Frigyes
Karinthy (Hungary)
1887-1938
Frigyes
Karinthy was a prolific writers of short stories, poetry, plays, and essays.
But he is best known as a humorist and satirist, the author of sequels to
Swift's Gulliver's Travels — Utazás Feremidóba (1916, Journey to
Faremído) and Capillaria (1921) — and the autobiographical Utazás a
koponyám Körül (1937, Journey Around my Skull). His poetry — often a blend
of Biblical-like diction and colloquial language or, as one critic has
described it, "a mixture of carefully polished...classical language and broadly-rolling,
Whitmanesque verse" — was collected in Nam mondhatom al senkinek
(1930, I cannot tell it to anyone) and Üzenet a palaaaackban (1938,
Message in a Bottle).
In Hungary he is also beloved as the
author of a book of parodies, Így írtok to (This Is How YOU Write), many
of whose lines have become proverbial. Like many of the New York Algonquin
writers in the United States, Karinthy became known as a wit of almost
legendary repute. With writer Dezsű Kosztolányi, he held literary court at the
famed Budapest New York Café, as he and Kosztolányi played sophisticated verbal
games and satirized the leading Hungarian poets such as Endre Ady, Mihály
Babits, Gyula Illyés, Attila József and Lōrinc Szabó.
Karinthy's son, the noted novelist Ferenc
Karinthy, contributed to the anecdotes of his father. His other son, Gabor, is
a poet.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Nem
mondhatom el senkinek
(1930); Üzenet a palackban (1938)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Grave
and Gay
(selections from his work), trans. István Kerékgyártó (1973); selections in In
Quest of the Miracle Stag: The Poetry of Hungary, edited by Adam Makkai
(Chicago: Atlantis Centaur/Budapest: Corvina, 1996).
The
Message in the Bottle
(The
Poet Is Asked Why He No Longer Writes Poems)
(a
few illegible lines, then:)
...my
fingers
are
frozen. This bottle's in my left hand. The right
holds
the joystick. It has grown very stiff.
There's
thick ice on the wings. I don't
know
whether the engine can take it. It makes Queer
snoring
noises in here. It's terribly cold.
I
don't know how high up I am
(or
how deep? or how far?)
Nearness
and distance — all empty. And all
my
instruments are frozen: the scales
of
Lessing and the compressometer of the Academy;
the
Martinetti altimeter, too. I think
I
must be high enough because the penguins
no
longer lift their heads as my propeller
drones
above them, cutting across
the
Northern Lights. They no longer hear me. Here are
no
signs to see. Down there's some rocky land. New land?
Unknown?
Ever explored before? By whom? Perhaps
by
Scott? Strindberg? Byron? Leopardi?
I
don't know. And I confess
I
don't care. I'm cold, the taste
of
this thin air is biter, horribly bitter...
It
could be that my nose has started to bleed.
I'm
hungry... I've eaten all my biscuits.
Some
unknown star keeps blinking
at
the point I gaze at. The pemmican
has
gone maggoty... What star can that be?
Perhaps
already... from the beyond...? And what's the date?
Wednesday?
Thursday? Or New Year's Eve? Who could be
sitting
around the homely hearth? Little brothers,
singing
birds,
beside
the anxiously guarded hearth
of
petty feelings; bird brothers in the depths
of
the human heart's jungle... Hallo! Hallo!
Is
there no one to hear this exiled fellow-crow, myself?
A
little while ago
something
crackled through the rusty antenna of my radio...
I
hear that Mr. D. has found a fine adjective
in
Banality Harbor
while
C. has discovered a new metaphor
between
two rhymes in Love Canal.
The
society's reporting it. Congratulations!
I'll...tell
you all...that I...
when
I get home...that I...
when
I get home...and...land...
all
that I...felt up here...only when
he
escapes....can....the traveler....relate it....
But
how does he every escape to return?
Now
I put these few confused lines
into
the empty wine bottle
and
drop it through the hatch. Like rolling dice!
If
an uncouth pearl-diver should find it, let him
throw
it away, a broken oyster,
bt
should a literate sailor find it,
I
send this message through him:
"Here
I am, at the Thirteenth Latitude of Desolation,
the
Hundredth Longitude of Shame,
the
utmost Altitude of teeth-gnashing Defiance,
somewhere
far out, at the point of the Ultimate,
and
still I wonder whether it is possible
to
go any farther...
—Translated
from the Hungarian by Paul Tabori
Dandelion
Towards
your hand,
Towards
your hand, your hair
Towards
your hand, your hair, your eyes
Towards
your hand, your hair, your eyes, your skirt
Why
this snatching? — You ask me always,
Annoyed
and loudly, or shaking your head in silence —
Why
not soft and gentle caresses,
Yes,
well behaved, like others would do it.
Why
this snatching, and in my eyes a twinkle
And
worse still, I am laughing — impudently!
It
is so strident, rude and ear-splitting!
You'll
leave me here at once, or smack my hand!
Flower,
don't leave me, I rather tell you
I
tell you — I breathe in your ear, wait,
Just
smooth this curl away now.
Towards
your hand,
Towards
your hand, your hair
Towards
your hand, your hair, your eyes
Towards
your hand, your hair, your eyes, your skirt
What
keeps snatching — you still cannot remember?
What
keeps snatching — you still can't think of it? —
though
you've this same expression
Always
when, annoyed, you try to find it off
Holding
your hair, your eyes, your skirt against it.
Towards
your stem
Towards
your stem stamen
Towards
your stem stamen pistil
Towards
your stem stamen pistil petals
What
keeps snatching, flower? — The wind!
The
wind, the wind, impudent, fickle wind
Chirping
cheerfully, seeing you annoyed.
Flower,
what next?
This
was just a light breeze
This
can only snatch and chirp away,
But
now I have to speak to you about my family,
Listen,
I say!
Proud,
Trumpeting Tempest was my father —
The
famous Typhoon of Arkansas my mother,
A
whirling tornado married my sister —
Fair
flowerfluff, have you ever wallowed exalted — exhausted
Hoisted
on a heaven-piercing hurricane?
So
don't smack me now on the hand, dear.
—Translated
from the Hungarian by Peter Zollman
Struggle
for Life
Brother,
it seems, you have been beaten.
As
Law decrees and Precept goes —
Your
corpse is sniffed round by hyenas
And
circled by the hungry crows.
It's
not the pack who were the stronger,
Smaller
beasts beat you to tatters —
And
who fights now over your carcass:
Jackdaw?
Jackal? Hardly matters.
Your
fist when it was time to use it
Always
stopped halfway in the air —
Was
it Charity? Weakness? May be.
Fear?
Pride? Modesty? I don't care.
Or
mere disgust, perhaps. So be it.
Good.
Amen, I accept the terms.
I
prefer that worms should eat me
Rather
than I should feed on worms.*
—Translated
from the Hungarian by Peter Zollman
*These
two lines have become proverbial in Hungarian.
_____
PERMISSIONS
"The
Message in the Bottle," "Dandelion," and "Struggle for
Life"
Reprinted
from In Quest of the Miracle Stag: The Poetry of Hungary, edited by Adam
Makkai (Chicago: Atlantis Centaur/Budapest: Covina, 1996). Copyright ©1996 by
Atlantis-Centaur. Reprinted by permission of Adam Makkai, with thanks to Peter
Zollman and Paul Tabori.
No comments:
Post a Comment