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Mihály Babits (HUN) - Jonah's Prayer

Abandoned by my words I'm left alone 
or I've become an aimless overflown 
drifting river and in my murky mud 
I drag the flotsam washed up in the flood: 
old idioms exhausted vain pretences 
like broken hedgerows signpost maybe fences. 
Oh would the Master wisely grant the force 
that channels deep, to lead a steady course 
toward the sea, and would He fit the rhyme 
to fringe my verse perfectly every time 
ready for use by me the good disciple, 
(for prosody I'd read His holy Bible), 
as lazy Jonah shirked to no avail, 
and then for three days rotted in the Whale, 
I too went down and shared those deadly bays 
of hot throbbing pain, but for thirty days, 
for thirty years or three hundred, who knows, 
to find, before my book will firmly close 
and even blinder and eternal 
Whale shall swallow my last departing journal, 
my real voice, to marshal every true 
word into action, as He gives the cue, 
to speak up loud as it is right and fitting 
for all to hear (my sickly throat permitting) 
until the powers, cosmic and Ninevean 
will silence me and send me to oblivion.


Posted on 03/15/2007 4:07 AM Visits: 57
Rhiwena: 03/15/2007 3:08 PM
thats beautiful. Especially if it comes from a translation, sometimes translations dont work. This reallydoes.
kathy1981: 03/16/2007 12:08 PM
it does come from a translation, I was amazed also. I love this in Hungarian :-)
JargonTalk ©: 03/17/2007 4:40 AM
rhiwena said:
thats beautiful. Especially if it comes from a translation, sometimes translations dont work. This really does.
I became aware of Babits years ago while in college from his scholarly work as a translator of Dante's Divine Commedy. His last years were overshadowed by his beloved Hungary entering WW-II on Germanys side. His last poetic work, The Book of Jonah, was published in 1939, and its postscript The Prayer of Jonah (which you have placed above), is a poetic introspective look at one's own values and destiny.

He died from throat cancer in the summer 1941, a witness to Hungary's alliance with Nazi Germany, not knowing what further monstrosities awaited Europe and his country. His last outcry in Jonahs Prayer was his poetic legacy, and demonstrates the obligation of speaking out in moral indignation.

Thanks for placing this here, Kathy. Hadn't thought about his writing in awile, but it looks it's a good time to once again read his works.

(I tried to post this earlier, and luckily made a copy. If it shows up as a duplicate, please just delete this one.)
fagyismaci: 05/03/2008 10:40 AM
wow ^_^
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