Zsuzsanna Ozsváth - Böcker

In the Footsteps of OrpheusThe Life and Times of Miklós RadnótiZsuzsanna OzsváthA powerful account of the life, art, and tragic death of a 20th-century Hungarian Jewish poet."Zsuzsanna Ozsváth bring[s] forth Radnóti's life, his thought, and his passion with a depth of insight that is rare in a scholar. Brilliant, penetrating, and passionate, Ozsváth's book sets a new standard of excellence in Holocaust studies. It is a must for anyone who would approach the dark flame that burns at the core of the Event." —David Patterson, University of Memphis Miklós Radnóti, a young Hungarian Jewish poet, was shot by Hungarian soldiers guarding him while on a forced march from Yugoslavia back to Hungary during the final days of World War II. When his body was discovered and exhumed nearly two years later, a small book of poems was found in his coat pocket. These poems, together with the rest of Radnóti's work, solidified his reputation as one of Hungary's greatest poets. Radnóti shared the experience of many Jewish artists and intellectuals in Central Europe during the early part of the 20th century, but his poetry brings out a particular and personal view of the Holocaust in Hungary. His work plays a unique role in the history of Central European culture as some of the most beautiful poems ever written in Hungarian, as a voice against the rise of totalitarianism, and as testimony to the destruction of Europe's Jews. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth places Radnóti within the context of the political and intellectual history of interwar Hungary, situating him as an artist who is both a Jew and a Hungarian patriot. Her sensitive translations from the Hungarian lend poignancy to this tragic and forcefully told story. This account of Radnóti's life and work explores the sources of the poet's inspiration and imagery and restores it to its extreme times and places.Zsuzsanna Ozsváth is Professor of Literature and the History of Ideas at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she is also Director of the Holocaust Studies Program. She is coeditor and cotranslator (with Frederick Turner) of Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti and Attila Jozsef's The Iron-Blue Vault: Selected Poetry.Jewish Literature and Culture—Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editorContentsMyth and ConsciousnessPoetic Images: Socialist Art and Political CommitmentThe Pull of Contraries: Making of the PastVisions of Destruction, Lyrics of ResistanceIn Extremis: 1944

Opening with the ominous scene of one young schoolgirl whispering an urgent account of Nazi horror to another over birthday cake, Ozsváth’s extraordinary and chilling memoir tells the story of her childhood in Hungary, living under the threat of the Holocaust. The setting is the summer of 1944 in Budapest during the time of the German occupation, when the Jews were confined to ghetto houses but not transported to Auschwitz in boxcars, as was the rest of the Hungarian Jewry living in the countryside. Provided with food and support by their former nanny, Erzsi, Ozsváth’s family stays in a ghetto house where a group of children play theater, tell stories to one another, invent games to pass time, and wait for liberation. In the fall of that year, however, things take a turn for the worse. Rounded up under horrific circumstances, forced to go on death marches, and shot on the banks of the Danube by the thousands, the Jews of Budapest are threatened with immediate destruction. Ozsváth and her family survive because of Erzsi’s courage and humanity. Cheating the watching eyes of the murderers, she brings them food and runs with them from house to house under heavy bombardment in the streets. As a scholar, critic, and translator, Ozsváth has written extensively about Holocaust literature and the Holocaust in Hungary. Now, she records her own history in this clear-eyed, moving account. When the Danube Ran Red combines an exceptional grounding in Hungarian history with the pathos of a survivor and the eloquence of a poet to present a truly singular work.

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.

In the spring of 1944, nearly 500,000 Jews were deported from the Hungarian countryside and killed in Auschwitz. In Budapest, only 150,000 Jews survived both the German occupation and dictatorship of the Hungarian National Socialists, who took power in October 1944. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth’s family belonged among the survivors. This memoir begins with the the author’s childhood during the Holocaust in Hungary. It captures life after the war’s end in Communist-ruled Hungary and continues with her and her husband’s flight to Germany and eventually the United States. Ozsváth’s poignant story of survival, friendship, and love provides readers with a rare glimpse of an extraordinary journey.