Poetry
Anna Forever
Anna örök
Gyula Juhász · 1926
Opening lines
Az évek jöttek, mentek, elmaradtál
Emlékeimből lassan, elfakult
Arcképed a szívemben, elmosódott
A vállaidnak íve, elsuhant
A hangod és én nem mentem utánad
Az élet egyre mélyebb erdejében.
The years came and went, you slipped away
Slowly from my memories, your portrait
Faded in my heart, there blurred
The curve of your shoulders, there drifted off
Your voice, and I did not follow you
Into the ever deepening forest of life.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from hu.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Many years later, the speaker finds that the image of the woman he loved has faded: he has forgotten the colour of her hair, the curve of her shoulders, the sound of her voice. And yet she remains: he finds her in every badly chosen tie, in every missed word, in everything his life has been since they met, which this unrequited love has shaped from one end to the other.
Context
The poem dates from 1926, nearly twenty years after the meeting, in Nagyvárad, with the actress Anna Sárvári, whom the author loved without return and who, according to witnesses, mocked the verses he addressed to her. The first Anna poem had appeared on 25 October 1908; this one is among the last of the cycle. It forms a single block of eighteen lines, without stanzas, an elegy that is also a prayer, and moves from an everyday language to a higher expression.
Who it is for
Eighteen lines in a single stanza, read in one minute; several English translations appear in the online anthology Babel.
Prizes and reception
One of the most famous love poems in the Hungarian language, and the summit of the cycle devoted to Anna.
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