Poetry
Új versek
Not translated into English
Endre Ady · 1906
Opening lines
Góg és Magóg fia vagyok én,
Hiába döngetek kaput, falat
S mégis megkérdtem tőletek:
Szabad-e sírni a Kárpátok alatt?
I am the son of Gog and Magog,
In vain I pound on gate and wall,
And yet I have asked of you:
May one weep beneath the Carpathians?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The book opens with a poem in which the speaker calls himself a son of Gog and Magog and, recalling the passes of Verecke and Dévény through which the ancient Hungarians entered, asks whether he too will be able to pass with new songs. There follow the psalms addressed to Léda, a love lived as a struggle, then “A magyar Ugaron”, a Hungary left fallow, “A daloló Páris”, the singing city, and finally the poems of the traveller of the virgin peaks.
Context
The collection appears in 1906. Adél Brüll lived in Paris, and the author made a first one-year stay there before publication; he would return seven times in all between 1904 and 1911. A programmatic poem precedes the cycles, which gather the love poems addressed to Léda, those of a fallow Hungary and those of Paris: eroticism, criticism of the country and the foreign city enter together, against the usages of the Hungarian poets of the time.
Who it is for
Short poems arranged in cycles; several appear in selections translated into French and English, but no complete translation of the collection has been located.
Prizes and reception
The book from which the birth of modern Hungarian poetry is dated, and a landmark of the whole literature of the country.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.