for the forthcoming volume 2.14 In any case, the poet's demonstrable debt to Ludwig seems as strong as it is to Szerb's edition of Columbus' travel log. We keep in mind, of course, that Szerb's work occupies the status of a first source,15 corresponding to Erman, while Ludwig's role in triggering "Hymn of the Nile," being its immediate occasion, parallels the Radnótis' baptismal rite, the event that directly led to the writing of "Columbus." II. Discovery with a Difference Miklós Radnóti was given seventeen years — from 1928 to 1944 — to unfold as an artist. "Hymn to the Nile," coming in the middle of his career, and "Columbus," coming near its end, are both works of Radnóti's poetic maturity. Their double backgrounds look superficially similar, yet they differ substantially, in that the more recent stimuli differ. As was Erman's anthology, Ludwig's book is again a literary source, a text found from without. Its occasional nature is ba­ sic. The Radnótis' baptismal rite, on the other hand, differs radically from Szerb's book, or indeed from any book publication; it is an inner source. Its text may be the published text of the Communion Service; its subtext is a variety of religious experience to which Radnóti felt attracted since student days. As the immediate stimulus, so the product. "Hymn to the Nile" is an important occasional work, while "Columbus" is a poem of self-discovery. The former reflects Radnóti's in­ terest in the outside world; the latter is the poet's personal ship log of his inner journey to his own, ultimate, island of San Salvador. Comparison will illumine this important difference between two of Radnóti's key exoticist poems. Melczer is right in perceiving a kinship between "Hymn to the Nile" and works showing the poet's exoticist interests of younger days. In particular the image, in lines 10—12, of the beggar gleaning "from trees that, loaded, sink / deep down to earth" conjures the world of Radnóti's earlier narra­ tive poem "Song of the Black Man Who Went to Town" (CW).16 There is, further, the paean to the sun ("Hymn to the Nile," lines 6 "blind with light" and 25 "In bursting sun and flame"), to remind us of the "Hymn to the Sun" section of 226 EMERY GEORGE "Sunday in Summertime" (NM); and the images of poverty in the Nile poetry take us back to youthful poems of the early 1930s nourished, not last, by Rad- nóti's experience in Paris of the Exposition Coloniale Mondiale. 17 The feeling of simultaneous closeness and distance, to and from the terrain and the people who depend on it for their sustenance, is not the least exoticist element in the Nile hymn's evidently gratefully received subject.
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