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RED IS THE BLOOD ON THE STREETS OF PEST (HUNGARIAN)
Verses and Lampoons about the 1956 Revolution
Compiled by László Győri
Budapest: Magyar Napló (Hungarian Journal) and the 1956 Institute, 2001
Author’s preface
This is a collection of 1956 verses that appeared during the revolution itself or early in the reprisal period, up to the end of 1956.
Most of the authors are quite unknown to literature. One is a farm labourer, another an army officer, a third a college student and a fourth a secondary schoolgirl. Nothing at all is known of several others. Others who were indeed poets—Ákos Dutka, István Pákolitz, József Pál, Mihály Simai or György Timár—are represented by verses that are quite forgotten, not appearing even in 1956 anthologies published after 1989. Also included are poems by authors known otherwise for prose works, not poetry: Rózsa Csongor of Székesfehérvár and Barna Sipkay of Nyíregyháza became novelists and storywriters, for instance. Their verses belong among those of other Fifty-sixers, as documents of the time, as do those of writers like Magda Kiss, Molnár Jenő and István Nagy.
Alongside them have been placed verses by well-known authors such as Gyula Illyés, Lajos Tamási, Lajos Kassák, Ferenc Jankovich and Sándor Márai. Their poems, which have appeared in 1956 anthologies, of course, are included to complete the picture of that autumn and that winter.
László Győri | |
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