Skip to main content

Faludy Has Died


Gyorgy Faludy, the Hungarian-Canadian poet, pictured, has died. Eyewear was based in Budapest for some time, and recalls hearing the poet read.
This from the CBC:
HUNGARIAN-CANADIAN POET FALUDY DIES
Gyorgy Faludy, the Hungarian poet who was an icon of the Nazi and Communist resistance in his native country, has died at the age of 96.
The poet, who became a Canadian citizen, passed away in his Budapest home on Friday, national news agency MTI reported on Saturday."Gyorgy Faludy was considered a master, the last member of Hungary's2 0th-century generation of poets to which all later generations compared and [will] compare themselves," Hungarian Prime MinisterFerenc Gyurcsany said. Known as George Faludy in the West, the poet fled his native country twice. Faludy, who was Jewish, left in 1938 during the rise of Nazism. He returned after the war and then fled a second time in 1956 as Soviet tanks crushed an anti-Communist uprising.
Before returning to Hungary in 1989, Faludy roamed the world, living inFrance, Algeria, the United Kingdom, Italy and then Toronto, where he resided for 20 years. The city was already planning to inaugurate a park bearing his name near his former home on Oct. 3.
Faludy may best be known for his adaptation of François Villon ballads from the medieval period, published just before the rise of fascism inthe late 1930s, and his autobiographical novel My Happy Days in Hell, published in 1962, which related his escape from fascist Hungary and his return and imprisonment during communist rule.I n the book, he details his life after being sent by the country's new Communist government to a concentration camp in 1949 where he spent three years. Many people were tortured or killed at the camp, which had been a state secret until 1,300 prisoners were released in 1953, following the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Faludy organized literature courses to keep up the spirits of the prisoners, including memorizing literary works to maintain their mental capabilities. He also recounts writing a poem in blood on toilet paper with a straw pulled from a broom.
After fleeing for the second time, Faludy edited a literary journal inLondon, taught at Columbia University in New York and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto. Faludy never stopped writing poetry, publishing a new collection of his works in 2002. His rebellious nature was never reined in. On the heels of his new collection, Faludy allowed the Hungarian edition of Penthouse magazine to photograph him and his new wife, poet Fanny Kovacs, wearing little more than their wedding rings for a featur earticle. More than 70,000 copies of the magazine were scooped up in a few days. He married Kovacs, then only 28 years old, after living for some time with a male lover. His son Andrew, from his marriage with second wife Zsuzsa, lives inBritain. Zsuzsa died in 1963. Faludy will be buried Sept. 9 in Budapest's Fiumei Uti cemetery.
Copyright (C) 2006 CBC. All rights reserved.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".