Thomas Land
| György Faludy (1910-2006) was one
of the great poets of modern
Europe.
He spent his final, extraordinarily creative, years in his
native
Hungary, where he returned after decades of self-imposed
exile. He then
married Fanny Kovács, a poet aged 28, and outraged the
authorities with
his riotous way of life while basking in the love of his
enormous
loyal public. Maecenas Press of Budapest has marked the
centenary of
his birth by publishing a Faludy collection in English
translation (37
Vers/37 Poems, trans. Peter Zollman, 2010, 208pp.,
ISBN:
9789632032252,
2,490 Forints or about £8). His 1962 memoir, My Happy Days in Hell, is published in Penguin Modern Classics. It is an incisive account of the demoralising effects of Communism and the horrors of forced labour - but is also very funny, and utterly life-enhancing. The critic Philip Toynbee once wrote: 'Faludy is the man we would all like to be.' Few books say as much about the central, most appalling experiences of the twentieth century. |
