Chapter 6. “How Others See …”
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Judit Zerkowitz
Abstract
Miklós Radnóti’s poem “How Others See …” is often recited in Hungary as a poetic expression of patriotism, a prayer for a victimised nation. Carrying out a stylistic analysis of one translation and comparing it to two others and the original, more textual evidence was found in favour of a humanistic pacifist interpretation than the standard patriotic reading, both at the level of structural patterns and of intertextual pointers. The poem contains a pattern of contrasts between the landscape as seen by the war pilot from above and the internal landscape viewed by the poet from below. The lexical choices of the translation analysed modify attitudes to the landscape and to the war in constructing identities, and argue for only individual innocence.
Abstract
Miklós Radnóti’s poem “How Others See …” is often recited in Hungary as a poetic expression of patriotism, a prayer for a victimised nation. Carrying out a stylistic analysis of one translation and comparing it to two others and the original, more textual evidence was found in favour of a humanistic pacifist interpretation than the standard patriotic reading, both at the level of structural patterns and of intertextual pointers. The poem contains a pattern of contrasts between the landscape as seen by the war pilot from above and the internal landscape viewed by the poet from below. The lexical choices of the translation analysed modify attitudes to the landscape and to the war in constructing identities, and argue for only individual innocence.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. The role of analogy in Charles Dickens’ Pictures from Italy 21
- Chapter 3. Listing and impressionism in Charles Dickens’s description of Genoa in Pictures from Italy 31
- Chapter 4. Immersed in imagined landscapes 45
- Chapter 5. The blind tour 61
- Chapter 6. “How Others See …” 81
- Chapter 7. The poems of Edward Thomas 95
- Chapter 8. Landscape as a dominant hero in “Bezhin Meadow” by I. S. Turgenev 123
- Chapter 9. A social landscape 153
- Chapter 10. The agency of The Hungry Tide 191
- Name index 233
- Subject index 235
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. The role of analogy in Charles Dickens’ Pictures from Italy 21
- Chapter 3. Listing and impressionism in Charles Dickens’s description of Genoa in Pictures from Italy 31
- Chapter 4. Immersed in imagined landscapes 45
- Chapter 5. The blind tour 61
- Chapter 6. “How Others See …” 81
- Chapter 7. The poems of Edward Thomas 95
- Chapter 8. Landscape as a dominant hero in “Bezhin Meadow” by I. S. Turgenev 123
- Chapter 9. A social landscape 153
- Chapter 10. The agency of The Hungry Tide 191
- Name index 233
- Subject index 235
